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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028978595 
 
HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY KUNO FISCHER 
 
 Descartes and his School 
 
 Translated from the Third and Revised German Edition 
 
 BY 
 
 J. P. GpRDY, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PEDAGOGICS IN OHIO UNIVERSITY 
 EDITED BY 
 
 NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1887 
 
 [_Auikorzzed Ediit'ofi] 
 
■?^ 
 
 n^3 
 
 
 S. Zfy"' 
 
 1 
 
 COPTRIQHT, 1887, 
 
 Bt CHAKLE8 SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 RAKD AVHBT OOMPAMT. 
 
 BI..BOTROTTPBRS AND PBIMTBRa, 
 
 BOBTOn. 
 
INTEODUOTIOK 
 
 A MONGr the many histories of philosophy for which we are 
 , -f^^-^ indebted to modern research, the history of Modern Phi- 
 
 asophy by Professor Kuno Fischer of Heidelberg is conspicuous 
 T the courage with which the author grapples with tlie difficulties 
 •f his task and the success with which he overcomes them. 
 I'hough he is by no means removed from criticism or controversy 
 fi respect to the interpretation which he gives of the writers and 
 Jchools which he encounters, and in the positive and pronounced 
 estimates and criticisms which he does not hesitate to give of 
 Iheir leading positions, he is uniformly clear, spirited, and ex- 
 haustive. He is also popular in the best sense of the term, being 
 beither technical nor abstract beyond the necessities imposed by 
 iis theme, and connecting with the thorough and masterly dis- 
 cussion of schools and opinions as much of personal and general 
 listoric interest as could be expected or desired. For these 
 reasons his history is, perhaps, more readable than any other, 
 land is uniformly confessed by competent critics, whether friendly 
 lor otherwise, to be eminently attractive and exciting to the 
 [general student. 
 
 Hitherto only a small portion of this history has been translated 
 I English, — for one reason among others, that the history itself 
 [not yet complete, having as yet been finished to the end of 
 bielling's system and life, where it rests for obvious reasons 
 ■Jh the author's unsatisfied desire satisfactorily to expound the 
 Irelopment of the Hegelian theory of Being and of Knowledge, 
 eanwhile the result of his attempt to do this is awaited with 
 are than ordinary interest by both the disciples and antagonists 
 
iv INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 of Hegel and his critics. During tliis interval, there seems to be 
 no reason why the earlier portion of this history should not be 
 given to the English public, especially when we consider that the 
 history of the school of Descartes, in many senses, and especially 
 as treated by our author, stands by itself, and holds closer rela- 
 tions to all the forms of modern speculation than is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 It should be remembered also, that this portion of the history 
 has meanwhUe passed to a third edition, and been carefully elab- 
 orated by the author. The general Introduction wiU be found to 
 possess an independent interest. 
 
 For these reasons the publishers have decided to publish in two 
 separate volumes a translation of that portion of this history which 
 treats of Descartes and his school (including Spinoza), leaving 
 the question at present undecided whether tbej' shall publish the 
 remainder of the history, being satisfied that the volumes which 
 they offer to the public will in any event constitute a valuable 
 addition to the library of the student of modern philosophy, 
 which will, in an important sense, be complete by itself. 
 
 They are assured that the translation has been made by a 
 competent German scholar, who, in addition to his knowledo^e of 
 the German language and his familiarity with German philosophy 1 
 has had the very great advantage of giving the study of several 
 months to the critical study of the school of Descartes previously 
 to undertaking this translation. 
 
 NOAH POETER. 
 
 Yale College, Deo. 14, 1886. 
 
AUTHOE'S PREFACE. 
 
 THE first volume of this work has been out of print for some 
 time. I have been unable to complete a thorough revision 
 of it until during the present year, and I here present it in a 
 third edition. When I published the second edition, I had 
 written my history of modern philosophy as far as Kant. Since 
 then, I have added Fichte and his Predecessors, and Schel- 
 ling and his Period. Hegel, his School, and his Opponents, 
 and the course of development of philosophy since Hegel, are 
 still lacking. On account of the great difficulty of the subject, 
 I have been obliged, for the sake of clearness, to treat it in 
 such detail that the size and expensiveness of the work have 
 increased beyond what I intended. For it is impossible to 
 estimate the difficulties of one's own work, until one has realized 
 them, and sought to overcome them. And if he should be so 
 fortunate as to travel the toilsome road a second time, he will 
 have acquired the strength to advance more easily and rapidly, 
 as is often the case with long and fatiguing journeys. Brevity 
 without injury to clearness is possible only after the most 
 detailed exposition. 
 
 The size of the work in this new edition will be diminished 
 by the more compact form in which the matter is printed. I 
 seek to comply with this just desire of my publisher, while 
 I oppose every kind of abridgment that is unfavorable to clear- 
 ness. With my method of exposition, I cannot attain brevity 
 by omissions, but only by a corresponding treatment of all the 
 various parts of the whole. This was one reason for tliis new 
 revision, and is an essential part of it. It also seemed desirable 
 
VI AUTHOK'S PREFACE. 
 
 to enlarge the introduction, especially the sections treating of the 
 Eenaissance and the Reformation : besides, it appeared necessary 
 to add the results of recent investigations concerning Descartes. 
 The stand-point and arrangement of the work are unchanged. It 
 is unnecessary to repeat in the i^reface what is shown in the work 
 itself. When a third edition of a work so extensive and expen- 
 sive as the present is called for, I can venture, with some satisfac- 
 tion, to regard it as a proof that it has been of some service in 
 the instruction of my contemporaries. 
 
 KUNO FISCHER. 
 
 Hhidblebeg, Oct. 23, 1878. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF MODERN 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY, 15 
 
 I. The Pkoblem of the Wokld 17 
 
 II. The Pboblem of Knowledge 21 
 
 III. The Pkoblem of Fkeedom 26 
 
 IV. The Problem of Religion 30 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH 41 
 
 I. Pkimitive Chkistianitt .41 
 
 II. The Chubch 43 
 
 III. The Doctkine of the Church 46 
 
 1. The Problem 46 
 
 2. Augustinianism 49 
 
 IV. The Deification of the Church 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES .55 
 
 I. Problem 55 
 
 II. The Ecclesiastical Age of the World . . .57 
 
 vil 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 III. The Founding of Scholasticism 63 
 
 1. Erigena ^^ 
 
 2. Anselm 65 
 
 IV. The Couksb of Development of Scholasticism . . 67 
 
 1. Realism and Nominalism 67 
 
 2. The Platonic and Aristotelian Realism .... 69 
 
 3. Sums and Systems 73 
 
 4. Thomas and Scotus 74 
 
 5. Occam. The Dissolution of Scholasticism ... 76 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSAlSrCE 80 
 
 I. Humanism 80 
 
 II. The Italian Renaissance 82 
 
 III. The Course of Development of the Renaissance . 85 
 
 1. The Neo-Latin Renaissance 86 
 
 2. The Aristotelian Renaissance 87 
 
 3. The Political Renaissance 91 
 
 4. Italian Neo-Platonism and Theosophy .... 95 
 
 5. Magic and Mysticism 100 
 
 6. The Italian Nature-Philosophy 106 
 
 7. Scepticism as the Result of the Renaissance . . .116 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION 121 
 
 I. The New View of the Wobld 122 
 
 1 . The Historical View 122 
 
 2. The Geographical View 123 
 
 3. The Cosmographical View 125 
 
 4. Inventions 132 
 
 II. The Conflict between the Chuech and Science . 133 
 
 1. Trial of Galileo joo 
 
 III. The Religious Refokmation 13g 
 
 1. Protestantism -.oa 
 
 2. The Counter-Reformation and Jesuitism . . .145 
 
 3. Jansenism 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN PHILOSO- 
 PHY 
 
 153 
 
 158 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 DESCARTES' LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DESCARTES' PERSONALITY AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF 
 
 HIS LIFE 165 
 
 I. Type of Life 165 
 
 II. The Fibst Pebiod op his Life (1596-1612) . . .168 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE (1612-1628): THE WAN- 
 DEMJAHBE. (a) LIFE IN THE WORLD AND AS 
 
 A SOLDIER 177 
 
 I. Enteance into the Wobld 177 
 
 II. Military Seevice in Holland (1617-1619) . . . 179 
 III. MiLiTAEY Seevice in Geemany (1619-1621) . . .183 
 
 1. Campaigns 183 
 
 2. His Solitude in Neuburg. An Inner Crisis . . . 186 
 8. The Epoch of the Crisis 193 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Continuation. (6) TRAVELS, AND SECOND RESIDENCE IN 
 
 PARIS (1621-1628) 197 
 
 CPIAPTER lY. 
 
 THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE (1629-1650). THE PERIOD OP 
 THE WORKS, (a) RESIDENCE IN THE NETHER- 
 LANDS 205 
 
 I. " The Hermitage in Holland " 205 
 
 II. Intellectual Life in the Netherlands . . . 213 
 
 1. The State of Culture . 213 
 
 2. Anna Maria von Schurmann 213 
 
 III. The Countess-Palatine Elizabeth 215 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (6) THE DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLICATION OP THE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WORKS ^^^ 
 
 - L The "Cosmos" ^^ 
 
 1. Arrangement and Plan 223 
 
 2. Composition, and Prevention of Publication . . 229 
 II. The Philosophical Works 235 
 
 1. The Motive for their Publication 235 
 
 2. Writings on Method 240 
 
 3. The Metaphysical Works 242 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF A SCHOOL. — DISCIPLES AND OPPO- 
 NENTS 250 
 
 I. Controversies in Utrecht 250 
 
 1. Eeneri and Regius 250 
 
 2. Gisbertus Voetius 252 
 
 3. The Condemnation of the New-Philosophy . . . 254 
 
 4. The Controversy between Descartes and Voetius . 256 
 
 5. Conclusion of the Utrecht-Groniugen Controversy . 262 
 II. Attacks in Letden 265 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LAST TEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND 269 
 
 I. New Plans and Friends 269 
 
 1. Journeys to France 269 
 
 2. Clerselier and Chanut 270 
 
 3. Last Residence in Paris 274 
 
 II. A New Opponent. — Last Labors 278 
 
 1. Regius' Apostasy 278 
 
 2. The Last Works 280 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM . . 283 
 
 I. The Invitation or the Queen 283 
 
 1. Christina of Sweden 283 
 
 2. Philosophical Letters 284 
 
 3. Invitation and Journey to Stockholm .... 290 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. Descartes in Stockholm 294 
 
 1. Eesidence and Position 294 
 
 2. Sickness and Death 296 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS . . , .298 
 
 I. The Works published by Descartes himself . . 298 
 
 1. The Philosophical Works 298 
 
 2. The Polemical Works 299 
 
 II. The Remains and the Opera Postuma . . . • . 300 
 
 1. Writings not in Descartes' Possession .... 300 
 
 2. Lost Writings 300 
 
 3. The Works edited hy Clerselier 302 
 
 4. Collection of Unpublished Works at Descartes' Death . 302 
 III. Edition of Complete Works 303 
 
 1. Collective Editions 303 
 
 2. Arrangement of Letters 304 
 
 3. Supplements 305 
 
 BOOK 11. 
 
 DESCABTES' DOCTRINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW METHOD OE PHILOSOPHY. — THE PATH TO 
 
 THE SYSTEM 309' 
 
 I. Sources op the Theory of Method .... 309' 
 
 1. Subject 309 
 
 2. The Methodological Posthumous Works. Critical 
 
 Questions 310 
 
 II. False Paths to Knowledge 313 
 
 1. Defective Knowledge 313 
 
 2. Defective Method 31.3' 
 
 IIL The Path to Truth 315 
 
 1. The Problem of Knowledge 315 
 
 2. The Method of True Deduction 317 
 
 3. Universal Mathematics. Analytical Geometry . . 320 
 
 4. Enumeration, or Induction. Intuition .... 323 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: METPIODICAL DOUBT, 328 
 
 I. The Omgin and Extent op Doubt 328 
 
 1. The Teachings of the Schools 328 
 
 2. Self-deception 329 
 
 II. Doubt as Method and as Principle . . . .333 
 
 CPI AFTER in. 
 
 THE J'RINCIp£e of PHILOSOPHY AND THE PROBLEM 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE 337 
 
 I. The Pkinciple of Certainty 337 
 
 1. One's Own Thinliing Being 337 
 
 2. The Principle of Certainty. The Mind as the Clearest 
 
 Object 339 
 
 II. The Problem of Knowledge 341 
 
 1. The Conception of a Being Without Us . . . 341 
 
 2. The Principle of Causality 343 
 
 3. The Idea of God . .' 344 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. — HUMAN SELF-CERTAINTY, 
 
 AND CERTAINTY OF GOD 346 
 
 I. Proofs of the Existence of God 346 
 
 1. Cause of the Idea of God 346 
 
 2. The Idea of God as Innate 348 
 
 3. Ontological and Anthropological Proofs . . . 349 
 
 4. The Anthropological Proof as Foundation of the 
 
 Ontological 350 
 
 II. The CEpiAiNTY OF Self and the Certainty of God . 354 
 
 1. The Certainty of One's Own Imperfection . . . 354 
 
 2. The Idea of the Perfect and its Primariness . . . 356 
 
 3. The Primariness, Reality, and Truthfulness of God . 357 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF ERROR. — UNDERSTANDING AND WILL. 
 
 — HUMAN FREEDOM 360 
 
 I. Error as the Fault of the Win 360 
 
 1. The Fact of Error 360 
 
 2. Will and Understanding 361 
 
 3. Blameworthy Ignorance 362 
 
CONTENTS. XIU 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. The Wish for Thuth . " 363 
 
 1. The Prevention of Error 363 
 
 2. The Lower and Higher Freedom of the Will . . 365 
 
 3. Freedom from Error 366 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY. — TRANSITION 
 
 TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE . . . .368 
 
 I. The Substantiality op Things 368 
 
 1. The Existence of Bodies 368 
 
 2. Substances. God and Things 371 
 
 3. Attribute and Modes 372 
 
 II. The Attributes op Things 373 
 
 1. False Attributes 373 
 
 2. The Multitude of Our Errors, and their Chief Source . 375 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, (a) THE MATHEMATICAL 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF THE EXPLANATION OF NATURE . 379 
 
 I. Extension as the Attribute of Body .... 379 
 
 1. Body as an Object of Thought 379 
 
 2. Body as Quantity of Space 382 
 
 II. The Material World 384 
 
 - CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. (6) THE MECHANICAL 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF THE EXPLANATION OF NATURE . 385 
 I. Motion as the Fundamental Phenomenon op the 
 
 Material World 385 
 
 1. Motion as a Mode of Extension 385 
 
 2. Motion as Change of Place 386 
 
 II. The Causes of Motion 389 
 
 1. The First Cause of Motion, and its Quantity . . 389 
 
 2. The Second Causes of Motion, or the Laws of Nature . 390 
 
 III. Hydro-Mechanics. — Solid and Fluid Bodies . . 395 
 
 1. Distinction between the Two 395 
 
 2. Solid in Fluid Bodies . . . . . . .396 
 
 3. The Heavens and the Earth. The. Motion of the 
 
 Planets. The Hypotheses of Vortices . . .397 
 
 4. Emptiness and the Pressure of the Atmosphere . . 404 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 UNION OF SOUL AND BODT. — PASSIONS OF THE SOUL. 
 
 — NATURAL AND MORAL LIFE OF MAN. ■ 407 
 
 I. AlfTHEOPOLOGICAL PROBLEM • ^" 
 
 1. Meaning and Extent of the Problem . . . -407 
 
 2. The Cardinal Point of the Problem . • • .410 
 
 3. The Passions as Fundamental Phenomena of the 
 
 Human Soul ^11 
 
 IL The Union of the Soul and Body 413 
 
 1. The Mechanism of Life 413 
 
 2. The Organ of the Soul 416 
 
 3. The Will and the Passions 418 
 
 III. Kinds op Passion 421 
 
 1. Fundamental Forms 421 
 
 2. Derived or Combined Forms 423 
 
 IV. The Moral Aim of Life 429 
 
 1. Worth and Unworthiness of the Passions . . .429 
 
 2. The Worth of Wonder 431 
 
 3. Freedom of Mind 434 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ■ THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST. — OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES . 438 
 
 I. Objections 438 
 
 1. Stand-points and Tendencies of their Authors . . 438 
 
 2. Points of Agreement and Disagreement . . . 441 
 
 3. The Points of Attack 446 
 
 II. Descartes' Replies 458 
 
 1. Reply to the Objection that the Proof is Syllogistic . 459 
 
 2. Reply to the Materialistic and Sensualistic Objections . 460 
 
 3. Reply to the Objection that Doubt is Nihilistic . . 462 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE 
 SOLVED AND NEW PROBLEMS 
 I. Object and Method of the Inquiry 
 II. Principal Critical Questions . 
 
 1. The Dualistic System of Knowledge 
 •"■ 2. Dualism between God and the World 
 
 3. Dualism between Mind and Body . 
 
 4. Dualism between Men and Animals 
 
 SYSTEM. - 
 1 . 
 
 UN- 
 
 465 
 465 
 460 
 470 
 471 
 477 
 483 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 III. New Problems and thkib Solution . . . .486 
 
 1. Occasionalism 48g 
 
 2. Spinozism 488 
 
 3. Monadology 489 
 
 4. Sensualism 491 
 
 5. Materialism and Idealism 492 
 
 6. Critical Pliilosophy 493 
 
 BOOK HI. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT AND MODIFICATION OF THE 
 DOCTRINE OF DESCABTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DIFFUSION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARTESIAN 
 
 DOCTRINE 499 
 
 I. Cabtesianism in the Netherlands 499 
 
 1. Tlie New Rationalism and its Opponents . . . 499 
 
 2. Attempts to Compose Philosophical Differences . . 502 
 
 3. Opponents in Lyons 504 
 
 II. Fbench Cabtesianism 505 
 
 1. Ecclesiastico-Political Persecutions .... 505 
 
 2. The Classic Period of French Literature and the 
 
 Supremacy of Descartes' Philosophy . . . 508 
 
 3. Fashionable Philosophy and Satire .... 512 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE FIRST ATTEMPTS/,T0 <ERITICAL^ DEVELOP CAR- 
 
 TESIANISM 516 
 
 I. The French School 516 
 
 1. Rohault and R^gis 516 
 
 2. De la Forge and Cordemoy 518 
 
 II. The School in the Netheblands 520 
 
 1. Clauberg 520 
 
 2. Balthasar Bekker 521 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM.— ARNOLD GEULINCX. 529 
 
 I. Geulincx' Life and Writings 529 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 II. Geulistcx' Doctkine 
 
 1. The Doctrine of Principles 
 
 2. Ethics .... 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WOEKS 
 I. The Intdition of the World in God 
 II. The Oratory of Jesus . 
 III. Malebranche's Life and Writings 
 
 1. Incidents 
 
 2. Controversies .... 
 
 3. Writings 
 
 PAGE 
 
 531 
 531 
 
 538 
 
 542 
 542 
 544 
 546 
 546 
 548 
 552 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE. {a) THE PROBLEM OF 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF OCCASIONALISM . . ■ -554 
 
 I. Dualism and Occasionalism 554 
 
 1. The Substantiality of Things 554 
 
 2. The Inactivity of Things 556 
 
 3. The Causality of God 558 
 
 II. Christianity and Philosophy 560 
 
 1. The Divine Will as the Law of Nature . . . .560 
 
 2. Error as the Consequence of Sin 562 
 
 3. Knowledge as Illumination 564 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (6) SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM: THE INTUITION OF 
 
 THINGS IN GOD 566 
 
 I. Objects and Kinds of Knowledge 566 
 
 II. Malebranche's Doctrine of Ideas 569 
 
 1. The Origin of Ideas 569 
 
 2. The World of Ideas in God 572 
 
 3. Intelligible Extension and Universal Reason , . . 673 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (c) THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD.— PANTHEISM IN 
 
 MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE 577 
 
 I. The Universe in God 577 
 
 1. God as the Place of Minds 577 
 
 2. Things as Modes of God 57^) 
 
 II. Malebranche's Pantheistic Tendency . . . .581 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 
 
 nr^HE subject of this work is modern philosophy. How- 
 -*- ever peculiar the conditions of life which this philosophy- 
 implies, however natural and plain its problems, proposed 
 through its own insight, it is still conditioned in its origin 
 by the history of the philosophy which precedes it. To be 
 sure, it arises in a thoroughly conscious break with the 
 past. It has the distinct and outspoken certainty that an 
 entirely new beginning must be made, and declares at the 
 start that it intends to be free from all presuppositions, per- 
 fectly independent of all traditional doctrines, of all the 
 authorities of the past. And it actually realizes this ideal 
 as it conceives it. But this freedom of mind is itself an 
 historical event: this freedom from presuppositions has his- 
 torical conditions. The path that leads to it is gradually 
 broken, and preparations are made for it by a further and 
 further departure from the principles of the earlier philoso- 
 phy. There are definite crises in which the human mind, 
 weary of that which is, falls back upon its original powers, 
 and, from its inexhaustible sources, renews its culture. The 
 foundations of such crises are laid deep in the progress of 
 humanity : they are dependent upon a long series of histori- 
 cal conditions, and, therefore, they are rare. They never 
 appear except in the fulness of time. Such a fulness of 
 
 1 
 
2 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 time, modern philosophy required for its origin. Hence, 
 this philosophy, with all its independence of thought, with 
 all the originality of its foundations, remains in constant 
 intercourse with its historical presuppositions. It contra- 
 dicts them in its iirst period, and sharpens this contradiction 
 to a complete contrast ; as it progresses, it inclines to them, 
 and feels a kinship with them ; and, in its most recent period, 
 it renews this antagonism and this relationship. Thus, 
 modern philosophy always sustains a definite relation to 
 the philosophy of ancient times, and never permits it to 
 vanish from its horizon. We must, therefore, in the intro- 
 duction to this work, become clear as to the historical con- 
 ditions from which modern philosophy proceeds, and as to 
 the connection of its first period with the great march of 
 human development. 
 
 In the very concept of the history of philosophy, certain 
 difficulties are contained which might make the possibility of 
 such a history doubtful. For a concept is difScult when its 
 characteristics cannot be at once combined, and impossible 
 when they cannot be combined at all. Now, between the 
 concept of history and that of philosophy, such an opposi- 
 tion seems indeed to exist. History is inconceivable with- 
 out a succession of events in time ; philosophy, without the 
 knowledge of truth. Now, only that concept is true which 
 completely corresponds to its object. There are, therefore, 
 but two possibilities, — either this correspondence between a 
 concept and its object exists, or it does not: in the first 
 case, the concept is true ; in the second, it is false. Truth is 
 a unit: it has no series or succession of cases, and, therefore, 
 as it seems, no history. And so a history of philosophy, a 
 succession of different systems, often in the most direct 
 contradiction, and never in perfect harmony with each other, 
 appears as the manifest contrfldiction of philosophy itself, 
 and the plainest testimony to its impossibility. Therefore 
 the contradictions of pliilosophers, the multiplicity and 
 diversity of their systems, have always been urged by 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 3 
 
 tliose who have doubted the possibility of true knowledge. 
 Among the objections which the sceptics of ancient times 
 brought against philosophy, the conflict of systems was one 
 of the first and most important. It is evident, that, from 
 this point of view, the history of philosophy, in the strict 
 sense of the term, is impossible. Either the many so-called 
 systems are accepted as mere historical facts, and the history 
 of philosophy is resolved into a history of philosophers, — 
 of their lives, opinions, and schools, — which the historian 
 sets forth as well as the sources of information concerning 
 permit, and as he understands those sources, or these sys- 
 tems are regarded merely as having failed to reach the 
 unity of true knowledge, and criticised without reference 
 to their historical character. In such a consideration of 
 the history of philosophy, history is entirely separated from 
 philosophy. In the first case, the history of philosophy 
 is a subject merely of a narration : in the second, it is a 
 subject merely of critical examination. The narration of 
 the first is as uncritical as the criticism of the second is 
 unhistorical. From the one-sided historical point of view, 
 there is indeed a history, but no philosophy : from the one- 
 sided critical point of view, there is indeed a philosophy, 
 but no history. This philosophy, without historical interest 
 and without historical insight, either regards the problem 
 of true knowledge as insoluble, and the given systems as 
 nothing but errors, or it maintains, on practical grounds, a 
 certain knowledge of the truth, valid in all cases, but which 
 those systems only imperfectly attain, and. mingle with false 
 opinions. Thus, it deals with historical systems either abso- 
 lutely sceptically, rejecting them all, or eelectically, separat- 
 ing and culling out the true according to a completely 
 subjective principle. Now, these critics are not what they 
 aim to be, by far. They suppose that they judge these 
 systems with entire freedom from prejudice, and in absolute 
 independence, as though they stood above the history of 
 philosophy. They do not know that they have received 
 
4 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 their stand-points from this very history ; that these stand- 
 points are historical events with historical conditions ; that 
 they are necessary products of an entirely definite historical 
 position of philosophy, and that this very fact gives them 
 their authority for the time. 
 
 These two points of view — the historical and critical — are 
 naturally the first from which the history of philosophy is 
 considered. It is written at first either by historians or by 
 sceptics and eclectic philosophers. Three important sources 
 of the knowledge of ancient philosophy are so many exam- 
 l^les of these historical, sceptical, and eclectic stand-points, 
 — Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, Johannes Stobaus. 
 And among the first writers who, in modern times, have 
 expounded and criticised the systems of philosophy, there 
 are three with corresponding points of view, — Thomas 
 Stanley, Pierre Bayle, and Jacob Brucker. 
 
 But this separation of the historical and critical points 
 of view does not solve the jjroblem of the history of phi- 
 losophy, but merely evades the difficulty. From the one, we 
 have history without philosophy ; from the other, philosophy 
 without history. It is impossible to comprehend how the 
 history of philosophy is possible from either of these stand- 
 points. And so the question returns, How is the history of 
 philosophy as science piossible ? 
 
 Let us inquire somewhat more rigorously whether philoso- 
 phy, as love of wisdom, as striving for truth, is really inca- 
 pable of a history. Let us admit for the present the usual 
 explanation, according to which truth consists in adequate 
 conceptions; i.e., in perfect agreement between our con- 
 cept and its object. If we assume that the object is a given, 
 in itself completed, thing, which remains unchangeably like 
 itself, certainly only two cases are possible: our concept 
 either does, or does not, correspond to this so constituted 
 object. And if we assume that there is just as certainly a 
 completed concept, only two cases are possible : either we 
 have, or do not have, this true concept ; either we are in com- 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 5 
 
 plete possession of the truth, or we are completely deprived 
 of it. In either case, every kind of history is excluded from 
 the territory of truth. 
 
 But this is never the case. However definite and un- 
 changeable may be the object of our knowledge, the concept 
 corresponding to it is never so perfect that with one grasp, 
 as it were, we lay hold of the object, or miss it altogether. 
 Even if true concepts were innate, we should have to become 
 gradually conscious of them : we should pass from the twilight 
 to the noonday of knowledge, in a succession of experiences 
 which would be equivalent to a history of our conscious- 
 ness. And, if true conceptions are not innate, they must 
 be produced by the mind, — i.e., be formed, — and, there- 
 fore, pass through a process of development which can be 
 nothing else than a gradual correction of our concepts, which, 
 in their first state, are not conformable to objects. Every 
 true concept in the human consciousness has become so : there 
 every truth has a history upon which its existence depends, 
 and this history forms an essential part of the progress in the 
 culture and development of the individual. The greater the 
 difficulties to be overcome, the more numerous the problems 
 to be solved in order to bring the truth into the light, the 
 longer, of courae, continues its development. Whole periods 
 remain involved in errors, and it requires the strength of a 
 new age to detect and correct and overcome them. Cen- 
 turies work on such a process of development. Such a truth 
 has a liistory on a large scale. Every science is an historical 
 growth, and could only become what it is by a gradual de- 
 velopment. The fabric of the world, in its constitution, its 
 laws, its mechanical order, remains unchangeably the same 
 as an object of human contemplation ; but astronomy had to 
 develop and fix a series of conceptions, then dissolve and 
 abandon them, before it could reach true knowledge after 
 so many centuries. However erroneous the old system, it 
 formed the necessary vestibule to the new and correct one. 
 
 The second of the above suppositions is, therefore, never 
 
6 HISTORY OF MODERN THILOSOPHY. 
 
 true. True concepts are never once for all stamped upon 
 the mind, and perfect. On the contrary, they are always 
 problems to be solved. But even the first of them is not 
 always true. The object of our knowledge does not always 
 remain unchangeably the same. What if this object itself 
 forms a process, is undergoing a change which is constantly 
 renewed, not in such a change as is continually repeated 
 according to the same laws, like motion in nature, and 
 the circulation of life, but in a creative activity, in a really 
 progressive development? What if this object not merely 
 has, but unfolds and represents its entire nature in, a history, 
 without being exhausted in any period of it whatever ? If, 
 in brief, this object is of a living, spiritual nature? It is 
 evident that the knowledge of such an object not merely 
 requires development, in common with all human knowledge, 
 but, in order to correspond to its object, must itself be in a 
 state of historical progress. A process of progressing devel- 
 opment can only be conceived by a process of progressing 
 knowledge. 
 
 This process of progressing development is th^ human 
 mind: this progressing process of knowledge is philosophy 
 as the self-knowledge of the human mind. Since it is clear 
 that the human mind, as self-conscious, must be an object to 
 itself, it must be a problem to itself. It must seek to solve 
 this problem : it cannot exist without this effort. This effort 
 is philosophy. Without it the mind could not be a problem 
 to itself, could not be its own object, could not, therefore, be 
 self-conscious. Human self-consciousness is a problem which 
 philosophy solves. The human mind is like an historical 
 development which ramifies into a variety of modes and into 
 a series of systems of culture which the mind produces from 
 itself, consummates, and outgrows, and out of which, as its 
 material, produces new forms of civilization. What can the 
 knowledge, which seeks to correspond to this object, be, 
 except a variety and series of systems of knowledge, which, 
 like their object, lead an historical life? What, therefore, 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 7 
 
 can philosophy be in this relation, except the history of 
 philosophy ? It is like a quantity whose value is made up 
 of a series of quantities. At the first glance, it seemed as if 
 the concept of philosophy excluded from itself the possibility 
 of a history, as something incompatible with it : we now see, 
 that, on the contrary, philosophy not merely admits histori- 
 cal development as a possibility, but demands it as a neces- 
 sity ; that to every philosophical system with its historical 
 worth, belongs also its historical truth ; that each of these 
 systems demands as rigidly to be understood in its historical 
 characteristics as in its truth; that, therefore, the history of 
 philosophy as science unites in the closest manner the his- 
 torical point of view with the critical, the historical interest 
 with the philosophical. If its object were the philosopher's 
 stone, its truth would be something found, a prize, which is 
 either won or lost. If its object is the human mind, its truth 
 itself is a living history, and it must develop and advance 
 within the great march of the civilization of humanity. 
 
 This must be true if indeed the human mind is the real 
 object of philosophy ; if in its fundamental characteristics, in 
 its distinctive problems, philosophy is nothing else than the 
 self-knowledge of the mind, the self-knowledge of humanity 
 universally. But is this true ? Is not this explanation too 
 narrow and limited? Does not the problem of philosophy 
 embrace more than the human mind? We call it self-knowl- 
 edge : it calls itself knowledge of the universe (weltweisJieW). 
 And the only relation which the knowledge of self can 
 sustain to the knowledge of the universe, is that of the 
 human mind to the universe ; i.e., that of a part to the 
 whole. Have we not, therefore, drawn a fallacious infer- 
 ence, and extended to philosophy in general what is true 
 of it only in a limited sense, asserted of it universally what 
 is only true partially? 
 
 It is certainly true that all historical systems have by no 
 means put the problem of human self-knowledge in the front, 
 and made all others depend upon it. Rather only in rare 
 
8 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 moments in the course of time, has the Delphic inscription 
 been written on the portals of philosophy, with the full and 
 distinct consciousness of being the first of all philosophical 
 problems. But, as often as it has, a definite crisis has at 
 the same time appeared in philosophy, as in antiquity in the 
 Socratic epoch, and in modern times in the Kantian. It is 
 easy to show that the meaning of these crises extends to the 
 whole of preceding and the whole of succeeding philosophy ; 
 that it is the fruit of the one and the seed of the other ; that 
 it absolutely brings to an end the philosophy of the past, as 
 it absolutely dominates that of the future. And thus it be- 
 comes clear, and is proved by the experience of the history 
 of philosofjhy itself, that human self-knowledge constitutes 
 the fundamental theme of all systems, — of all, if they are 
 not isolated, but considered in their inner relations with each 
 other. It is indeed the universal problem, for the clear per- 
 ception of which the systems of the one series prepare, and 
 the distinctly conscious starting-point of the systems of the 
 other series. The epochs in which the consciousness of this 
 problem breaks through would not illuminate the path of 
 philosophy on both sides so brilliantly, they would not 
 enable us to see so easily and simply the significance of all 
 the schools of philosophy, if they did not reveal the nature 
 of the subject in its entirety. 
 
 And what the experience of history thus shows, is 
 taught also by the concept of philosophy when rightly 
 considered. For human self-knowledge is not merely the 
 profoundest, but also the most comprehensive, of all scientific 
 problems. Philosophy as knowledge of self, plainly in- 
 cludes philosophy as knowledge of the universe. A thought- 
 less conception of the matter certainly represents the 
 knowledge of self as related to the knowledge of the uni- 
 verse — the self to the universe — as a part to the whole. 
 It sees in self a single thing ; in the universe, the conceived 
 totality (inhegriff") of things: how, therefore, can it be 
 that that is not less than this ? And yet it is not difficult 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 9 
 
 to see that the world as the conceived totality of things 
 presupposes a being that conceives this totality, therefore a 
 conceiving being, since conceived totality is nothing in 
 itself. It is not difficult to see that the world as the object 
 of our contemplation, as the problem of our knowledge, is 
 only possible under the condition of a being that makes it 
 an object, therefore, of a perceiving, conceiving, in a word, 
 self-conscious, being ; that this itself as a single thing, as a 
 part of the universe, belongs among the objects which re- 
 quire to be reflected upon, conceived, made into objects, 
 and presupposes, therefore, an original self, which forms the 
 inmost core of our being. Here is the great problem of 
 things that presses for solution, the problem of all problems. 
 The universe and self are related as subject and object, as 
 the conditioned to the condition, not as the whole to a 
 part, also not as the two sides of a contrast which exclude 
 each other, as the real to the ideal, to use the favorite 
 formula for expressing the relation between object and sub- 
 ject, the world and self. The world is our object, our 
 presentation : it is nothing independent of our presentation 
 of our self. We ourselves are the world. Every false view of 
 the world is always likewise a self-delusion : every true view 
 of the world is always likewise a self-knowledge. As there 
 is no world independent of our self to whom it appears, by 
 whom it is conceived, so there is no knowledge of the world 
 capable of being independent of, or disjoined from,» hiimman 
 self-knowledge. Only two cases are hero thinkable i eiither 
 our self-knowledge is made dependent upon our view of the 
 world, or our view of the world is made dependent upen our 
 self-knowledge. From the nature of the case» the- second 
 must be true ; but the perception of this necessity had to be 
 gained by toil, and philosophy made and abandouedi a series 
 of presuppositions before it could acquire it.. And' thus 
 its fundamental tendencies are distinguished. At first, the 
 world appeared first, and self as second, until the self-delu- 
 sion which lies at the foundation of this point of view 
 
10 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSORHY. 
 
 became evident, and now their relation in the consciousness 
 of philosophy is reversed. 
 
 Thereby we hope to liave established that philosophy by 
 means of its concept can be nothing else than human self- 
 knowledge, and, as soon as it has gotten rid of the first 
 self-delusion, that it also consciously seeks to be nothing 
 else. The coui'se of its historical development confirms 
 this truth. 
 
 We can draw a number of self-evident inferences from 
 this conception, which throw much light upon the history of 
 philosophy, and clear aAvay a multitude of prejudices that 
 hinder a right view of it. 
 
 The first is, that philosophy, like the human mind itself, 
 is capable of, and requires, an historical cleveloj3ment ; that 
 it participates in the life of systems of culture which ages 
 and nations consummate, and, therefore, shares in their prog- 
 ress, and is subject to their destinies. It is the self-knowl- 
 edge of humanity, of humanity in the highest form of one 
 of its stages of development, controlled by one of its defi- 
 nite and distinct modes of culture. It is the problem of 
 jihilosophy to comprehend the inmost motives of this form 
 of cultui'e, and explain its nature and its ideal. This in- 
 most motive must appear, the mind mi^st be conscious of it 
 if it is conscious of itself, for it is itself this inmost motive. 
 And there is no other means of solving this problem than 
 philosophy. 
 
 The richer and more multiform the world of culture 
 which philosophy must comprehend and explain, the more 
 difficult its problem. A multitude of different and opposing 
 movements and intei-ests are clashing with each other on 
 the animated theatre of the world ; so different and conflict- 
 ing must be the motives at work in the human mind ; and 
 so different and conflicting must be the philosophical systems 
 of such an age. It is self-evident that the contradictions 
 of the time must appear in conflicting sj'stems, each of 
 them representing one phase of the spirit of the age, and 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 11 
 
 supplementing the rest in order to solve the philosophical 
 problem of the time. 
 
 Every period has its predominant tendencies, either mani- 
 festing themselves alone or with unmistakable ascendency, 
 and employing the active forces of history : they are based 
 either upon the great problem of the age, upon the highest 
 interests of the human mind, which obscure all others for 
 a time, and drive them into the background, or upon the 
 interests of mere bulk, which, with the value of its aims 
 in life, presses to the front, and temporarily chokes all 
 other forms of culture. Hence also in philosophy there 
 are predominant systems contrasted in character; profound 
 systems probing the depths of the human mind, and popu- 
 lar philosopMes comprehending no more than the masses 
 desire. 
 
 But whatever may be the spirit of a time which is por- 
 trayed in philosophj', this portrait is always more than a 
 mere likeness. Philosophy is related to the historical spirit 
 of man as ' is self-knowledge to our own life, and this en- 
 ables us to bring this great question into a smaller compass. 
 Now, what is involved in an act of self-knowledge,? We 
 withdraw our attention from the outer world, and reflect 
 upon ourselves. It is our own life which we make the 
 object of our thoughts ; and while we, in contemplation of 
 it, stand opposite to it, as it were, we ourselves become a 
 phenomenon. We cease to be what we have been : we 
 rise above our past self, like an artist above his work. 
 The artist absorbed in labor sees with different eyes from 
 the artist who has put down his tools, and stepped back 
 from his work, and, from a. well-chosen point of view, 
 critically surveys the whole. He discovers faults undetected 
 before ; here he sees an incongruity in the parts, there a 
 lack of symmetry. He sees how one part harmonizes with 
 .another, and what disturbs this harmony. What will he 
 do? Abandon the work because it is not yet perfected, 
 because it seems to him very defective ? Will he not rather 
 
12 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 seize his tools again, and strive to realize that true concep- 
 tion which entered his mind in the moment of that criti- 
 cal survey? Let us leave the figure. We are the artist; 
 the work of art is our life; the critical survey is the 
 knowledge of self which interrupts our life. We withdraw 
 from the life we have been living, like the artist from his 
 work, to a point of view from which we make it our object, 
 and get a distinct perception of ourselves. Thereby we 
 leave our old life, and we shall never return to it again. 
 Thus, the knowledge of self determines the moment in 
 our existence which concludes one period in our life, and 
 begins another; it forms a crisis in our development; it 
 makes a turning-point in our lives. It is not merely a 
 copy, it is a transformation of our lives. We free our- 
 selves from our passions as soon as we think them ; they 
 cease to be our state as soon as they become our object; 
 we cease to feel them as soon as we begin to reflect upon 
 them. Therein lies the whole significance of the knowl- 
 edge of self; the crisis which it effects in our lives. It 
 transforms our state into our object : it places the power 
 under which we have lived over against us as an object. 
 What is the necessary result? We are no longer in- 
 volved in that state ; we are no longer controlled by that 
 power ; we are, therefore, no longer what we were. Thus, 
 earnest self-knowledge is always a fundamental freeing 
 and renewing of our lives : it is really the crisis in which 
 the present separates itself from the past, and prepares for 
 the future. The acts of self-knowledge in our lives are 
 like the monologue of a drama : the action withdraws from 
 the animated theatre of the outer world into one's inmost 
 mind, and there, in the quietness of self-reflection, it solves 
 old problems, and proposes new ones. 
 
 Such crises are wanting in no actively intellectual life, and 
 every one has experienced them. It is impossible for us • 
 continually to pour out our being without remainder, as it 
 were, into the particular states of life and culture by which 
 
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. 13 
 
 we are controlled. Insensibly begins, and gradually grows, 
 the rebellious consciousness. In the same proportion, our 
 interest in the old forms of culture dies ; in the same pro- 
 portion they cease to satisfy us ; we are weary of them. A 
 feeling of satiety and dissatisfaction becomes more and more 
 definite, more and more painful, until, at last, we remain 
 alone with ourselves. One thing is certain : we are estranged 
 from the life we have been living ; we are inwardly free from 
 it. For the first time we become conscious of our independ- 
 ence ; and we indemnify ourselves in our thoughts for every 
 thing that we no longer desire or believe with the great con- 
 sciousness that we no longer desire it. Now begins reflection 
 upon ourselves, upon the problem of our existence, upon the 
 problem of the world. We begin to philosophize so far as 
 our faculties and culture permit us. This philosophy is a 
 fruit of our culture, however mature or immature it may be. 
 Its foundations are laid in the state of culture from which it 
 proceeds, and from which it frees us. It will, therefore, ne- 
 cessarily give expression to this state of culture also. Thus, 
 from the experience and development of a single life, I have 
 described the state of mind in which the will inclines to 
 reflection and self-knowledge, and the first motives to phi- 
 losophize are conceived. Those are the moments when in- 
 tense natures become conscious of a passionate desire to 
 become acquainted with philosophy, and receive from it the 
 satisfaction that life no longer gives. 
 
 What those significant meditations upon self are in the life 
 of the individual, the prominent systems of philosophy are 
 in the life of humanity. They not merely accompany the 
 advancing spirit of man, but they exert a quiet though power- 
 ful influence upon its progress. They make that an object 
 of thought which was before a mastering state : they free 
 the world from this dominion, and so tend to complete 
 existing states, and prepare and lay the foundations of a 
 new human culture. They act as inner factors in originat- 
 ing, developing, and bringing to an end, the great systems 
 
14 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of culture in the history of the world, and in determining 
 the great crises of culture. Humanity is a problem that 
 becomes more and more developed in history, is ever more 
 and more profoundly conceived. That, in brief, is the entire 
 content of the history of philosophy, a content indeed of 
 great historical significance. We first see the history of phi- 
 losophy in its true light, when we see in it the course of 
 development in which the necessary problems of humanity 
 are defined with all distinctness, and so solved that from 
 every solution ever new and profounder problems arise. 
 We must trace out the fundamental lines in this course of 
 development, in order to fix the point where we ourselves 
 take up its exposition. 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COURSE OP DEVELOPMENT OP GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rriHE entrance of Christianity into the history of the world 
 -*- forms the boundary between the two great periods of 
 the history of the world, — the pre-Christian and the Chris- 
 tian. By this boundary we mean the whole time which 
 Christianity required to overcome the old religion and to 
 become itself a great power in the history of the world. 
 
 In the pre-Christian world, there was one nation which 
 beyond all others was philosophical. It exercised almost 
 undivided mental sway for more than a thousand years, and 
 its systems still remain a school of culture and education for 
 the nations of Christianity. The predominant philosophy of 
 antiquity was the Grecian. It began in the sixth century 
 before Christ, and ended in the sixth of the Christian era. 
 Its beginnings coincided with the foundation of the great 
 Persian empire, and its last school died about a half-century 
 after the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. A pecul- 
 iar fate willed that Grecian philosophers of the first period 
 should flee from the Persians, whose victorious arms already 
 threatened the Grecian world, and that, more than a thou- 
 sand years later, the last philosophers of Greece, driven from 
 Athens, should seek refuge with a Persian king, protected 
 by the edict of a Christian emperor. 
 
 A comparison has often been made between the philosophy 
 of Greece and that of modern times. In this relation, Soc- 
 rates has often been compared with Kant, and the pre-So- 
 cratic, with the pre-Kantian, philosophies ; and, even in the 
 
16 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 post-Kantian philosophers, some have sought to find many 
 notewortliy points of resemblance to the Post-Socratic Attic 
 philosophers. Still, on the whole, the fundamental principles 
 of the two periods are essentially different. Nevertheless, I 
 will make the comparison in one respect, if only to make the 
 survey more rapidly. If one can distinguish the periods of 
 the development of antiquity according to the universal 
 scheme of historical division, into the earlier, middle, and 
 later times, Grecian philosophy, in the last of these divis- 
 ions, begins in an unmistakably reformatory epoch. The 
 founders of ancient philosophy were impelled by the desire 
 for a universal religious-moral reformation of the Grecian 
 world, and philosophy itself appeared in the service of this 
 reformatory effort. I need only mention Pythagoras to de- 
 note a type and example of a tendency which stamped itself 
 on Grecian philosophy even in its origin, and which was con- 
 tinually re-appearing during its progress. Ancient philosophy 
 began in the reformatory age of the Grecian world; modern 
 philosophy in that of the Christian world. Between the end 
 of the former and the beginning of the latter, lie a thou- 
 sand years of that specifically Christian culture in which 
 the new principle of faith developed its order of the 
 world in the supremacy of the Church, and based its view 
 of the world on theological foundations. Thus, it is the 
 philosophical problems of antiquity, and the theological 
 problems of Christendom, which, generally speaking, con- 
 stitute the course of development which precedes our subject 
 as its historical condition. 
 
 In the development and succession of its problems, Grecian 
 philosophy is a wonderful and an incomparable example of a 
 profound and, at the same time, entirely natural and simple 
 growth. Nothing is forced, nothing is artificial. Nowhere 
 is there a break in the progressing course of thought. Every- 
 where the uniting terms are thoroughly thought out and dis- 
 tinct. A connection of the most vital character binds the 
 members of this long series into a whole, in whose magnifi- 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 cent forms we recognize the plastic influence of classic art. 
 No other philosophy makes this impression. The thought- 
 world of Greece was born of one people, of one language, 
 and has nothing, therefore, of the fragmentary character of 
 those philosophies in whose elaboration different peoples 
 co-operate. And how full of meaning, and rich, is the de- 
 velopment of Grecian philosophy ! In its origin, it was in 
 contact with the cosmogonal fictions of the religion of nature: 
 at its close, it stood in the presence of Christianity ; and it 
 was not only an essential factor in its production, but is still 
 an indispensable means in its education. 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Its first problem was the explanation of the world, as 
 it appeared as nature to the perceiving mind. Its first 
 thoughts were the simplest, which naturally first occurred 
 for the solution of that problem. Of what does the world 
 consist? What is the basal material of which it is formed 
 and constituted? But the world is not merely substance 
 and material : it is likewise form and order, system, cosmos. 
 In what consists its fundamental form, its principle of order? 
 These two problems were the first and simplest. The Ionic 
 school undertook to solve the first, — the determination of 
 the basal material ; the Pythagorean philosophy the second 
 and higher, — the determination of the principle of world- 
 order, or the fundamental form of the world. 
 
 If we combine these two questions in one, we have the 
 fundamental problem of Grecian philosophy, the problem 
 which was first solved in the zenith of its classical develop- 
 ment, — How are stuff and form united? How does stuff 
 acquire form ? How is the world formed ? How do things 
 arise ? This formation or origin, taken in its simplest sense, 
 is a becoming, a process, a change. And so the third natural 
 and great problem that here arises relates to the world-process, 
 the origin of the world. When the principle, the real ground 
 of things, is determined, whether it be stuff or form, plainly 
 
18 HISTORY OF MODKRN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the next question must be, How do things result from their 
 real ground? 
 
 The solution of this question results in new contradictions. 
 The concept of becoming, of genesis and decay, in a word, 
 of the world-process, is a great problem. We must compre- 
 hend how something arises, — i.e., passes from non-existence 
 into existence ; how something changes, — i.e., how this thing 
 becomes another thing, passes from this condition into 
 another. Siich a transition seems incomprehensible, inexpli- 
 cable, underivable. And so there are for this problem of the 
 world but two solutions at first. We cannot deduce, cannot 
 explain, cannot think the genesis of things ; it appears, there- 
 fore, unthinkable and impossible ; it cannot be. That is one 
 solution. Or we cannot, to be sure, deduce becoming, but 
 we can just as little deny it : it must, therefore, be declared 
 original and eternal. It does not follow from the principle 
 of the world, it is itself the principle of the world. That 
 is the second solution. The two solutions form the most 
 decided contradiction. The first solution declares that noth- 
 ing is in a process or becoming: the second declares that 
 every tiling is in a process, in a constant and continuous 
 change which never begins, never ceases, never pauses. 
 Both recognize in the concept of becoming, the contradic- 
 tion that something is, and, at the same time, is not. This 
 contradiction is impossible, declare the Eleatics: this con- 
 tradiction is necessary, declares Heraclitus, "the incompre- 
 hensible sage of Ephesus." The problems on both sides are 
 clear. How must the world be conceived, since it does not 
 endure that contradiction, since being necessarily excludes 
 from itself not-being in every respect, therefore, all becoming 
 and all multiplicity, since, in a word, becoming and multi- 
 plicity are concepts, which are full of contradictions, unthink- 
 able, impossible ? This is the exact problem of the Eleatics. 
 They first made the great discovery, that contradictions are 
 contained in, and impossibilities asserted hj, our natural 
 thinking ; that, therefore, the natural concept of the world, 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 based on the reports of the senses, cannot be true. This 
 trend of thought is, therefore, rich in results for all time. 
 The world-process cannot be derived : how the primary being 
 passes over froni a permanent state into changing states 
 cannot be conceifed. Such a transition is unthinkable, there- 
 fore impossible. There is no becoming ; the primary being 
 remains always like itself; there is in it no difference, no 
 multiplicity : it is the all-one. The fundamental concept of 
 the Eleatics is, the necessarily to be thought, as the con- 
 tradictory of the impossibly to "be thought (Xenophanes, 
 Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus). 
 
 How must the world be conceived, since it excludes from 
 itself motionless, unchangeable being, as entirely contrary to 
 nature? That is the question of Heraclitus. The world- 
 process cannot be denied: it is. It cannot be deduced, 
 since it is incomprehensible how an unchangeable being 
 should at any time begin to change. The world-process is, 
 therefore, original; the primary being itself is in eternal, 
 uninterrupted change, ; it is itself the world-process, the eter- 
 nally arising and vanishing world ; it is the one divine entity, 
 the principle of world-order, the logos, the primitive fire. 
 That is the solution of Heraclitus. 
 
 As the Ionic and Pythagorean problems together consti- 
 tute the fundamental question of Greek philosophy, so the 
 Eleatic and Heraclitic philosophies constitute its deepest 
 and most fundamental contradictions. To answer the first 
 question, to comprehend the true relation of stuff and form, 
 or their union, the metaphysics of Aristotle was necessary. 
 To answer the second question, to comprehend the true rela- 
 tion of the one and the many, the existing and its changeable 
 phenomena being in becoming, — this union of the funda- 
 mental thoughts of the Eleatics and Heraclitus, — the Pla- 
 tonic dialectics was required. 
 
 But the problem of philosophy is still occupied with the 
 world-process as nature. This problem must be solved : the 
 world-process, the origin and formation of things, must be 
 
20 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 made comprehensible or explained. Now, to explain is to 
 deduce. Such an explanation of natural becoming, is im- 
 possible both to the Eleatics and Heraclitus: they declare 
 the world-process impossible ; he, original. From neither 
 of these points of view can there be any question of a 
 derivation. 
 
 If the world-process is to be deduced, something must lie 
 at the foundation of it which has itself not become, and which 
 itself does not enter into change ; something, therefore, ori- 
 ginal and unchangeable, something in which no genesis or 
 destruction takes place; a something existing in the sense 
 of the Eleatics. The world-process is : it cannot take place 
 in the existing. What remains ? How alone can it be con- 
 ceived, since it plainly must be so conceived that that which 
 is does not itself change ? That is the precise form in which 
 the problem of Grecian philosophy now stands. The solu- 
 tion is evident, the only one possible. That which exists 
 cannot be conceived as one, but as many, a multiplicity 
 of primary beings. The world-process — i.e., all natural 
 changes, all genesis and destruction — can only be conceived 
 as a union and separation of primary beings; i.e., as a 
 mechanical process. 
 
 Since these primary beings must be united and separated, 
 they can, of course, be nothing else than materials, funda- 
 mental materials. But what are these fundamental materi- 
 als ? The first answer is that of Empedocles : they are the 
 four elements. But the elements are changeable and divisible, 
 and the fundamental materials must be unchangeable. This 
 is required by the principle of the Eleatics, to which this 
 trend of thought remains loyal, in this respect, and certainly 
 on logical grounds. But if they must be unchangeable, they 
 cannot have this or that property, cannot, therefore, be dif- 
 ferent kinds of elements ; hence, not the four elements at all, 
 but an indefinite multitude of fundamental materials, desti- 
 tute of quality and divisibility ; i.e., numberless atoms, only 
 quantitatively different, whose manifold unions or agoreo-a- 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREiK PHILOSOPHY. 21 
 
 tions constitute things (Leucippus, Dpmocritus). But if 
 only blind, mechanical motion results from the weight of the 
 combined atoms, what is the explanation of the form and 
 order of things? Evidently without such a law-giving 
 motion the problem of the world cannot be solved ; evidently 
 such a law-giving motion cannot result. from the fundamental 
 materials ; evidently there must be an intelligent principle 
 by means of which this motion, and thereby all motion what- 
 ever, is produced, since mechanical motion is, at the same 
 time, conformable to purpose. That primordial mind must, 
 therefore, be separated from that fundamental material, 
 and the dualism of mind and matter must be explained. In 
 itself, therefore, the matter of the world is a motionless, 
 unseparated mass, a chaos in which there is no separation of 
 materials, but a universal mingling of each with every other. 
 The fundamental materials, therefore, can no longer be con- 
 ceived as atoms, but qualitative materials, each of which is 
 mingled in every part with the parts of the other, therefore 
 materials divided in an equal number of parts, or homceo- 
 meria as Aristotle called them (Anaxagoras). 
 
 Here the first period of Greek phi]osophy naturally closes. 
 This period, usually called the period of natural philosophy, 
 has so far thought through the problem of the world, that 
 from its solutions mind necessarily resulted. There are three 
 great problems which occupied this first period, — the problem 
 of the world-material, that of the world-order, and that of 
 the world-process (genesis of things). These investigations 
 lead to one result, and this to a new and higher problem. 
 
 II. THB PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 If the nature of things is in truth as these first natural 
 philosophical systems have defined it, it appears, at first 
 sight, inconceivable, and therefore impossible, for the mind 
 of man to know things. Knowing is a mental process. Now, 
 if there is no process whatever, as the Eleatics maintained, 
 there is no mental process. If there is nothing but process. 
 
22 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and nothing whatever that is permanent, as Heraclitus main- 
 tained, neither subject nor object continues ; there is neither 
 a knowing nor a thing to be known, therefore no knowledge. 
 If there is notliing but mechanical process, nothing but the 
 unions and separatiomi of basal elements, as Empedocles and 
 the atomists maintained, there is no mental process, there- 
 fore no knowledge. And if the mental process depends 
 upon a being outside the world, as Anaxagoras maintained, 
 there is no natural process of knowledge, therefore no 
 human knowledge. The total result is, — human knowledge 
 is impossible. It is impossible from all the points of view of 
 the philosophy which has been heretofore taught : it cannot 
 exist in nature as that philosophy conceived it. At first 
 sight, therefore, nothing seems to remain but to deny it. 
 There is no knowledge, therefore no truth, therefore nothing 
 whatever in itself, or universally valid, neither in science 
 nor in ethics. Nothing remains but subjective opinion, and 
 the art of making it accepted ; nothing but the individual 
 man, who declared himself the measure of all things, — the 
 theme of the Sophists (Gorgias and Protagoras). The theory 
 of the sophists forms tha transition from the knowledge of 
 the world to the knowledge of self, — the crisis of Greek 
 philosophy : it decided the new problem which occupied the 
 following period, the classical time of Attic thought. It 
 turned a blaze of light upon the then existing state of 
 thought, by showing with entire clearness, that, under this 
 state, knowledge and, along with it, philosophy itself, was 
 an absolute impossibility. The sophists themselves were 
 really convinced of this impossibility, at least the ablest of 
 them, since they saw no means of escaping this conclusion. 
 In this conviction they were by no means without philosophi- 
 cal principles ; and if we correctly and completely understand 
 them, we shall have to say that they not merely made the 
 culture of their time fruitful, but that they threw such light 
 upon the condition of philosophy that the new problem was 
 self-evident to the progressing mind. They completely illu- 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 23 
 
 minated the state of thought of the Greek mind ; and the 
 confusion of concepts which they are charged with having 
 produced, was the necessary result of the existing condition 
 of thought, — a condition which they apprehended with per- 
 fect clearness, and made clear to the consciousness of others. 
 
 The fii'st who saw the new problem, and was himself pos- 
 sessed by it against his will, as it were, who brought on the 
 crisis of self-knowledge, and made it a matter of distinct con- 
 sciousness in the philosophy of Greece, was Socrates. The 
 doctrine of the Sophists forms the transition from the pre- 
 Socratic philosophy to the Socratic. The central point of 
 the pre-Socratic problems related to the genesis of things. 
 The problem of Socrates was to explain the genesis of the 
 process of knowing. This was the problem of Attic philosophy. 
 Attic philosophy conceived and solved the problem of the 
 world under the presupposition of the problem of knowledge. 
 Its question was. How must the world be thought, if it is to 
 be thought as a knowable world, as an object of knowledge ? 
 
 The question which occiipied Socrates was nothing else 
 than the genesis of knowledge, the passage of the mind 
 from the state of not-knowing into that of knowing, the 
 seeking of truth, the production and uniting of true concepts, 
 the factual refutation of the sophists who declared that 
 knowledge is impossible, because there is no concept, no 
 judgment, the contradictory of which cannot just as well be 
 affirmed. The continual contradiction of human opinions 
 was regarded by the sophists as a proof of the impossibility 
 of knowledge. Socrates regarded the harmony produced 
 out of the contradiction of opinions as the proof of the con- 
 trary. He could only find truth, therefore, in intercourse 
 with men, in animated conversation, in ordinary, conversa- 
 tional thought. 
 
 Universal concepts — those in which all men agree — are 
 true concepts, the objects of true knowledge, therefore true 
 objects in general. Are we not obliged to conclude that 
 those species or ideas which express the nature of things, are 
 
24 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 also really the nature of things? that the objects of true 
 knowledge constitute the truly real and primordial being, 
 are, therefore, tlie true world, the intelligible or archetypal 
 world, which appears in the sensible world as in its copy, like 
 an idea in a work of art ? If there is true knowledge, its object 
 must be the truly real. That is the step from Socrates to 
 Plato. PVom this point of view, philosophy becomes a doc- 
 trine of ideas, and the world appears as a copy of ideas, as 
 an eternally living work of art ; the cosmos as a natural, the 
 state as a moral, work of art. An ideal world arises in the 
 philosophical consciousness, accessible to man only through 
 elevation to his thinking and ideal nature ; and this elevation 
 is only possible through purification from his sensuous nature, 
 from that which constitutes its roots, — namely, the desires 
 which obscure the bright world within us, and draw us down 
 into material things. This philosophy requires the turning 
 from desire and to ideas : it makes the elevation of man to 
 the world of ideas dependent upon his inner purification, 
 upon his moral transformation. Now the conception of an 
 eternal purpose in the world is gained, a living and moulding 
 power which unfolds itself in the order of things, and ap- 
 pears to man as an example for his moral life. In this ten- 
 dency towards the transformation of the moral life of man, 
 the Platonic philosophy is reformatory and religious. In 
 this phase of his doctrine, Plato feels a kinship with Pythag- 
 oras, and future centuries will feel their relationship with 
 Plato. The time will come when men with ardent longing 
 will look towards that intelligible world which Plato, like a 
 master of the plastic arts, conceives, and holds before his 
 world as the only deliverance from the ruin that had already 
 begun. 
 
 The opposition of idea and matter, of the intelligible and 
 material worlds, of the natures of thought and sense, is 
 peculiar to the Platonic philosophy, and is grounded in its 
 entire nature. Simply expressed, it is the dualism between 
 form and stuff. The philosophical consciousness, in its de- 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 25 
 
 mand for unity and coherence, struggles against this dualism. 
 And so the next question — which results from the Platonic 
 philosophy, and which we have called the fundamental prob- 
 lem of Greek thought — is, How does stuff acquire form? 
 How is their union explained? If they were separate from 
 each other, their union would only be comprehensible through 
 the action of a third principle, of external machinery ; and this 
 itself would remain incomprehensible. Form, therefore, must 
 be conceived' as dwelling in stuff, as a formative force, i.e., 
 as energy ; and stuff must be conceived as containing form 
 potentially in itself, as the foundation for, and tendency to, 
 this particular formation, i.e., as energy; and every actual 
 thing must be conceived as self-forming stuff, which achieves 
 its form, realizes its inner purpose, i.e., as entelechy. And 
 things altogether must appear to us as a series of such forms, 
 the lower of which always contains the foundation for, and 
 tendency to, the next higher, i.e., as a gradation of entelechies. 
 And the world-process itself can only be conceived as a mo- 
 tion, in which stuff forms itself, form completes itself, poten- 
 tiality actualizes itself, and that which has already become a 
 thing, is constantly becoming stuff and material for higher 
 formations ; i.e., it must be conceived as development. By 
 this concept, Aristotle got rid of the Platonic dualism. Even 
 knowledge, according to Aristotle, is a process of development. 
 Thus, through the concept of development, both the problem 
 of the world and the problem of knowledge were solved. 
 This concept is established as soon as form is conceived as 
 the energic, and matter as the dynamic! principle, or, what is 
 the same thing, as soon as ideas are regarded as the purpose 
 dwelling in things. Matter, then, mi^'st be explained by the 
 concept of potentiality, or capacity for assuming form. Plato 
 regarded stuff as [ltj ov, Aristotle as Swdfiet ov. The difference 
 between these two philosophers cannot be stated more briefly 
 and forcibly. 
 
 Here ends the classic period of Greek philosophy. The 
 succeeding period takes another direction, pointed out by 
 
26 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the Socratic schools and the Platonic-Aristotelian doctrine. 
 It ceased to be what it had been, — cosmology, — since before 
 and after its transition in Socrates it was constantly trying 
 to solve the problem of the world. The problems of the 
 world-stuff, world-order, world-process, occupied the atten- 
 tion of the pre-Socratic philosophers : How can the world be 
 known ? was the question of Socrates. Anaxagoras gave the 
 last solution of these first problems, Aristotle of the last. 
 Anaxagoras founded the dualism between mind and matter 
 which Aristotle sought to overcome by the doctrines of en- 
 telechy and development, but he was by no means entirely 
 successful ; since, at the conclusion of his system, this dualism 
 appears again and again. If we attend merely to this sepa- 
 ration of mind from matter, Aristotle's system seems to con- 
 clude in a dualism similar to that from which Anaxagoras 
 started. 
 
 III. THE PKOBLBM OF FREEDOM. 
 
 This dualistic mode of thought, though certainty incon- 
 sistent with the principle of Aristotle, was nevertheless a 
 natural result of his philosophy. This philosophy sees in 
 the world a series of gradations of entelechies : it conceives 
 this series as a completed whole, and, therefore, requires a 
 last member, a highest entelechy, i.e., such a one as can 
 proceed from no higher, which, therefore, in no wise con- 
 tains a potentiality for new formations, is, therefore, not at 
 all of a material nature, but is completely immaterial, hence 
 one which must be thought as pure form, as mere energy 
 which is an end only to itself, i.e., as thought which thinks 
 itself, as mind, as God. Moving every thing, he is himself 
 unmoved. Unaffected by the world-process, he is exalted 
 above the world, and in this exaltation is absolutely perfect. 
 He is sufficient to himself. This self-sufficiency appears as 
 the most perfect state, attainable only by mind which re- 
 poses in its self-consciousness, and holds itself aloof from 
 the motions of the world. Man also is a self-conscious per- 
 sonal being: if he were free from the world, he would be 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 27 
 
 perfect. This perfection becomes his ideal, his highest prob- 
 lem. What he seeks is the most perfect state of life, his 
 personal ideal. Philosophy which takes this direction is 
 practical rather than theoretical. The object of this phi- 
 losophy is not so much idea as ideal, not so much truth as 
 the wise man whose archetype it only seeks to know in order 
 to realize it in life. Its fundamental direction is practical : 
 its problem is the restoration of divine perfection in man, an 
 inner perfection, which approximates divinity. Its goal is 
 this divine-human state, or, if I dare so speak, this God-be- 
 coming of man. The solution of this problem is only pos- 
 sible through becoming free from the world ; and in this sense 
 I call the new problem, the freeing of man from the world. 
 Here we see already how Grecian philosophy, filled by the 
 ideal of man, renounces the world, and seeks a goal that, 
 without its knowledge, guided it into the path that termi- 
 nated in Christianity. 
 
 But how is the freeing from the world possible, through 
 which personal self-sufficiency is obtained? So long as the 
 world lays hold of us, and insnares us, we remain dependent. 
 This dependence is profound so long as we permit the world 
 to excite our desires, our passions, and our efforts ; so long 
 as we allow ourselves to be influenced by its goods, its evils, 
 its problems. To free ourselves thoroughly from the world, 
 we must cease to desire, to suffer, to struggle ; i.e., to strive 
 for the solution of the problems of the world. We must put 
 ourselves in a condition in which the world offers us no more 
 goods, in which there is nothing worthy of desire, in which 
 our desires and passions become dead, in which the will is 
 affected and influenced by nothing. This state is the virtue 
 of the stoics. We must lead a life — in order to protect our- 
 selves against the world — which is free from suffering, or, 
 not to ask too much of nature, in which we suffer as little, 
 and enjoy as much, as possible. This state is the happiness 
 of the Epicureans. Finally, in order to get rid of unrest of 
 mind, we must cease to strive, and must give up the solution 
 
28 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the problems of the world, being convinced that they are 
 insoluble. This doubt is the indifference of the Sceptics. 
 What, after Socrates, was begun in the cynic, Cyreuaic, and 
 Megaric schools, again appears after Aristotle, in the related 
 trends of thought, in the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, 
 raised to a higher power, as it were, and so conceived that 
 these different tendencies there spring from one motive, and 
 go hand in hand to one goal. This common motive is the 
 ideal of freedom from the world, a self-consciousness resting 
 in itself, entire self-sufficiency. In this common ideal. Stoics, 
 Epicureans, and Sceptics unite. 
 
 If we compare the means which they employ for the at- 
 tainment of their ideal, with the power from which they wish 
 to become free, the impossibility of their undertaking is 
 manifest. They wish to become free from the world; but 
 the world is more powerful than they are, and the ideal of 
 the wise man is wrecked on the abiding power of things. 
 The virtue of the Stoics stands opposed to the ever-renewing 
 power of natural impulses ; the happiness of the Epicureans, 
 to the course of nature with its army of evils, and unless the 
 Epicureans fly to their gods in the interspaces of the uni- 
 verse, they cannot escape the evils of the world ; finally, the 
 course of nature, with the power of its predominant concep- 
 tions and purposes, which the Sceptic cannot expel, of which 
 he cannot get rid, makes the indifference which he seeks im- 
 possible. It is impossible to wring the ideal of self-sufficiency 
 from the world, to bear it triumphantly away, unspotted by 
 the powers of the world. This ideal is the weaker party in 
 the conflict, and must at last succumb. 
 
 The means which are here opposed to nature, are, in the 
 last analysis, taken from nature herself. The Stoic seeks to 
 become free from nature through the independence of the 
 will, and this he calls virtue ; but this virtue is the proud 
 consciousness of one's own worth, and this egoistic feeling 
 is of the character of human vanity which is a part of nature. 
 The Epicurean seeks to become free from nature through en- 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 29 
 
 joyment, -which he would change into a permanent state : this 
 enjoyment is the agreeable consciousness of one's own well- 
 being, and this consciousness is a part of nature. The Sceptic 
 seeks to become free from nature through doubt : he wistes 
 to destroy our natural beliefs, and to regard the problems that 
 naturally arise as insoluble. But this doubt itself is sup- 
 ported by natural grounds, by the perceptions of the natural 
 understanding ; and this itself is a part of nature. The ideal 
 which seeks to overcome nature is constituted by the powers 
 of nature. 
 
 And so each of these trends of thought falls into a pecul- 
 iar contradiction with itself. The Stoic is happy in the con- 
 sciousness of his virtue ; he feels exalted in it, and has in this 
 exaltation that agreeable consciousness which the Epicurean 
 finds only in the enjoyments of the senses ; he contents him- 
 self with the consciousness that he does not need and desire 
 the goods of the world ; in this consciousness he can enjoy 
 them, first really enjoy them. In brief, the Stoic makes an 
 enjoyment of virtue. The Epicurean seeks enjoyment as the 
 most perfect state of life ; he avoids all suffering as far as 
 possible : but the greatest enemj' of pleasure are pleasures ; 
 and the Epicurean, therefore, carefully avoids pleasures, and, 
 for the sake of pleasure, practises a renunciation and temper- 
 ance which would do credit to many a Stoic. In brief, the 
 Epicurean makes a virtue of enjoyment. And thus the two 
 opposing trends of thought and systems of life, in their ac- 
 tual manifestations, may become like, even to the degree of 
 being confounded with each other. Finally, the Sceptic 
 makes a certainty of doubt, and falls into a contradiction no 
 matter whither he turns. For if his doubt is certain, he is 
 no longer a Sceptic ; and if his doubt is doubtful, it destroys 
 itself, and with it scepticism is at an end. Enough, these 
 trends of thought are on the road to the human ideal ; but 
 all their attempts fail, and at last resolve themselves into 
 nothing but problems which require a new and deeper 
 solution. 
 
30 HISTORY OF MODEEN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rv. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION. 
 
 We ourselves are the world. Our natural love of self and 
 our natural understanding are also world : they are funda- 
 mentally powers of the world, since without them there is no 
 world which we conceive or desire. And just this world 
 which is identical with ourselves, which we ourselves are in 
 a certain sense, is, in the ideal of the Stoics, Epicureans, 
 Sceptics, so little overcome that it is rather deified in it. To 
 get rid of this world, of this our own nature which is of the 
 world, which is indeed experienced as evil, to free ourselves 
 thoroughly from it, to fling away and break through this self 
 that takes us prisoner, and holds us down, — this is now the 
 problem of philosophy and, at the same time, the longing of 
 all who are sensible of the calamities of the time, and the 
 deep inner ruin of man. This ardent desire for freedom 
 from our own worldly and selfish nature is the desire for sal- 
 vation ; and so it is an absolutely religious motive which now 
 animates philosophy, and urges it directly toVards human re- 
 demption. It seeks the way to this goal : it aims itself to be 
 the means of salvation, it announces itself as a doctrine of 
 salvation. In this spirit, and in this motive, must we judge 
 its conceptions and its effects. Its problem is the last of an- 
 tiquity, — the salvation of the world. What it would call 
 into life, is a world religion : and it seeks to attain it, first, 
 through a purification of the old faith in the gods; and second, 
 through a restoration of it. With this thought, it prepares 
 for, and goes to meet, Christianity, contends and struggles 
 with it for the victory, which it finally loses. But the idea 
 of a world-saving religion was received in, and nourished by, 
 the consciousness of the Grecian world ; and when aspiring 
 Christianity broke through the limits of Judaism to work for 
 the salvation of the world, it found here the most fruitful 
 soil. 
 
 That desire for salvation which animated the last philosophy 
 of antiquity, and determined its mode of thought, consists 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 in the effort of man to get rid of the world, to escape from 
 the world, or, what is the same thing, to unite himself with 
 a being who is entirely aloof from the world of the senses, 
 free from its limits and evils. The stand-point of this phi- 
 losophy, therefore, requires, in the strictest sense of the word, 
 the oppositeness of God to the world. To satisfy this desire 
 of human salvation, God cannot be transcendent enough, or 
 enough opposed to the world. Exactly because of his aloof- 
 ness from the world, exactly because he is free from every 
 thing from which man desires to be free, does he become an 
 object of religious aspiration. And exactly for this reason is 
 there in the conception of a great chasm between God and 
 the world a religious satisfaction. God must be so conceived 
 that man can say to himself, " If I were with him, I should 
 be happy. In his presence there is nothing of that which 
 disturbs and oppresses me." The dualistic mode of concep- 
 tion is, therefore, a characteristic of this philosophy, and the 
 fundamental cause of it is absolutely religious. God here 
 stands opposite the world, not as the principle of order in 
 the presence of chaos, not as the moving purpose in the pres- 
 ence of the moved cosmos, but as the principle of blessed- 
 ness in opposition to the principle of evil. He is not a principle 
 for the explanation of things, but the ideal of man striving 
 for salvation. Religious aspiration widens to the uttermost 
 the chasm between God and the world : at the same time it 
 desires their union. But how is this union possible ? Cer- 
 tainly not by natural, therefore only by supernatural, means r 
 on the part of God by supernatural revelation ; on the p9,rt 
 of man by supernatural intuition, by inner, mysterious, illu- 
 mination. The highest state possible to man is now regarded 
 not as self-sufficiency or independence, but enthusiasm, a be- 
 ing filled by God. This state has nothing in common with, 
 the natural reason, and is not attainable by it. It is mysteri- 
 ous, and the philosophy which seeks this state is mystical. 
 It is a wonderful exaltation in which philosophy now partici- 
 pates, and which tears it away from its natural consciousness ; 
 
32 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a state of ecstasy which cannot arise by natural means, but 
 rather suddenly comes and vanishes like a moment of divine 
 illumination. Of himself, man cannot produce this state: 
 he can only experience it, and, so far as in him lies, make 
 himself ready to receive it by a constant purification of his 
 life, a continued renunciation of the world, and control of 
 the natural desires, even to the extremest abstinence. Hence 
 the strictly ascetic form of life which this pious philosophy 
 adopts. But the infinite chasm between the divine and the 
 human nature remains. Only in the moment of ecstasy is 
 man lifted above it ; but the moment of illumination passes, 
 and man sinks back again into the obscure and unholy world 
 of his natural consciousness. Religious aspiration must throw 
 a bridge across this chasm. Natural beings cannot, therefore 
 higher, supernatural beings must, be mediators between God 
 and man. From the world, no gradation of beings ascends to 
 God ; therefore, a gradation of beings must descend from God 
 to the needy world of man. These mediators are, therefore, 
 demons, — beings above man, and below God. Faith in 
 demons takes possession of this religious philosophy ; and the 
 same motive, which, in its mode of conception, separates God 
 and the world to the uttermost, and relates the two dualisti- 
 cally, putting the being of God entirely beyond and outside of 
 the world, which makes man's consciousness of God mystical, 
 and his life ascetic, — this motive makes philosophy demon- 
 ological in relation to the mediation between God and man. 
 
 Of course, from such conditions a new scientific system 
 cannot arise, nor does it lie in the need and tendency of the 
 time. It goes back to the past, and what it finds in those 
 systems akin to it, is taken by it, and transformed and reno- 
 vated in the religious spirit which now animates philosophy. 
 And it finds there two trends of thought pre-eminently 
 which meet its great want, and, therefore, even appear as 
 prefigurations, because they are the fruits of the same kind 
 of reformatory and religious motives ; viz., the doctrines of 
 Pythagoras and Plato, who are now surrounded with the 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 halo of a divine authority. Both these philosophies are 
 theologically transformed in the religious spirit of the time, 
 and in this character they appear as Neo-Pythagoreanism and 
 Neo-Platonism. To transform and renew the Pythagorean 
 doctrine in this spirit, its doctrine of the orders of the world 
 must be conceived as thoughts of God ; the numbers, which 
 express this order in the old Pythagorean system, must be 
 taken symbolically, — as signs or symbols of concepts, — 
 themselves, therefore, thought as ideas, the doctrine of num- 
 bers as a doctrine of ideas; i.e., the old Pythagorean phi- 
 losophy must be conceived as the Platonic. And so it is 
 principally the Platonic philosophy which offers material for 
 the development of that religious view of the world which the 
 last period of antiquity required. We may, therefore, call 
 this entire trend of thought religious Plafonism, which begins 
 with the Neo-Pythagoreans, and systematically culminates 
 and dies in the Neo-Platonic schools (Plotinus and Por- 
 phyry, Jamblichus, Proelus). In fact, the aspiration for a 
 supersensible, purely intelligible world, the ardent desire for 
 freedom from the world of the senses, for salvation from evil, 
 the desire for inward purification, — these fundamental im- 
 pulses which imbue philosophy with the religious spirit, find 
 no greater or more luminous example than Plato's doctrine of 
 ideas. And the Platonic ideas themselves, descending from 
 the highest unity step by step to an ever-increasing multi- 
 plicity, down to the extremest limit where forms enter into 
 matter, appear here as intermediate beings, as uniting terms, 
 as ladders, descending from God to the world. This world 
 of ideas offers itself as a welcome design into which philoso- 
 phy, with its faith in demons, works its conception of 
 mediators. 
 
 From this point of view, it is easy to determine the sys- 
 tematic form in which the last school of antiquity conceived 
 and solved its problem. It required a system which fulfils 
 these two conditions : first, the chasm between God and the 
 world must be made as wide as possible ; and second, this 
 
34 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 chasm must be bridged over by a series of intermediate bemgs 
 infinite in number. These intermediate beings must be con- 
 ceived as a gradation, a descending gradation, and, therefore, 
 of decreasing perfection, which proceeds from the most per- 
 fect being, and ends in the most imperfect ; i.e., in the world 
 of the senses, with the effort to return to its original source. 
 The divine primordial being must be thought as not merely 
 beyond the world, but also all activity of mind, as beyond 
 even thought and will, since as such it is inaccessible to man. 
 Those intermediate beings, therefore, cannot proceed from 
 their divine Cause by means of will and thought, but only as 
 a necessary result, flowing from the fulness of his Being 
 without diminishing this fulness, as an effect from which 
 again new, less perfect effects emanate ; i.e., that gradation 
 of intermediate beings must be conceived as a gradation of 
 divine emanations. What, in the old Platonic system, are 
 ideas, are emanations in the Neo-Platonism, in which the sal- 
 vation of the world or the soul returning from the greatest 
 distance from God to union with him, is thought in the form 
 of an eternal process of the world and nature. Here we see 
 plainly how the religious motive is conceived in its typical 
 pagan form. These emanations are the most plastic material 
 for all forms of mythology. What in Plotinus are still ema- 
 nations, are in Jamblichus races of gods and demons, which 
 Proclus methodically orders and arranges. 
 
 From the central point of religious Platonism, in which it 
 is grounded, this mode of thought describes a wide horizon, 
 extending beyond Pythagoras and the bounds of the Grecian 
 world. Religious feelings, as such, are indeed kindred. 
 Every phenomenon of a distinctly religious character is im- 
 portant to the interests of this period. As it is itself of a 
 mystical nature, it is particularly attracted by such forms of 
 religious culture as are of a mysterious character, by such re- 
 ligious knowledge as has the character of a divine revelation. 
 Hence the powerful and fanciful attraction which the mys- 
 teries of Greece, the Orphic rites, and the Oriental religions, 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 35 
 
 exercise on this temper of mind. The more mysterious the 
 phenomenon, so much the more powerful and magical its 
 impression ; and the obscurer it appears, i.e., the further 
 removed from the present, so much the more mysterious can 
 it assume to be. Hence the effort of this Platonic trend of 
 thought to push the sources of its religious knowledge out 
 beyond the bounds of authentic history, and to sink them in 
 the darkness of the past. There it would find the origin of 
 its wisdom, and would see it borne on in religion and phi- 
 losophy by a succession of world-illuminating minds from 
 then until the present in which the old and mysterious reve- 
 lations are renewed. It is characteristic of the faith of this 
 time, of the dogmas of this philosophy, that it feels itself in 
 harmony with all the religious minds of the past, and brings 
 them in a connection which corresponds to its own religious 
 presuppositions. It looks everywhere as in a mirror, and 
 finds everywhere the reflection of its own mode of thought : 
 it perceives its conceptions in the philosophy of Plato, in the 
 wisdom of Pythagoras, in the mysteries of the Egyptians, in 
 the wisdom of the magicians and Brahmins, in the illumina- 
 tions of the Jewish prophets. It feels itself a link in the great 
 chain of minds through which divine revelations are commu- 
 nicated to humanity. Its reflection, which it throws back into 
 the past, appears again as the prefiguration of that from which 
 it claims to have received its own light. As these religious 
 Platonizing philosophers think, so must Plato and Pythago- 
 ras themselves, the old Platonists and old Pythagoreans, have 
 thought. And at the same time this perfect harmony is jus- 
 tified and proved. A multitude of writings appear written 
 in the spirit of the new mode of thought, under the names 
 of an Orpheus, Pythagoras, and old Pythagoreans. The 
 connection believed in is substituted for the actual one, and 
 this is completely obscured by dogmatic conceptions ; in like 
 manner, under the dominion of these conceptions, historical 
 sense and historical criticism are obscured until they are 
 completely lost. 
 
36 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Among the religions of the East, there is particularly one 
 which spontaneously feels and acknowledges a spiritual kin- 
 ship with religious Platonism, — the Jewish. The decline and 
 ill fortune of the Jews under the oppression of foreign rule ; 
 the consciousness of this calamity, and the longing to be 
 delivered from it ; the hope of a future restoration ; faith in 
 a transcendent God ; the religious animation, extension, and 
 purification of the idea of God through the prophetic con- 
 sciousness ; the prophets themselves, with their religious and 
 reformatory efforts, and their illuminations enhanced even to 
 ecstasy ; faith in miracles ; the conception of angels as in- 
 termediate beings between God and man, already old and 
 familiar in the faith of the people, — all these characteristics 
 gave to Judaism a kinship with the Grecian philosophj^, 
 which we have just expounded, and made the jMosaic 
 religion hospitable to the Platonic. Even the external con- 
 ditions for mental intercourse existed in Alexandria, that cen- 
 tre of the Hellenic Orient. Judaism recognizes this kinship : 
 it can only comprehend the harmony between itself and Pla- 
 tonism by conceiving the latter as based on the Old Testa- 
 ment, the holy records of its own faith ; and now it can only 
 so interpret the records of its own faith as to vindicate their 
 harmony with Platonism. In this way the allegorical mode 
 of interpreting the Old-Testament Scriptures originated, and 
 on its basis the Jewish-Alexandrian religious philosophy. 
 This philosophy culminated in Philo, as religious Grecian 
 Platonism did in the later Neo-Platonists. 
 
 This Jewish philosophy is also religious Platonism, under 
 which name we accordingly include all the factors iu the 
 spirit of the time immediately preceding the Christian era. 
 Not to lose ourselves in details, since we are here concerned 
 only with the motive that impels philosophy onward, we seek 
 the central point of this entire trend of thought. Its chief 
 problem is the salvation of the world : the fundamental 
 thought in which its solixtion is sought is that of a world- 
 saving principle. Now, this principle can only be conceived 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPIIY. 37 
 
 as the divine purpose in the world, as the motive of creation, 
 as tlie world-arranging idea — present in the formation of 
 things — which enters into the universe, wliile God himself 
 remains entirely aloof from the world in his transcendent 
 existence. The principle, therefore, which creates and saves 
 the world must be different from God ; it is not God himself, 
 but it goes out from God as the word from the mind ; it is, 
 to express it allegorically and typically, the word of God, the 
 divine logos. All the intermediate beings between God and 
 man, however they are named, whether demons according 
 to the Greeks, or angels according to the Jews, meet in 
 this conception as in their unity. The logos is regarded as 
 the mediator between God and man. 
 
 The idea of the logos was developed in the Grecian phi- 
 losophy. In order to enter into human consciousness, this 
 idea required a trend of thought which, from the beginning, 
 made the principle of the world its problem. Grecian phi- 
 losophy from its very origin reflected upon the principle of 
 the world : it developed these reflections in its pre-Socratic 
 period, and applied them to the explanation of things ; in its 
 classic period, to the explanation of the knowledge of things; 
 in its first post-Aristotelian period, to the realization of the 
 human ideal ; in its last period, to comprehend from thence 
 the salvation of man from the world. If we denote that 
 principle of the world by the term logos, since even under 
 the logos a principle of the world must be thouglit, although 
 this name was by no means the one alwaj-s i;sed, we can say 
 that Greek philosophy was almost always occupied with this 
 theme, with this question, What is the logos? In the series 
 of solutions with which we have become acquainted, I will 
 call attention to three principal forms in which we meet the 
 Grecian concept of the logos most distinctly. The principle 
 of the world must be conceived as the order of the world, 
 which is equivalent to the eternal world-process ; but this 
 order of the world cannot be conceived without an eternal 
 purpose in the world, which expresses itself in the world-pro- 
 
38 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cess, and appears as changeless being in ceaseless becoming. 
 But this eternal purpose in the world cannot be conceived, 
 without at the same time conceiving in it the forming world- 
 energy, or the powers that form the world, and are the germ, 
 as it were, from which the world is developed. In the first 
 form, we recognize the Heraclitian explanation of the world ; 
 in the second, the Platonic ; in the third, after the appearance 
 of the Aristotelian philosophy, the Stoic. In the first expla- 
 nation, the logos appears as the order of the world or world- 
 process, as nature or cosmos ; in the second, as the archetypal 
 or ideal world, as the world of ideas ; in the third, as the 
 fulness of forming forces the \6yoi <7Trf.pix.aTiKo[. And in the 
 Heraclitian-stoic form, we even meet the word logos. 
 
 But the Platonic mode of thought forms the real central 
 point of the Grecian logos-idea. The Heraclitian mode of 
 thought involves it as a conclusion : the Stoic involves it as a 
 premise. For one cannot conceive the world-process without 
 the world-idea, and just as little can be conceived the form- 
 ing powers of the world without the same idea. The Pla- 
 tonic conception of the archet3'pal world includes the human 
 archetype as the intelligible ground of our existence and the 
 goal of our becoming. In the presence of this archetype, we 
 can only understand our earthy existence, our embodiment 
 in the material world, as a fall of the soul, which is guilty of 
 desire, and our return to that archetype is only possible by 
 means of a purification, which entirely overcomes desire in 
 our minds. But if this is the goal of man, should it not also 
 be the goal of the world — this salvation of man from the 
 world ? Here the Platonic philosophj'- appears in its religious 
 significance ; and, from this point, it gives rise to, and explains, 
 the religious state of mind and mode of thought which char- 
 acterized Greek philosophy in the last centuries of its exist- 
 ence. The logos now appears as the world-saving principle, 
 as the divine thought of the salvation of the world, in which 
 the secret, i.e., the inmost purpose of creation is contained, 
 as the real motive of creation, as the creative word of God. 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 39 
 
 The word is realized, in man who overcomes the world, or 
 restores in himself the pure archetype of man. 
 
 Now the Grecian and Jewish problems of salvation come 
 in contact, and show in very .many kindred conceptions their 
 religious affinity. That rests in the thought of the logos, 
 this in the conception of the Messiah. The logos is a uni- 
 versally conceived principle of the world, and seeks personi- 
 fication : the Messiah is an ideal of a people conceived as a 
 person, and seeks universalization. Both trends of thought 
 need to supplement and penetrate each other : this supple- 
 ment is sought on the Jewish side. To introduce Platonism 
 into Judaism is to think the logos idea into the conception of 
 the Messiah. This problem, already adumbrated in the Jew- 
 ish-Alexandrian book of wisdom, is solved by Philo, who 
 makes the logos-Messiah the central point of his philosophy, 
 the Mediator and Saviour of the world. 
 
 The problem of salvation demands a personal solution. It 
 is solved if a man appears who actually overcomes the world 
 in himself, who, in the deeper meaning of the word, is truly 
 free from the world, in whom humanity recognizes its arche- 
 type, and in whom it, therefore, believes as the Saviour of 
 the world. This is the only possible form in which the solu- 
 tion of the religious problem of the world can be effected. 
 A person must appear, who saves himself from the world, and, 
 through faith in him, the world itself; a person of whom one 
 can say that in him salvation has taken place, the idea has 
 appeared, the logos has become flesh, God has become man. 
 Only through faith in such a person can the desire of men 
 for salvation be satisfied. 
 
 From the point of view of the logos idea, as this was de- 
 veloped in the consciousness of Greek philosophy, this man 
 was not to be found, for this idea had no reference whatever 
 to a particular individual, to an actual man : it gave to the 
 faith which it animated no direction whatever towards a per- 
 son. From the logos to man, there was an impassable chasm, 
 a chasm that could not be bridged by any conceivable num- 
 
40 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ber of orders of divine beings. The logos idea sought per- 
 sonification, bnt it was utterly incompatible with the natural 
 life of man. The thought of salvation was inconsistent with 
 human nature ; it remained on the other side of reality, some- 
 thing universal and inanimate ; and so under this conception 
 the desire of salvation was without expectation and without 
 hope. 
 
 The Jewish desire for salvation, on the other hand, was 
 filled with a definite expectation and hope. An ideal of their 
 people was given to it in the person of the ^lessiah. It waited 
 patiently for this Saviour who was to come to be the deliverer 
 of a people, a people whom God had chosen and preserved 
 to rule the world. This world-ruling Messiah, whom the 
 prophets beheld in the future of Israel, was the object of the 
 highest hopes of the faith of the Jews. Now, when a Messiah 
 appeared who became a saviour, not in the Jewish sense, but 
 the Grecian, a saviour from the world, the conditions were 
 fulfilled under which the religious problem of the world re- 
 ceived its solution. Its starting-point lay in the centre of the 
 Jewish people. Their Messianic ideal gave the personal di- 
 rection which the idea of the logos lacked. The desire for 
 salvation had, therefore, to accept this ideal in order to reach 
 its goal, in which, as a phenomenon of history, the logos was 
 believed to have become flesh, God to have become man. 
 Faith had at first no path from the logos to man ; but there 
 was a path from man to the Messiah, and from this jNIessiah, 
 who was not a deliverer in the Jewish-worldly sense, to the 
 logos. Historical development took this path, a roundabout 
 one indeed, but tlie shortest one because it led to the goal ; 
 and, as Lessing has said in the "Education of the Human 
 Race," " It is not true that a straight line is always the 
 shortest way." 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 41 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 
 I. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ri^HE person Jesus realized that desire for salvation wliich 
 -L humanity felt most deeply, most purely, and most sim- 
 ply ; and simplicity always triumphs. Through him the Jew- 
 ish Messianic ideal was spiritualized and transformed : 
 through him it was animated from the beginning of its his- 
 tory with a new spirit, whose aim was not the exaltation of a 
 people, the subjugation of the world, but the transformation 
 and regeneration of man. In him was solved the deepest 
 and most difficult of the problems of the world, — the salva- 
 tion of man from the world ; he himself was the personal 
 solution of this problem ; he forms, therefore, the decisive 
 crisis in the development of humanity, as Socrates was in 
 the development of Greek consciousness. This comparison 
 shows likewise the difference between the two. 
 
 At this point in the history of humanity, a fundamental 
 spiritual renewing began. Before this was possible, it was 
 necessary for the divine idea to be embodied in a person 
 who restored and revealed the human archetype in himself ; 
 then it was necessary for humanity to recognize this arche- 
 type as its own, and believe in the person Jesus as the Sav- 
 iour of the world. This faith in Jesus Christ forms the 
 foundation and the principle of Christianity : it contains the 
 problem which from that time occupied humanity, and out 
 of which new problems are progressively developed. We 
 follow here these problems in their philosophical relations, so 
 
42 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 far as they give rise to, and promote, a new view of the 
 world corresponding to the Christian faith. The principle 
 of this faith is absolutely religious: it is concerned only 
 with the eternal welfare of man, with the salvation of the 
 world, with the relation of man to God. The view of the 
 world corresponding to it is, therefore, absolutely theologi- 
 cal. The theological mode of thought forms the fundamen- 
 tal characteristic of Christian philosophy, by which we mean 
 that system of conceptions which is grounded on faith in 
 Christ as its principle. 
 
 Christian philosophy, therefore, as a system, could not be 
 developed until the religious principle of Christianity was 
 thoroughly established, — the principle that fitted it to be 
 the religion of the world. In its primitive form, Christianity 
 was not a system of thought, but the proclamation of a fact ; 
 not a series of dogmas, but a gospel. As it developed, it 
 passed through a series of different stages, and got rid of the 
 contradictions which were discovered in its first records. 
 Christian faith regarded Jesus from higher and higher points 
 of view. First he was the Messiah of the chosen people ; 
 then he was the Saviour of the world, who came not to glo- 
 rify the Jews, but to save the world ; and finally he was the 
 saving principle of the world, the eternal logos, God become 
 man, and in this light his person and life were represented. 
 
 To follow and point out those developments in the New- 
 Testament records, those contradictions, forms of transition, 
 and interminglings of Jewish and Hellenic conceptions, 
 those great conflicts which deeply and passionately agitated 
 primitive Christianity, and were necessary to free it from its 
 first limits, and fit it for a great career in the history of the 
 world, was the special task of a searching examination of the 
 Bible. It was necessary to decide between the Jewish faith 
 in the Messiah, and the faith in the Saviour of the world ; 
 between Christianity as the religion of the Jews and the reli- 
 gion of the world; between the Jewish and Gentile, the 
 Petrine and Pauline, conceptions. These controversies were 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THK CHURCH. 43 
 
 carried on and settled by primitive Christianity, wliich, in its 
 Pauline form, broke through the barriers of Judaism, and 
 severed the bond that still fastened it to a single nation. 
 Thus only did Christianity attain that universal value which 
 made possible a great career in the history of the world. 
 
 II. THE CHURCH. 
 
 The decisive step towards the realization of this career 
 was the fixed and permanent organization of the Church, 
 an empire of faith which rose in the midst of the Diins 
 of the old world, and laid the foundation for a new one. 
 But such an organization was impossible until Christianity 
 laid aside its apocalyptic conceptions of the imminent end 
 of the world. If Christ was about to come from the 
 clouds of heaven, and establish a millennial kingdom, there 
 was no need of a permanent ecclesiastical institution. But 
 as faith in Christ abandoned its Messianic form, and became 
 spiritualized ; as the idea of its universal value was empha- 
 sized, and, consequently, as the need for a new fellowship 
 and regulation in the life of humanity was felt, — the organi- 
 zation of the Church seemed a necessity. The Church was 
 the earthly kingdom of the invisible Christ instead of the 
 millennial kingdom expected by those who believed in his 
 immediate second coming. That kingdom of the invisible 
 Christ promotes the unity of believers, and this unity must 
 be the central fact and governing principle in the new regu- 
 lation of life. Now, Christ himself must be the bond of 
 union between Christian believers. But for its value on 
 earth, this union requires a visible form. The community of 
 believers need to know that they are united under one 
 head, a head which represents Christ in their midst, steps 
 into his place, as it were. The idea of a representative oifice, 
 i.e., tl}fi,idea of an episcopacy, alone solves the problem of 
 the unity of faith, which is identical with the problem of the 
 Church. Now, only in one way can bishops be regarded 
 as the representatives of Christ on earth. The apostles were 
 
44 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the immediate successors of Christ : bishops must be the 
 successors of the apostles, and, through them, of Christ. 
 Thus, the value of the episcopacy depends upon the idea of 
 apostolic succession. But there are many bishops ; and the 
 idea of unity, which, it must be borne in mind, is identical 
 with that of the Church, requires their union under a 
 supreme bishop ; and, from the idea of apostolic succession, it 
 follows that he must be regarded as the successor of the 
 chief apostle, i.e., of Peter. Now, the Church was organized 
 in the Roman empire : the political institutions of Rome 
 were, therefore, the external conditions under which it began 
 to exist. Hence her political centres seemed the natural cen- 
 tres for the ecclesiastical organization ; the capitals of prov- 
 inces became the natural seats of bishops ; those of states, of 
 archbishops and patriarchs ; and the metropolis of the world, 
 the seat of the supreme bishop. Thus, Rome was the seat of 
 the ecclesiastical unit, the episcopal primate ; while it fol- 
 lowed, from ecclesiastical grounds, that this primate was 
 regarded as the successor or representative of Peter. From 
 the co-operation of the two causes, therefore, it followed that 
 the Roman bishop was regarded as the successor of Peter, 
 and the apostle Peter as the founder of the Christian com- 
 munity in Rome. Th\is the idea of the papacy arose and 
 was realized in the Western Church. The idea of Peter's 
 residence in Rome and his labors there first grew out of 
 anti-Pauline tendencies, then adapted itself to the recon- 
 ciled form of the Petro-Paulme legends, and grew into an es- 
 tablished tradition, on the basis of which the Roman bishops 
 claimed ecclesiastical primacy. (This conclusion is clearly 
 made out by a highl}^ instructive investigation, which has 
 thrown much light upon the nature and development of the 
 Jewish-Christian modes of thought.) 
 
 In the various departments of human life, and the various 
 forms of human culture, perhaps no greater example can be 
 found of an historical development, springing merely from 
 an idea, and perpetuated and controlled by it, than the Chris- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 45 
 
 tian Church. It sprang from the idea of tlie unity of Christian 
 faith; and this idea determined its form, and developed it 
 into a power that ruled the world. Its fundamental form 
 was very simple. It was so constituted that believers felt 
 themselves united with Christ by a living, historical bond ; 
 that the person of Christ seemed united with believers by an 
 unbroken series of connecting links. Those links were the 
 bishops and the apostles and the apostolic fathers. Hence 
 the historical reality of Jesus was accepted as an axiom of 
 incontestable truth. 
 
 In a short time, the Church became a living and indestruc- 
 tible power. Its influence increased in spite of the persecu- 
 tions of Rome, and because of them. In the midst of the 
 disintegrating empire of ];)agan Rome, the Christian Church, 
 after a few centuries, was the only strong unit with inward 
 life. The unity of the state consisted in imperialism ; the 
 unity of faith, in the Church; and already it stood in the 
 presence of that empire as an imposing, and, even in its out- 
 ward form, invincible, power. In 07ie respect, imperialism 
 and th'e Church resembled each other, — in their striving for 
 centralization ; and this was why the Church exercised an 
 attraction on the imperial power. Each of these powers 
 could strengthen itself by forming an alliance with, and using, 
 the other. Constantino the Great appreciated this fact, and 
 it might very well have appeared to him in a religious light.^ 
 It was not so much the cross in the clouds, as the cross in 
 the world, before which he bowed. Imperialism professed 
 Christianity, and thereby advanced to the power of the world. 
 What Constantine established in the beginning of the fourth 
 century, and Julian, fifty j'ears after the first edict of tolera- 
 tion, vainly sought to overthrow, was confirmed by Theodo- 
 sius the Great, at the end of that century, even before the 
 division of the empire. 
 
 The first inner problem of the new religion consisted in the 
 
 1 F. Chr. Baur: Christiauity, and the Christian Church of the First Three 
 Centuries (1851!), pp. 443-7. 
 
46 HISTOBY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 development and adjustment of the apostolic oppositions, — 
 the grounding of Catholic Christianity. Externally, its work 
 was to conquer the Roman empire. It gained the victory 
 after enduring all sorts of political persecutions, in the course 
 of the three first centuries, from Nero to Diocletian, and 
 experiencing every attack of philosophy from Celsus to 
 Porphyry. 
 
 m. TUB DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCn. 
 
 1. The Problem. — Unity of faith demands perfect harmony 
 in the conceptions of faith. The Church must make these 
 conceptions universally valid or symbolical. Only the 
 Church can do it, since, by virtue of its bishops and synods, 
 it alone has the power to decide what is true. Christian 
 faith must be definitely determined, freed from all arbitrary 
 conceptions, from all opposing points of view. This was re- 
 quired by the Church, since unit}' of faith demands also unity 
 in the consciousness of faith: only thereby is the Church 
 inwardly and thoroughly established. The men who laid 
 the foundations of the ecclesiastical edifice, who put the doc- 
 trines of the Church in a definite form, are justly called the 
 fathers of the Church, patres ecclesice. They changed faith 
 into dogmas ; they grounded the doctrines of the Church, and 
 therewith the inner unity of the faith of the Church ; tliey 
 solved the fundamental problems of theology (called patristic 
 in this part of its development). 
 
 These problems were solved from a regulative point of 
 view. The criterion of the unity of faith was determined by 
 the teachings of Christ and the apostles. That is true which 
 they taught, which has been handed down as their doctrine 
 in unbroken succession by the successors of the apostles, 
 with whom the Church believes itself, and only itself, in 
 living historical connection. As apostolic succession forms 
 the unity of faith, so apostolic tradition forms the criterion 
 of the doctrines of faith. 
 
 From the point of view, and the fundamental idea, of 
 Christianity, we can see the principle that determined the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 47 
 
 conception and solution of the patristic problem. What must 
 be believed, is Christ as the Saviour of humanity. He must 
 be accepted as the person in whom the salvation of the world 
 is accomplished. Faith in this fact forms the fixed presuppo- 
 sition on which the Church rests ; the sure guiding principle 
 which regulates and arranges its conceptions. What contra- 
 dicts this principle is false, that which agrees with it is true. 
 Thus orthodoxy and heterodoxy were distinguished in the 
 concepts of the Christian faith. And the problem of the 
 Church was to develop and establish the doctrines of ortho- 
 doxy in accordance with this principle. 
 
 In that fact of faith itself lies the fundamental question of 
 Christian theology. The fact of the salvation of the world 
 is accomplished in the person of Christ. Christ, therefore, 
 must be accepted as the Saviour of the world ; as the world- 
 saving principle, which is eternal ; like the divine purpose in 
 the world, like the divine motive in creation ; eternal, there- 
 fore, like God himself. This world-saving principle must be 
 identified with the person Jesus, with this definite, historical 
 person. The two moments of faith must have equal authority, 
 and must be united in the doctrine of the Church. If a cer- 
 tain mode of thought requires the saving world-principle in 
 Christ to be so acknowledged and emphasized that the his- 
 torical, human Jesus is thereby made unreal, the fact of sal- 
 vation ceases to be an historical, actual fact, and this mode 
 of thought is, therefore, false. If another mode of thought 
 requires the finite and creatural character of the Saviour to 
 be so emphasized that his divine nature is thereby degraded 
 and invalidated, this mode of thought is likewise, therefore, 
 in contradiction with that which must be believed. Thus, 
 the doctrine of the Church must develop its own principles 
 in conflict with opposing views of faith. It is threatened 
 on two sides, each a contradiction of the other. On the 
 one, the divine manifestation of Christ is maintained at the 
 expense of his historical and human reality: on the other, 
 reversely, his creatural nature is maintained at the expense 
 
48 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of his divine. There, the Gnostic-Docetic mode of thought 
 must be contested ; here, the rationalistic-Arian. 
 
 If we presuppose salvation in Christ as the primarily 
 given fact, the problem of patristic theology is, to bring the 
 conceptions of faith into harmony with it, to make them 
 conformable to it, to so determine them that they do not in- 
 validate that primary fact. Humanity must be saved ; i.e., 
 reconciled with God through Christ. This fact, therefore, 
 appears as a product of three factors, — God, Christ, human- 
 ity. In reference to all three, a multitude of conceptions are 
 possible which are not consistent with the fact of salvation ; 
 all those conceptions are, and must be, false in the opinion 
 of the Church. In respect, therefore, to all three, only cer- 
 tain conceptions are true ; and this brings us to the problem, 
 What are those true conceptions? If God is not so con- 
 ceived that from him goes out a world-saving principle, which 
 appears in the person of Christ, and makes real the fellow- 
 ship of believers, the fact of salvation is null. If the person 
 of Christ is not so conceived that salvation takes place in 
 him, there has been no salvation. If man is not conceived as 
 needing, and, therefore, capable of receiving, salvation, the 
 fact of salvation is without purpose and meaning. 
 
 These are thus three problems, in respect to that primary 
 fact of faith, which affect the doctrine of the Church : how 
 must the natures of God, Christ, and man, be conceived, that, 
 in all three points, our conceptions may be conformable to 
 the fact of salvation ? The first question is the problem of 
 theology ; the second, of Christology ; the third, of anthropol- 
 ogy. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, determined the 
 ecclesiastical solution of the first question in a controversy 
 with the presbyter Arius : he is related to dogma, as Baur 
 aptly says, as Gregory VII. to the Church. Cyril, the patri- 
 arch of Alexandria, determined the solution of the second, 
 in controversy with Nestor, the patriarch of Constantinople ; 
 and the solution of the third was determined by Augustinus, 
 the bishop of Hippo, in controversy with the monk Pelagius. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 49 
 
 The solution of the first question requires the distinction of 
 the divine persons and their consubstantiality, the determi- 
 nation of the divine economy, the concept of the trinity; 
 that of the second, the distinction and union of both natures 
 in Christ, the concept of theanthropism ; that of the third, 
 the doctrine of divine grace and of the sinful nature of man, 
 by which tlie concept of liuman freedom is determined. Here 
 the ecclesiastical system of faith culminates in decided and 
 absolute opposition to paganism. Augustine defined this 
 opposition, conceiving them as fundamentally opposed sys- 
 tems, — paganism as the kingdom of this world, '■'■civiias ter- 
 rena;" Christianity as the kingdom of God, '■'•dvitas dei." 
 Filled and illuminated with the faith in a new world, in 
 the midst of the on-rushing destruction and devastation of the 
 old, he laid the foundation of the specifically Christian and 
 ecclesiastical view of the world. 
 
 2. Augustinianism. — Augustine was the ablest of ecclesi- 
 astical thinkers ; and if " ecclesiastical " includes " theologi- 
 cal," he was the greatest of Christian theologians. He made 
 the Church clear concerning herself: he kindled the light in 
 which she saw her own nature ; and in this sense Ave can say 
 with truth of this father of the Church, that he was her 
 greatest light. He not merely completed the faith of the 
 Church, but at the same time grounded faith in the Church, 
 drawing from the fact of salvation all the inferences that 
 relate to human nature. 
 
 Human nature must be conceived as adapted to the fact 
 of salvation .from sin. It must, therefore, be regarded as 
 needing salvation, or sinful. It can be saved only through 
 Christ: it appears, therefore, as incapable of salvation of 
 itself, or as destitute of freedom in its sinfulness. Sin, accord- 
 ingly, is the power which controls the will ; it is a property 
 of the will from which the will cannot free itself , it is the 
 nature of the human will. But sin is guilt, and guilt pre- 
 supposes freedom, since a being without freedom cannot 
 incur guilt : a sin which excludes freedom is a contradiction. 
 
50 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thus, sin appears as the fact of freedom, and likewise as its 
 loss. Man originally had power not to sin : he sinned, and 
 thus lost his freedom, and certainly forever. Since then he 
 can do nothing but sin. In the first sin, the human race 
 fell : in Adam, all have sinned. Sin is free in its origin ; in 
 its consequences, slavery, causing the permanent corruption 
 of human nature, original sin. That is the fundamental 
 thought of Augustine, — a thought which he first made valid 
 in this sense, raised into full consciousness, and made the 
 central point of the doctrine of salvation. In this state of 
 original sin, man cannot acquire salvation ; he can neither 
 give it to himself, nor can he of himself merit it; it can only 
 fall to his share contrary to his deserts, i.e., through grace. 
 There is nothing in man to deserve this favor : it is, there- 
 fore, unconditional, groundless, an act of the divine Arbi- 
 trary Will. God bestows his grace on man without his 
 co-operation ; i.e., he elects him to salvation. Salvation, 
 therefore, is the election of grace, — an election completely 
 independent of human actions and works : it was made be- 
 fore man existed, and must accordingly be conceived as 
 divine predetermination or predestination. To elect is to 
 prefer. Some are' elected by God to salvation, others to 
 damnation. Now, according to the divine decree, revealed 
 in the fact of salvation, man can receive divine grace only 
 through Christ, and communion with Christ is possible only 
 through the Church. The Church, therefore, is the kingdom 
 of grace, the divine institution of grace on earth, the con- 
 dition and means of human salvation. There is no salvation 
 except through redemption, none, therefore, outside of tlie 
 Church : this is the doctrine that the Church alone saves. 
 
 The fact of salvation presupposed by faith demands that 
 human nature be conceived as under the dominion of origi- 
 nal sin. The concept of God and that of the Church lead to 
 the same requirement. 
 
 God must be conceived as unconditional, i.e., all-powerful, 
 will. He is not merely power, but will : this concept nega- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 51 
 
 tives all emanation. He is unconditional will, — will limited 
 by nothing without him ; without him, therefore, there is 
 nothing that can limit him : this concept negatives all dual- 
 ism. The mode of thought of religious Platonism, the Neo- 
 Platonists, and the Christian Gnostics, was dualistic and 
 emanational. The theology of Augustine is completely 
 opposed to these modes of thought. If God is will, the 
 world is Mie work of his will, — i.e., creation, — and the divine 
 activity is creative. If God is unconditional will, the world, 
 since it does not emanate from the divine nature, can only 
 be created out of nothing by the divine will : it is '■'■per deuni 
 de nihilo." So the conservation of the world, since the world 
 is nothing in itself, is a continual creation of God, " creatio 
 continua;" so every thing which happens in the world is 
 determined, predetermined, by the divine will ; so men also 
 are predestined, some to salvation, the rest to damnation ; so 
 from the side of men salvation can be conditioned by nothing, 
 i.e., men appear as of themselves incapable of salvation, as 
 so under the rule of sin that this constitutes the condition 
 of their will, — a condition which is transmitted by iuheritance 
 from generation to generation. In this point, the theology 
 of Augustine results in the doctrine of original sin. 
 
 Two principal concepts of the Augustinian system appear 
 to contradict each other. The concept of God requires the 
 unconditionalness of the will, and this, the concept of pre- 
 destination, which destroys human freedom. But if there is 
 no freedom, there is no sin ; and if there is no sin, there is no 
 need of salvation; and if no need of salvation, no salvation. 
 What the concept of God denies, the concept of salvation 
 affirms. Augustine seeks so to remove this contradiction as 
 not to deny human freedom as such. God gave it to man, 
 but man has lost it through sin, aud corrupted his nature ; 
 and this is why sin has become original sin. 
 
 The concept of the Church requires that of original sin. 
 The perception of this connection turns a blaze of light upon 
 the system of Augustine. If the Church is the kingdom 
 
52 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 within which alone we can commune with Christ, and there- 
 by partake of the divine grace, it possesses the power to 
 forgive sins. Only through and in it can sins be forgiven. 
 Salvation comes to man because the Church takes him into 
 her bosom through the means of grace of baptism. Now, if 
 the Church, as the kingdom of divine grace, is, like this, 
 unconditional, and independent of the co-operation of men, 
 it exists before individuals : it appears, like the state of the 
 ancients, as the whole which is earlier than the parts. It, 
 therefore, receives man in the beginning of his earthly exist- 
 ence, at his entrance in the world : it must incorporate into 
 itself children when it baptizes them. Through baptism, 
 children become partakers of forgiveness of sins, must, 
 therefore, also need forgiveness of sins, i.e., be sinful; and 
 this is only possible because of original sin. It is very sig- 
 nificant that a controversy arose between Pelagius and 
 Augustine concerning the damnation of unbaptized chil- 
 dren. If there is no salvation outside the Church, and if it 
 can only be reached through the Church, man outside the 
 Church is in a state of sin ; outside of baptism is corruption ; in 
 the kingdom of nature, sin rules, and this leads to damnation. 
 Without original sin, there is no sinfulness of children, no 
 necessity in their case for forgiveness of sin, no necessity 
 for their baptism, no validity to the doctrine that the church 
 exists before individuals, no unconditional existence of the 
 Church, i.e., no Church as the kingdom of grace. Thus, 
 the doctrine of original sin is the central point of the doctrine 
 of the Church. Faith in the Church demands the natural 
 corruption of individuals, and conversely. As to Avhat con- 
 cerns the eternal welfare of man, every thing depends upon 
 the Church, nothing upon the natural man. That is the 
 central point of Augustinianism, which, regardless of con- 
 sequences, forcibly and keenly drew all the inferences which 
 that presupposed principle of faith enjoins, even in their 
 unavoidable contradictions. 
 
 This system is the basis of the Church of the Middle Ages. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AKD THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 This is the source of its consciousness of unconditional su- 
 premacy. But, in the course of the development of the 
 Church, conclusions were necessarily drawn which obscured 
 the principle of Augustinianism. Faith in the Church is un- 
 conditional obedience, and this does what the Church requires. 
 Obedience can show itself in but one way, — by obedient con- 
 duct, by external works, in this case by ecclesiastical works. 
 Inwardly these works may be merely mechanical : outwardly 
 they may far exceed the measure of what is required, and 
 be meritorious and holy ; and, from the nature of works, they 
 must be judged from without. Hence the possibility arises 
 of earning merit, and justifying one's self, by works. But, 
 if works avail as a means of justification, human co-operation 
 is no longer excluded from the conditions of salvation; and 
 in the same proportion as this co-operation is meritorious, 
 validity must be conceded to human freedom also. And 
 thus there proceeded from the faith in the Church, which 
 Augustine grounded, the doctrine of the merit of good 
 works, which, in contradiction with Augustinianism, rests 
 on the Pelagian doctrine of freedom. After this doctrine 
 had reached its extremest limit, Augustine's fundamental 
 thought of the sinful nature of man was emphasized anew 
 as a reforming power. Within the Christianity of the West 
 it broke through the authority of the Roman-Catholic sys- 
 tem in Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin ; and within Catholicism, 
 as Jansenism, it attacked the system\of the Jesuits. 
 
 IV. THE DEIFICATION OP THE CHURCH. 
 
 If the Church is the kingdom of divine grace, the vessel 
 of the Holy Spirit, and the sphere of its activity, it itself 
 appears as a member in the divine economy, as an eternal 
 ordinance, which, in its hierarchical forms, constitutes the 
 ladder which leads from heaven down to earth. In this 
 conception, the historical origin and development of the 
 Church is obscured: it seems as if it had descended from 
 heaven, become visible iu the earthly hierarchy, which rises 
 
54 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from the Jewish to the Christian, from the legal to the 
 ecclesiastical, from deacons and presbyters to bishops, and 
 continues beyond the world in the heavenly hierarchy in the 
 orders of angels, whose highest ranks surround the throne of 
 God. 
 
 The gradation of Platonic ideas had transformed itself in 
 the last systems of Greek philosophy, in religious Platonism, 
 into the gradation of heathen gods. This conception, which 
 the Neo-Platonic school of Athens, the system of Proclus, 
 developed, was the last of exhausted paganism. The Chris- 
 tian Church has now established its divine authority. It 
 also is a kingdom of orders mediating between God and 
 man, and the type and the form of that Neo-Platonic mode 
 of conception corresponds to its hierarchical constitution. 
 Thus it was that the two entered a union ; that that type 
 became Christianized, and in it the Church was deified. 
 
 This blending of Neo-Platonic forms with faith in the 
 Church, this deification of the Church, constitutes the charac- 
 ter and the theme of those writings which, in the sixth 
 century of the Cliristian era, were known under the name 
 of "Dionysius the Areopagite," who was one of the first 
 Christians whom Paul converted in Athens, and whom the 
 sage made the first bishop of that city. This conception of 
 the theology of the Areopagite, which sees and worships in 
 the Church the kingdom of heaven on earth, stamped itself 
 deeply on the religious imagination and the mysticism of 
 the Middle Ages. It was the Gnosticism of the Church. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CODESE OF DEVELOPMENT OP THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
 THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 I. PROBLEM. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY has developed into the Church, and 
 Christian faith into a series of dogmas. The fixed pre- 
 supposition upon which the further development of Christian 
 ideas now rests, is the fact of salvation, represented in the 
 form of the symbols and dogmas which resulted from the 
 labors of the fathers of the Church, and of the great coun- 
 cils of the fourth and fifth centuries. The fact of salvation 
 needed to be proclaimed, devoutly received, freed from every 
 limitation. The dogmas of faith, on the other hand, require 
 to be taught, proved, combined with each other. As the 
 Church forms a hierarchical system of absolute unity, so its 
 doctrine must become a system in complete harmony with 
 the spirit of the Church, and governed by it. The system- 
 atization of faith requires their collection and oi-ganization in 
 a demonstrative form, by means of which they can be taught 
 and learned. Such a form is impossible unless they are 
 grounded on a comprehensive basis, and logically deduced 
 therefrom. This systematization was the work of scholas- 
 ticism. The teachers of the Church in the narrower sense 
 of the term, the doetores ecclesice, take the place of the patres 
 ecdesice, the fathers of the Church. Dogmas in their hands 
 were materials for instruction : theology was taught. It be- 
 came scholasticism, and in this form constitutes the phi- 
 losophy of that ecclesiastical age of the world that we are 
 accustomed to call the Middle Ages. 
 
56 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The character and problem of scholasticism were thereby 
 determined. It was closely and vitally connected with the 
 hierarchical system, and was a servant of the Church. Its 
 labor was essentially /ormaL- out of given material, according 
 to a prescribed plan and an established guiding principle, it 
 had to erect a system of doctrine in perfect harmony with 
 the ecclesiastical conception of the world. As theology, it 
 was a servant of the Church : as philosophy, it was " the hand- 
 maid of theology." 
 
 But though scholastic philosophy was in bondage to the- 
 ology and the Church, this bondage involved a new and 
 peculiar relation into which scholasticism entered with faith. 
 The Church determined Avhat was believed: scholasticism 
 was to explain why it was true. Dogma says, " Deus homo : " 
 scholasticism asks, " Cur deus homo f " Dogmas must be 
 evident to the natural understanding : the faculties of human 
 knowledge must be brought into harmony with faith. This 
 harmony was the avowed problem, the programme, as it 
 were, of scholasticism. And this differentiates scholasticism 
 from the theological development which preceded it, and the 
 philosophical one that followed it. The doctrine of faith 
 had to be developed in opposition to Gnosticism, which was 
 its immediate antagonist, and in opposition to the philosophy 
 in general which came from paganism, and seemed to it the 
 mother of all heresies. It regarded philosophy, and, with 
 it, all the natural knowledge of reason, as inimical to faith; 
 and Tertullian regarded its assertions as the criterion of 
 infidelity, and with his " credo, quia absurdum,''' struck it to 
 the ground. In the time succeeding scholasticism, philosophy 
 threw off its dependence upon faith, and took its own course, 
 even in opposition to faith. Before and after scholasticism, 
 faith and philosophy were separated : in it they were united 
 so long as its power was unimpaired. While this alliance 
 lasted, scholasticism flourished, and lived in its true element. 
 When this alliance was dissolved, it fell into decline. When 
 faith tore itself loose from philosophy, and quit the service of 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 57 
 
 the latter, the signs of the decay of scholasticism were at 
 hand. And this decay came from within: it was the self- 
 dissolution of scholasticism, since it necessarily advanced to 
 the point in its own development where it demanded the 
 separation of knowledge and faith, and thereby destroyed 
 its own work. 
 
 The motive of scholasticism was '■^ credo ut intelligam ;" its 
 fundamental principle the ecclesiastical '■'■fides;'' its goal the 
 '■^ ratio fidei." The systematization of faith was likewise its 
 rationalization. Scholasticism is rational theology under the 
 control of the Church : therein lay its character and its prob- 
 lem. In scholasticism the Church authorized philosophy, 
 gave it a field of labor, demanded the development of a 
 Christian philosophy, and incorporated rational activity into 
 its own development, as a completely servile, dependent fac- 
 tor, to be sure, to which the faith of the Church prescribed 
 what it had to do. But to serve is to become free. Obedi- 
 ence is the discipline that prepares for freedom. In the ser- 
 vice of theology, philosophy laboriously attained its majority, 
 and won the independence with which it finally tore itself 
 loose from the dominion of the Church, and undertook its 
 own development. 
 
 II. THE ECCLESIASTICAL AGE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 In determining the problem and activity of scholasticism, 
 we have presupposed an ecclesiastical age of the world, that 
 had to be founded historically before this ecclesiastical philos- 
 ophy began its work of instruction. New states of the world 
 and of nations required to be developed, — nations which 
 received Christianity in the form of the faith of the Church, 
 the education and culture of whom proceeded from the 
 Church. The downfall of the old world ; the hostile migra- 
 tions of nations ; the destruction of the Western Roman em- 
 pire, which, of the powers contemporary with it, the Church 
 alone outlived ; the formation of the feudal system ; the 
 Christianization of new peoples distinguished into Romanic, 
 
68 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Germanic, and Slavic ; finally, the founding of a new, Franko- 
 Carlovingian empire, extending over a large part of the 
 world, — these were the conditions which prepared the way 
 for the ecclesiastical age of the world, and preceded the 
 appearance of scholasticism. Its theatre was the Western 
 world, the Romanic-Germanic, — Spain, France, Italy, Britain, 
 Germany. 
 
 Rome was the spiritual centre of this new world, — not the 
 Rome of the Caesars, but ecclesiastical Rome, in whose rule 
 of the world the age consists that we have called ecclesiasti- 
 cal. The supremacy of the Church was based on its unity 
 and centralization. Rome was the centre of the empire of 
 the world: Rome, therefore, was, also, the Church of the. 
 world. The elevation of Roman bishops to authority over 
 the Church was the condition which constituted and realized 
 the character of the ecclesiastical age. This sovereign au- 
 thority of the Roman bishops is the papacy, which gradually, 
 in the course of centuries, step by step, scaled the height 
 from which it saw the Church and the world at its feet. 
 
 The first round of the ladder was the ecclesiastical primacy 
 to which the bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, laid 
 claim, and which particularly Leo I., a generation before the 
 downfall of the "Western Roman empire, succeeded in estab- 
 lishing, on the ground of the ecclesiastical dignity and impor- 
 tance of Rome. During the headlong political changes in 
 Italy, — in the course of the immediately subsequent time, 
 the Goths were forced to give way to the Greeks, and these 
 to the Longobardi, — the successors of Peter grew more and 
 more independent. The second great step was taken in the 
 eighth century through the alliance with the Prankish rulers, 
 which even Gregory I. had in mind : this made the bishop 
 of Rome the largest possessor of provinces, and, after the 
 downfall of the rule of the Longobardi, brought about that 
 significant and momentous event very near the beginning of 
 the uinth century, which denoted a new state of the world, — 
 the coronation of Charles the Great by the first bishop of the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 59 
 
 West, the ecclesiastical inauguration of the empire of the 
 Caesars during the Middle Ages, the subjection of the world 
 to two highest, as yet harmonious and co-ordinate, powers, 
 the joint rule of emperor and pope. A dualism was founded, 
 which, in the progress of things, necessarily called forth a 
 conflict between those two powers for the empire of the 
 world. But before this, the final step was taken, which 
 forged for the Roman-ecclesiastical primacy, in the form in 
 which it then existed, the appearance of a legal foundation, 
 through that collection of spurious decretals named after 
 Isidorus. The form into which it had developed was the 
 original one according to the decretals, — the Roman bishop 
 ■ the from-the-first acknowledged bishop of the Church of the 
 world, to whom even Coustantine conceded the government 
 of Rome and Italy. Not till then was the hierarchical sys- 
 tem finished, the ecclesiastical pyramid: the Roman bishop 
 passed not merely for the first, but the supreme, bishop of the 
 Christian world, the head and ruler of the Church. The 
 papacy consists in this central power. The pseudo-Isidoric 
 decretals appeared about the middle of the ninth century : 
 they originated in the Prankish episcopacy, and in its inter- 
 ests, since its immediate subjection to the Roman ruler freed 
 the bishops of the Frankish empire from the secular and 
 ecclesiastical powers (archbishops), whp were near at hand 
 to limit the scope of their authority. Independently of the 
 forged decretals, Nicholas I. (858-867) defended his eccle- 
 siastical central power, as it had been conceded, with a clear 
 consciousness of its importance, and with great energy. 
 
 The papacy, and with it the ecclesiastical age of the world, 
 reaches its highest point in the conflict for the supremacy of 
 the world, and in its victory there. We can trace its course 
 in this period of its greatest ascendency through three points, 
 — its rising, its culmination, and the beginning of its decline 
 as the sovereign power of the world. At its rising stood 
 Q-regory VII. (1073-1085) ; at its culmination. Innocence III. 
 (1198-1216) ; at the beginning of its decline, Boniface VIII. 
 
60 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (1294-1303). It was no longer enough that the bishops of 
 Rome were regarded as the successors of Peter, they became 
 his deputies : with this conception of his office, Gregorj^ VII. 
 ruled. The feeling of power increased : it was not enough 
 that they were deputies of Peter; they became the vicars 
 of Clirist, the vicegerents of God on earth, an infallible 
 authority in human form. The bishops themselves were 
 regarded only as their vicars ; the pope was not merely the 
 supreme, but, by reason of his absolute power, the only, bishop. 
 This is the claim of the papacy since Innocence III., sup- 
 ported by a new collection of ecclesiastical decrees from the 
 hand of Gratian, the so-called '■'■ decretum Gratiani," which 
 appeared in the course of the twelfth century. This highest 
 elevation of power is the papal system. 
 
 In these great conflicts for universal power, three great 
 phases can be distinguished. In the first, it was a conflict 
 of principles between the Church and the world, or the State : 
 it was the controversy between Gregory VII. and Henry IV. 
 In the second, it was a conflict for secular power, especially 
 for the possession of Italy : then were kindled those fatal con- 
 flicts between the popes and the Hohenstaufen. In the last, 
 the controversy was renewed between the Church and the 
 State, with the peculiar turn that then the national con- 
 sciousness was arrg.yed on the side of political power, to 
 oppose to the central power of Rome the independence of 
 the nation : it was the conflict which the king and the orders 
 of France waged against Boniface VIII. 
 
 At first, the two powerful, pyramid-shaped bodies of the 
 Middle Ages appeared on the field of battle, — the hierarchical 
 Church and the feudal State, — the first dovetailed into the 
 second, exposed to secularization, and in danger of becoming 
 ungovernable. The freeing of the Church from the powers 
 of the world that fetter it ; the dissolution of all the bonds 
 that ensnared the clergy in the world and in the State ; the 
 separation of the Church from the world without abandoning 
 its power, i.e., the exaltation of it above the State, — Gregory 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 61 
 
 VII. regarded as his reformatory work. He forbade the 
 marriage of priests, the sale of spiritual offices (simony), the 
 investiture of laymen, the vassalage of bishops. The contro- 
 versy concerning investiture continued long, and terminated 
 with a compromise between the parties. In tlie conflict with 
 the Hohenstaufen, the popes won the victory, but the means 
 to which they resorted sowed "the seeds of injury to the 
 papacy. Never in the history of the world did Nemesis show 
 her power more sublimely. To destroy the German imperial 
 family, the papal policy founded a French throne in Italy, 
 the necessary result of which Avas the increase of French in- 
 fluence upon the apostolic see. In the conflict with France, 
 the powerful Boniface VIII. was overthrown ; and he, the 
 most positive in his consciousness of power of all tlie popes, 
 was taken prisoner by the king of France : and the second 
 of his s^iccessors, a French pope, went to Avignon (1305) 
 two years after his death. Thus, the destruction of the 
 Hohenstaufen, through the French i5olicy of the popes, re- 
 sulted in their captivity to tlie French, that so-called Baby- 
 lonish exile (1305-1377) by which the papacy was hurled 
 down the abj-ss at the brink of which Boniface VIII. stood. 
 For the immediate consequence of this exile was the begin- 
 ning of the great schism (1378), the destruction of the unity 
 of the Church, which the reformatory councils of the fif- 
 teenth century restored, and the plans of which were frus- 
 trated by their own work. F'or the reformation of the 
 Church was incompatible with the restoration of the papacy. 
 What remained but the reformation of the Church, — which 
 was necessary, and had been proved impossible through coun- 
 cils, — a reformation beginning at the very foundation ? And 
 then appeared Luther, as the time of the upheaval had come. 
 Thus, the ecclesiastical age of the world, before the refor- 
 mation of the sixteenth century made the irreparable breech, 
 includes the time from Gregory VII. to the beginning of the 
 German reformation. Tliis is the period of real scholasticism, 
 — scholasticism bound, in its activity of thought, to the service 
 
62 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the Church ; and it extends from the end of the eleventh 
 to the end of the fifteenth century. Its course of develop- 
 ment corresponded to that of the Church. Two periods can 
 be clearly distinguished in the development of the Church, — 
 that of the papal rule of the world, or ecclesiastical centraliza- 
 tion ; and that of its nascent dissolution, or decentralization. 
 The former includes the tit^elfth and thirteenth centuries; 
 the latter, the fourteenth and fifteenth. The first two were 
 the time of the Crusades (1095-1291), in which the papacy 
 appeared at the head of the nations, and which (immediately 
 before Boniface VIII.) ended with the loss of all their con- 
 quests. Of course, the distinction between those two periods 
 stamps itself upon the course of the development of scholas- 
 ticism, which is controlled by the position of the Church in 
 the world. So, in its first period, the fundamental trend of 
 ecclesiastical centralization, the idea of the all-powerful, 
 universal Church, binding together all individual powers, 
 predominates ; and, in the second, the fundamental trend of 
 ecclesiastical decentralization, the idea of the Church, inde- 
 pendent of, and separated from, the world and the State. 
 The Church and the world are related as the faith of the 
 Church and natural (human) knowledge. The bond, there- 
 fore, between faith and knowledge was strong in the first 
 period, and weak in the second. Scholasticism changed with 
 the times. And precisely therein consists its philosophical 
 significance, that, within its department, it formulated, and 
 gave expression to, the consciousness of the time. That in 
 an ecclesiastical age of the world, the consciousness of the 
 time was of an ecclesiastical character, with ecclesiastical 
 limitations, was clearly the natural result of the predomi- 
 nant state of the world. It is absurd to make a noise about 
 empty and unproductive scholasticism, and blame the forest 
 because it is not an orchard. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 63 
 
 III. THE FOUNDING OP SCHOLASTICISM:. 
 
 1. Urigena. — Scholasticism had two beginnings, separated 
 from .each other by more than two centuries, — the first, 
 which remained isolated, in the Carlovingian period, in the 
 time of the pseudo-Isidoric decretals and Nicholas I. ; the sec- 
 ond, with which its real course of development began, in 
 the period that commenced with Gregory VII. 
 
 The first founder, a Briton, whom Charles the Bold 
 called to his court in Paris, was John Seotus Erigena. He 
 regarded the unity and universality of the divine being as 
 the truly real, and the knowledge of it as the illuminatioA 
 of faith. God is the beginning, middle, and end of all that 
 is, which, in all its distinctions of kind, is determined by 
 the concept of creation and created being. There is one 
 being who creates all things, himself uncreated. He is the 
 creative ground of all things. There is a second, which, 
 though created, works creatively, — the logos. The third na- 
 ture consists in creatures, without creative power of their 
 own, in the world of time and sense. Finally, there is an 
 ultimate state, in which all creation and creating reach their 
 goal, the end of all things, in their re-union with God. 
 Accordingly, that which is, or nature in its entire extent, 
 is divided into the following distinctions of being: God, 
 the world in God (logos), the world outside of God, the 
 return of the world to God. That is Erigena's '■'■divisio 
 naturae," We perceive at once the Platonic thinker in the 
 form of this classification. In his manner of conceiving the 
 primary being as without distinctions, and distinguishing all 
 other beings as degrees of the one life, emanating from God, 
 separated from him, to him returning, in the mode of the 
 pantheistic doctrine of emanation, we see unmistakably the 
 traces of his mental affinity with the fundamental doctrine 
 of Neo-Platonism and the theology of the Areopagite. (It 
 was not an accident that he became the translator of the 
 Areopagite.) 
 
64 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In the system of Erigena, the divine life in the world has 
 but one origin, — its issue from the father of all things; 
 and humanity but one final goal, — union with God. With 
 him, therefore, there is no second divinity equal to the 
 primary being, no divine twofold nature, no twofold issue 
 of the Holy Spirit, no twofold choice of grace. If the final 
 goal of humanity consists in its spiritualization, glorification, 
 and re-union with God (^adunatio'), its communion with God 
 in the visible Church, and the presence of Christ in the sacra- 
 ment, have only a figurative and symbolical meaning. 
 
 Thus, this system conflicts with the dogma of the Trinity, 
 ef theanthropism, of the divine election of grace, and with 
 the nascent doctrine of transubstantiation. After the S3aii- 
 bolical sacrifice had gradually transformed itself, in the 
 imagination of believers, into the real, through the culture 
 of the century, the doctrine of transubstantiation, formulated 
 by Paschasius Radbertus, had resulted from that culture 
 in the time of Erigena ; and those controversies concerning 
 the Lord's supper began, which were renewed under Gregory 
 VII., between Lanfranc and Berengar of Tours, the result 
 of which was, that the doctrine of transformation became a 
 dogma of the Church (1215) under Innocence III., a result 
 which grew out of the interests and the condition of the 
 Church. There is no greater example of the development 
 of a dogma from worship ; none in which the obedience of 
 faith had to stand a more powerful test in opposition to the 
 certainty of the senses ; none that could make more evident 
 the truth of that sentence of the German poet, " Miracle is 
 the favorite child of faith," than the faith in this trans- 
 formation. 
 
 Erigena's system stands in opposition to the Romish 
 Church. It appeared in an age in which the controversy 
 concerning predestination was renewed, and that concerning 
 transubstantiation arose. It is, therefore, comprehensible 
 enough, that such a thinker experienced persecutions from 
 the Church through s3-nods, bishops, and popes (Nicholas I.). 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 65 
 
 In his system, Gnosticism and Scholasticism are mingled. He 
 attempted to unify faith and knowledge, but in such a sys- 
 tem that the Church rejected it, and even centuries after his 
 death condemned it as a type of heretical ideas. Erigena 
 has been called the " Origen of the West." But scholasti- 
 cism required for the solution of its problem a "second 
 Augustine." 
 
 2. Anselm. — This " second Augustine " was found in a 
 contemporary and mental kinsman of Gregory VII. In the 
 year that Hildebrand ascended the papal see (1073), Anselm 
 of Aosta became prior of the cloister Bee in France (suc- 
 cessor of that Lanfranc who had defended the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation against Berengar) : twenty j'ears later he 
 was made archbishop of Canterbury, the first ecclesiastical 
 prince of England. In the controversy with England con- 
 cerning investiture, he supported the pope against the king ; 
 in the political questions of the Church, he was an hierarch ; 
 in theology, the orthodox founder of scholasticism. He 
 harmonized the interests of theology and hierarchy as the 
 spirit of scholasticism required. 
 
 The faith of the Church was then accepted as the motive 
 and aim of all knowledge, and knowledge itself was only 
 regarded as a means of strengthening the hold of the doc- 
 trines of the Church. Where comprehension ceased, faith 
 called a halt, and reason submitted. "Caput submittam." 
 The reality of God and theanthropism were not subjects of 
 inquiry or of doubt, as if they were first to be established : 
 they were incontestable certainties. The question was only 
 as to the arguments for demonstrating them. And the 
 arguments which Anselm of Canterbury made for the exist- 
 ence and incarnation of God in his "proslogium" and his 
 " Cur Beus homo ? " give a good illustration of the character 
 of scholasticism. 
 
 He proves the being of God ontologically. The reality of 
 the most perfect being is evident from our concept of him. 
 For, if he lacked existence, he would be defective, and, there- 
 
66 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fore, not perfect, and our conception would not then be 
 what it is, — that of the most perfect being. He proves the 
 incarnation of man, from the conditions through which alone 
 sinful humanity can be saved. For the fall of man is, as 
 disobedience to God, a crime of infinite guilt, and, as such, 
 can neither be forgiven, without some interposition, nor 
 punished according to its deserts; for forgiveness without 
 punishment would be unjust, and deserved punishment would 
 be the destruction of man. The former is incompatible with 
 divine justice : the latter would frustrate the purpose of 
 creation. There is but one way out of the difficulty, — guilt 
 must be atoned for ; satisfaction must be made to God. Sal- 
 vation is only possible through satisfaction. But this aton- 
 ing action, paying our infinite debt, must itself be an infinite 
 merit, of which sinful humanity is incapable. In place of 
 humanity, a sinless being must suffer and outweigh the guilt 
 of sin. Satisfaction is possible only through a substitutional 
 suffering. Here God himself alone can take the place of 
 humanity, for he alone is sinless ; and, therefore, substitu- 
 tional suffering requires the incarnation of God. This incar- 
 nation must not be subject to the conditions through which 
 original sin is transmitted ; it can take place, therefore, only 
 through supernatural birth ; is possible only in the son of the 
 Virgin Mary, in the person Jesus, who sacrificed himself for 
 humanity, and through this sacrificial death earned infinite 
 merit, — a merit which God cannot put to the account of Jesus 
 himself, but only to that of those for whom the God-man 
 made himself an offering. This merit which God puts to 
 the account of the race is the forgiveness of sins, or the salva- 
 tion of humanity. Now the debt is all paid. Salvation is 
 accomplished through the incarnation of God. The incarna- 
 tion results from the necessity of substitution, and this from 
 the satisfaction which humanity owes in consequence of 
 original sin. Heirship now steps in the place of original 
 sin ; original sin works on in nature ; heirship in the Church 
 as the kingdom of grace. Thus, the proofs of Anselm lead 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 67 
 
 lis to the central point of the doctrine of Augustine. Justly 
 can we call this first orthodox scholastic the second 
 Augustine. 
 
 IV. THE COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 1. Realism and Nominalism. — Anselm's arguments rest 
 upon a presupposition which, indeed, lies at the bottom of the 
 whole doctrine of the Church, but was first consciously- 
 accepted here, where the attempt was made to give a logical 
 and demonstrative proof of dogmas. The two turning-points 
 of the Augustinian doctrine of faith and the theology of An- 
 selm are original sin and salvation : in Adam man fell, in Christ 
 he is saved. If these facts have no universal truth, or, what 
 is the same, if these universal determinations have no actual 
 (real) being, faith is without foundation. Faith rests, there- 
 fore, on the logical presupposition that humanity as species 
 or idea in truth exists, and constitutes the nature of man. 
 What is true of this species must be true of all species 
 (ideas), of all universals. If they are not realities, it is to be 
 feared that the facts of faith are either manifestly unreal or 
 incapable of proof. The Church itself exists by virtue of 
 its idea : its reality rests on its universality. Even Augus- 
 tine based its authority on its catholicity, its necessary, on 
 its universal, validity. As the Platonic state exists in the 
 idea of justice, independently of particulars, so the Christian 
 Church exists in the idea of the unity of faith. And that is 
 why the comparison of the two is so just and appropriate, as 
 Bauer and Zeller have very significantly shown. 
 
 From this fundamental, and, to the Church, natural, view, 
 the proposition now follows in which scholasticism recog- 
 nizes its principle, universalia sunt realia. Species are the 
 truly real. It is characteristic enough that the first scholas- 
 tic proof of the existence of God was the ontological argument 
 of Anselm. 
 
 The realism of the Middle Ages was based on the reality 
 of universals, — the first fundamental trend of scholasti- 
 
68 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cism ; and it evoked its opposite. The problem of scholasti- 
 cism authorized also the claims of the natural understanding, 
 but to this, single things appear as the real objects ; species, 
 on the other hand, as mere concepts and abstractions, which 
 we make and denote by words. The natural understanding, 
 accordingly, regards universalia not as realia, but " voealia " 
 or "'■ nomina.^' On the unreality of universals rests the 
 nominalism of the Middle Ages, the second fundamental 
 trend of scholasticism, the first expression of which followed 
 close upon the heels of realism. These opposing views were 
 formulated in a controversy between Roscelin and William 
 of Champeaux, near the end of the eleventh century. 
 
 The range of the nominalistic mode of thought can be 
 easily determined. We know by means of presentations and 
 concepts, judgments and propositions. If concepts neither 
 have, nor apprehend, reality, there is no knowledge of the real, 
 and, since the objects of faith are the truly real, no knowledge 
 of faith. When, therefore, nominalism, in the spirit of scholas- 
 ticism, affirmed the reality of the objects of faith, it was at the 
 same time compelled, contrary to the fundamental principle of 
 scholasticism, to deny the knowledge of them. As soon as this 
 mode of thought prevailed, the bond between knowledge and 
 faith, which constituted the certainty of the theology of the 
 Middle Ages, was severed : the union of faith and knowledge. 
 From this vantage-ground we can survey the course of the 
 development of scholasticism. In the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, realism prevailed ; in the fourteenth, the nominal- 
 istic mode of thought became more and more general ; and 
 this led to the downfall of scholasticism, and formed the 
 transition to a new philosoph3% independent of faith. Thus, 
 the two fundamental tendencies of scholasticism, each in its 
 greatest predominance, coincide with the two periods which 
 we have distinguished in the ecclesiastical age of the world. 
 Realism corresponds to the period of the ecclesiastical rule 
 of the world and centralization ; nominalism to that of its 
 nascent destruction and decentralization. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 69 
 
 Such a course of development has lately been denied ; and, 
 on the other hand, an attempt has been made to limit the 
 point of dispute between realism and nominalism to their 
 first encounter, when Roscelin explained universals as '■"fla- 
 tus vocis." If any one wishes to restrict the term nominalism 
 to Roscelin's unsuccessful contradiction of realism, he may 
 choose another name for the later and victorious line of 
 thought, in like manner opposed to it. The matter itself, 
 the well-known contrast between the two scholastic periods, 
 which we have just explained, remains unchanged. And 
 just as little is accomplished by the objection that the prog- 
 ress of scholasticism consisted only in growth in breadth, 
 only in the increased importation of its materials for doc- 
 trine, — in other words, in the increasing knowledge of 
 the doctrine of Aristotle. The materials of culture which the 
 Middle Ages received from the ancient world were the scant- 
 iest. Of the philosophy of Aristotle, which ruled scholas- 
 ticism in its zenith, — so some have claimed, — only an 
 unimportant fragment of the logic was at first known, the 
 doctrine of the proposition and the categories, and this only 
 in a translation of Boethius, with an introduction by Por- 
 phyry. Not till the twelfth century was the whole organon 
 of Aristotle known, and his real philosophy, his metaphysics, 
 physics, psychology, etc., not till the following, and these 
 through Latin translations, made first from the Hebrew and 
 Arabic, later from the Greek, until at last the study of the 
 ancients in their own language was again renewed. This 
 creeping away into the leading-strings of Aristotle signifies 
 nothing more than the increasing secularization of scholastic 
 theology, from which the separation between faith and 
 knowledge, and the victory of the nominalistic doctrine of 
 knowledge, at last necessarily resulted. 
 
 2. The Platonic and Aristotelian Realism. — During the 
 period when the ecclesiastical rule of the world was unbroken, 
 the accepted fundamental principle of scholastic theology 
 was, that species or ideas have reality ; that this reality is 
 
70 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 either completely independent of individual things, or their 
 active, indwelling principle, either "-ante rem" or "m re." 
 This is not the place to enter into all the possible modifica- 
 tions and intermediate distinctions of those two conceptions. 
 The scholasticism of the twelfth century was untiring in 
 such distinctions. The two norm-giving conceptions were 
 prefigured in Greek philosophy, — the first in Plato, the second 
 in Aristotle. Both affirmed the reality of ideas , but Plato 
 regarded them as that which truly exists independently of 
 phenomena, while with Aristotle they were the truly efficient 
 force in things. With Plato, their reality was the world of 
 ideas ; with Aristotle, nature. We have already shown how 
 the second conception necessarily results from the first. 
 Platonic realism prevailed in the scholastic theology of the 
 twelfth century, the Aristotelian during the thirteenth. 
 Thus, in the ecclesiastical philosophy of the Middle Ages, 
 three trends of thought can be distinguished, which, gener- 
 ally speaking, coincide with the centuries, — the realistic- 
 Platonic in the twelfth, the realistic-Aristotelian in the 
 thirteenth, and the nominalistic in the two following. 
 Abelard (-|- 1142) formed the transition between the Pla- 
 tonic and Aristotelian scholasticism ; John Duns Scotus 
 (-\- 1308) between the realistic and nominalistic. 
 
 We have already referred to that significant affinity, which, 
 in spite of the fundamentally different ages in which they 
 were developed, and of their fundamentally different concep- 
 tions of the world, exists between the Platonic mode of 
 thought of antiquity and the ecclesiastical conceptions of 
 the Middle Ages, between the Platonic state and the Romish 
 Church. In both, the universal prevails unconditionally over 
 the particular ; the whole is before the parts, and the idea is 
 the only real power, completelj' independent of individuals. 
 It is not, therefore, surprising that, under the absolute rule 
 of the Church of the Middle Ages, a Platonic scholasticism 
 was developed, and that the period during which this scholas- 
 ticism prevailed coincided with the period of the Crusades ; 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 71 
 
 that the Church resisted the increasing departure from this 
 mode of realistic thought, the increasing approximations to 
 the Aristotelian realism, and finally yielded to the necessity 
 which it could not prevent. The physical and metaphysical 
 writings of Aristotle were still condemned in the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century, then hesitatingly permitted, first 
 to artists, then to theologians ; and finally the study of the 
 Aristotelian philosophy was even required, and the pagan 
 philosopher was held in the highest regard by the Church 
 itself, in respect to all natural knowledge. 
 
 What is the explanation of this remarkable phenomenon, 
 — this union between the Church of the Middle Ages and 
 Aristotle? 'It is not hard to find. When once natural 
 knowledge was authorized in scholasticism, even if only as 
 an instrument of faith, in the course of its development the 
 point necessarily came where nature also became its object, 
 and where it inserted into, and subordinated to, its system 
 this concept, even as the Church had subjected the State to 
 its authority. The Church itself in the course of time was 
 obliged to recognize this work as necessary and beneficial to 
 its system. Scholasticism required a theological conception 
 of nature. In obtaining it, the Church conquered a great 
 territory, that appeared hostile as long as it was foreign to 
 theology. By the theological conception of nature, a mode 
 of thought is to be understood which regards God as the 
 ultimate ground and purpose of nature, and nature herself 
 as a gradation of material and living forms, depending upon 
 the divine purpose, — forms which are animated by God, and 
 have their consummation in him. This conception of nature 
 is found in the Aristotelian philosophy, hence its significance 
 to scholasticism and the Church. Because of its pagan spirit, 
 it at first seemed to be of a questionable character ; but its 
 theological aspect recommended it to the Church, and finally 
 it was regarded as a most welcome means for solving a prob- 
 lem, through the solution of which the Church triumphs. 
 Now, the philosophy of Aristotle was almost unknown to the 
 
72 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 West. His logical writings have no bearing upon the solu- 
 tion of this problem. The culture of the West was remote 
 from that of Greece, and made still more so by the chasm 
 between the two cluirches. And so, by the most circuitous 
 path, the Aristotelian philosoplij' was introduced into the 
 schools of Western Christendom, through the Arabian phi- 
 losophers of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. 
 Of those, Avicenna (-(- 1036) was the greatest of those of 
 the East; Averroes (-|- 1198) of those of Spain. The latter 
 came nearest to the true understanding of Aristotle, through 
 the extent of his commentaries and the mode of his insight. 
 
 During the thirteenth century, scholasticism was in its 
 zenith. The problem was, to gain a concept of nature for 
 the system of theology, and thereby first to complete its 
 systematization. The kingdom of grace did not seem to 
 natural knowledge thoroughly established, until the king- 
 dom of nature was subordinated to it, and could be conceived 
 as forming one coherent whole with it. In this union of the 
 two kingdoms lay the problem. The kingdom of nature 
 must be regarded as the vestibule to the kingdom of grace ; 
 so that even in nature the kingdom of grace is outlined, pre- 
 figurated, designed, that the ordinances of the Church appear 
 as the filling out of the outline contained in nature. That is 
 the fundamental thought of the thirteenth century ; the real 
 motive in the systems of the great theologians of this period, 
 — Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas. 
 He who solves this problem most perfectly, in the conception 
 of the Church, sustains the same relation to scholasticism 
 that Augustine had done to the doctrine of faith. This 
 greatest of the scholastics was Thomas. In his system, nature 
 appears as a kingdom of gradations, planned with reference to, 
 and leading up to, the Church. In the natural life of man, 
 the stages of the body are completed : in the ordinances of 
 grace, i.e., in the sacraments, the natural life of man is com- 
 pleted. Thomas's doctrine of the sacraments turns a blaze 
 of light upon the spirit of this entire theology. It is the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 73 
 
 Aristotelian conception of development which is the founda- 
 tion of its systems. As tlie foundation is related to the com- 
 pleted structure, the means to the end, so, in Thomas's view 
 of the world, is the natural world to the ecclesiastical, the 
 life of man to the sacraments. His system, in its ecclesiasti- 
 cal spirit, is throughout theological and supernatural ; but it 
 incorporated into itself the conception of nature, and there- 
 by completed the theological-scholastic mode of thought. 
 Thomas rounded off the faith of the Church into an incom- 
 parable system of doctrine, and earned for himself the fame 
 of being the ecclesiastical philosopher. 
 
 3. Sums and Systems. — The problem of scholasticism was, 
 to form a theological system out of the material furnished 
 by dogmatic doctrines and controversies. The first solution 
 of this problem consisted in the collection, abridgment, and 
 arrangement of all the materials appertaining to it, — those 
 so-called " Sums " of the twelfth century, the model of which 
 was the work of Peter Lombard (+ 1164). He sustained 
 the same relation to the doctrines of the Church that his 
 contemporary, Gratian, did to its laws. He surveyed the 
 whole field of dogmas or "sentences" in a comprehensive 
 work, which earned for him the title of '■'•magister sententi- 
 orum" and became the first commonly accepted text-book of 
 theology, the foundation of theological lectures. The sums 
 of sentences produced in the twelfth century were still no 
 systems. The test-book of Lombard furnished the material 
 out of which, blended with the philosophy of Aristotle, the 
 theological sums of the thirteenth century were produced, the 
 works of the great doctors of the Church. To the grounds 
 of the doctrine of the Church were now added the rational 
 grounds of the philosopher ; to the " autoritates" the " rationes." 
 In the exposition, comparison, and contrast of the two, the 
 new problem was introduced by the English Franciscan, Alex- 
 ander of Hales (+ 1245). The real representative of the 
 rationes was the Aristotelian philosophy. So far as this lay 
 in the horizon and power of comprehension of the time, it 
 
74 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 must be set forth along with theology, and the problem 
 thereby explained and illustrated in its entirety. This was 
 done by the " doctor universalis" the German Dominican, 
 Albert the Great (+ 1280). His greater disciple, the Italian 
 Dominican, Thomas Aquinas (-j- 1274), completed the solu- 
 tion of the scholastic problem : he was the author of the 
 ecclesiastical philosophical system in which Augustine, the 
 Lombard, and Aristotle were harmonized with each other. 
 He Christianized the Aristotelian doctrine of development in 
 the spirit of the Church's rule of the world, as the Areopa- 
 gite had done the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation in the 
 spirit of its hierarchy. 
 
 4. Thomas and Scotus. — In the progress of the Aristotelian 
 Realism, the opposition between Thomas and Scotus arose, 
 which set their schools at variance with each other, and per- 
 manently affected the stability of the scholastic theology. If 
 the two kingdoms of nature and of grace are so united that 
 the former is consummated, and realizes its purpose, in the 
 latter, the kingdom of things in general must appear as the 
 best-ordered world, — a world which God chose, by reason of 
 his wisdom, out of all possible worlds, and created by his om- 
 nipotence : and the divine will in the creation of the world is 
 thus determined by knowledge ; and the divine creation, since 
 it is under the control of an idea, — that of the good, — is 
 necessary and determined. Thus, the system of Thomas, in 
 spite of its supernatural character, is absolutely deterministic; 
 and therein is the genuine expression of the ecclesiastical 
 conception of the world, which regards its ordinances as 
 rigidly determined, decided for all cases, and so arranged as 
 to completely exclude individual wills and choice. This 
 " theodicee " of Thomas, in which every thing is determined 
 according to divine knowledge, and arranged " ad deum,'" 
 found an antagonist in the English Franciscan, John Duns 
 Scotus. It was no less a controversy than that between de- 
 terminism and indeterminism, between necessity and freedom, 
 which here broke out in scholasticism. It was the question 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 75 
 
 of the freedom of the will. If the divine causality is necessary, 
 God is bound to his works, and cannot exist without them ; 
 then the independence of God must be denied, and, conse- 
 quently, his existence. If every thing is determined by 
 divine necessity, and this itself by the idea of the good, 
 nothing is either accidental or evil : God is not merely the 
 first, but, in the last analysis, the only, cause ; he is identical 
 with the nature of things, and pantheism is the manifest and 
 inevitable result. These were the weighty objections which 
 Scotus urged in reply to Thomas. Determinism, according 
 to which the divine will is determined by the idea of the 
 good, is disproved by the fact of accident and evil in the 
 world. The divine will is determined by nothing; it acts 
 without grounds, absolutely arbitrarily; it can just as well 
 create as not create, just as well this world as another, or even 
 none at all. The will is not determined by knowledge, but 
 conversely, — voluntas superior intellectu. The good is good, 
 not of itself, but through the determination of the divine will, 
 not '•'■per se," but " ex instituto ; " it is not rational, but posi- 
 tive : God has not willed because something is good, but 
 something is good because God has willed it. With the 
 power of choice, will is destroyed, and the distinction between 
 natural causes and will-causes obliterated ; there is then no 
 will at all, either divine or human. Scotus affirms human 
 freedom and its co-operation in the reception of divine grace ; 
 the meritoriousness of works which, not by reason of their 
 own character, also not because of the disposition of mind in 
 which they are done, but merely through this justify, — that 
 God by the exercise of his arbitrary will has united this 
 effect to this work. Spiritual works avail, independently of 
 any state of mind, as external acts in accordance with com- 
 mand as " opus operatum." This is the. theory of scholastic 
 indeterminisra seeking to support the power, and to promote 
 the interests, of the Church. Human freedom includes self- 
 determination, personal will, individual existence, by reason 
 of which every man is not merely a thing among things, but 
 
76 HISTORY or MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this particular, individual being existing for itself. Thus 
 arises in the consciousness of scholasticism the conception of 
 individuality, the character not merely of specific but iiadi- 
 vidual distinction of things which are differentiated not 
 merely by their kinds and properties (quiddities), but each 
 from all the rest by reason of its singleness (thisness). In- 
 dividuality is undefinable, incomprehensible, " ratio singulari- 
 tatis frustra quceritur." If reality reaches its highest point 
 and consummation in individuality, there is no knowledge of 
 the real. The same is true of arbitrary will: it is groundless 
 in its actions, therefore unknowable. The same is true of 
 divine revelation, of the work of salvation, of the objects of 
 the faith of the Church in general: they exist by reason 
 of the groundless and inscrutable will of God. There is, 
 therefore, no knowledge of the objects of faith, no rational 
 theology, no philosophical system of faith. Theology is 
 practical ; faith a direction and consent of the will independ- 
 ent of knowledge, not based on rational grounds, incapable 
 of being overthrown by rational considerations. Thus, inde- 
 iterminism dissolves the alliance between faith and knowledge. 
 C 5. Occam. The Dissolution of Scholasticism. — The way was 
 tlius paved for that new and last fundamental phase of scho- 
 lasticism, — the phase which was systematically grounded 
 by the English Franciscan, William Occam (-\- 1347?), a 
 disciple of Scotus. His was no longer the age of Roscelin, 
 which began with Gregory VII., and terminated with Inno- 
 cence III. When Scotus stood at the height of his fame, and 
 died, the papal see had been for three years in Avignon. 
 The age of Occam began with Boniface VIII., and the great 
 schism was not far distant. 
 
 Occam's work was the destruction of scholastic realism ; 
 of the dominion of the ideal world in the faith of the Church. 
 If universals (ideas) are real, they must precede creation in 
 God, and determine his will, and there is no divine freedom, 
 and no creation ex nihilo. It was the conflict between faith 
 and scholastic realism. 
 
DEVELOPMKNT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 77 
 
 If uaiversals (genera), thiiB'gh common to things, are 
 themselves things, a thing must be in several things at 
 the same time, which is impossible. Ideas are not things, 
 they are not realities : they are only conceptions which 
 denote things, and are tliemselves denoted by words, as 
 words are by letters. They are, therefore, signs or " signa," 
 the fundamental determinations of which are constituted by 
 the " termini.'^ These last are single and universal concep- 
 tions, spoken and written symbols, therefore intuitions, con- 
 ceptions, words. Intuitions represent single actual things; 
 concepts, many single perceptions ; words, conceptions. All 
 human knowledge takes place through terms (^termini') : it is 
 therefore terministic, and, so far as the signs which commu- 
 nicate it are '■'■ vocalia'' or names, nominalistic. Knowledge 
 through perceptions is intuitive or real, since they represent 
 things : knowledge through universal conceptions and judg- 
 ments, through words and sentences, is rational or logical 
 Qsermoeinal'). There is, therefore, no knowledge of actual 
 things. Reality consists in single things, individuals, simple 
 substances: our conception is neither thing nor substance 
 nor simple, and its indistinctness is in proportion to its 
 universality. There is, therefore, no agreement whatever 
 between conception and thing ; hence, no knowledge of the 
 truth. 
 
 Between conception and reality, there lies an impassable 
 chasm ; and hence the impossibility of the ontological proof 
 of the existence of God is evident, since its presupposition 
 of the reality of the conception of God is fundamentally 
 false. Also the cosmological proofs are invalid, since they 
 presuppose that there must be a first or ultimate cause, that 
 an infinite regress is impossible. But just this presupposi- 
 tion is fundamentally false ; rather, this regress is necessarily 
 to be demanded. There are, therefore, no proofs whatever 
 of the existence of God : there is no kind of rational theology. 
 From the impossibility of this knowledge follows the neces- 
 sity of faith, guaranteed only by the authority of the Church. 
 
78 HISTORY OF MOUERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The relation between the Church and the world corresponds 
 to that between faith and knowledge. The question is as to 
 separation in both cases, — as to the separation of faith from 
 knowledge, and the Church from the world. The time has 
 come when the powers of which the Church is the centre 
 begin to become centrifugal, and desire to throw off her con- 
 trol ; viz., states and nations, sciences and arts. With the 
 spiritualization of the Church, the independence of the State 
 from the Church is at the same time required. " Defend me 
 with your sword, and I will defend you with my pen," Occam 
 is reported to have said to Louis the Bavarian, in the con- 
 troversy between the emperor and the pope. 
 
 We must carefully observe how this nominalistic doctrine 
 of knowledge, which caused the dissension between faith and 
 knowledge, theology and philosophy, and stamped itself upon 
 the consciousness of the time, is related to both. It desired 
 separation for the sake of faith, for the sake of the Church. 
 It sought to purify and strengthen faith by separating it from 
 knowledge, and the Church by separating it from the world. 
 It is not an accident that these nominalists belonged for the 
 most part to the strictest party of the Franciscans. Faith 
 would no longer keep a common account with fallible knowl- 
 edge, supported by human authority : it would have nothing 
 more to do with this foreign and dangerous ally. In the same 
 proportion as it renounced all natural and rational knowledge, 
 it strengthened its supernatural character, increased its posi- 
 tive value, its ecclesiastical authority. To strengthen the 
 latter, and make it irresistible and unquestionable, was the 
 ultimate purpose of this nominalistic theology. It was, 
 therefore, in its nature scholastic. But it broke with the 
 secular power of the Church, and aimed at her purification, 
 and thus opened the way to reformatory efforts within 
 scholasticism. It also freed philosophy, by separating it 
 from faith, and directing the former to things of the world. 
 Within scholasticism it paved the way for a neiv philosophy. 
 It denied the possibility of a true knowledge of things by 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 79 
 
 human means, and thus led to that scepticism with which 
 modern philosophy began, and out of which it proceeded. 
 It conceded to human knowledge, only the intuitive and sen- 
 sitive, and appeared in this point as the scholastic forerunner 
 of that empiricism and sensualism with which modern philoso- 
 phy began its course in the native country of Occam. 
 
80 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 
 I. HUMANISM. 
 
 IJAGAN philosophy served the ecclesiastical philosophy of 
 -*- the Middle Ages in a form foreign to its origin and its 
 nature. Scholastic theology confined human knowledge in 
 a twofold prison. It was under the control of the Church, 
 which determined its doctrines ; and under the control of a 
 school which borrowed its mode of teaching, and the form 
 of its culture, from the authorities of ancient philosophy. 
 M''hen, now, the chains began to be loosed, and human knowl- 
 edge began to strive for a fundamental renewing, the first 
 step was to throw off the bondage of the schools, and seek 
 out, and search into, the great philosophers of antiquity in 
 their original form. The philosophy of modern times came 
 directly from the emancipated schools of antiquity. It 
 matured in it gradually. Not till it felt itself outgrowing 
 the leading-strings of that philosophy, did the epoch of its 
 own independent existence come, and the moment when it 
 entered upon its majority. The revival of the Grecian- 
 Roman philosophy was, therefore, the necessary and imme- 
 diate problem of knowledge, the condition of, and the 
 transition to, modern philosophy. 
 
 This problem forms a part of philological archaeology, 
 and this itself required to be cultivated and understood as 
 a particular branch of revived antiquity in general. To 
 guide philosophy from the IMiddle Ages into our times, that 
 mental new birth of antiquity Avhich we call the "Eenais- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 81 
 
 sanee," must find and illumine the path. The significance 
 of the Renaissance is in no way limited to linguistic studies ; 
 since it is not merely a matter of schools and of scholarship, 
 but an age -which progressing humanity has lived, and which 
 has penetrated every department of human culture, — an 
 inexhaustible age, which lives on in our day, and never will 
 die. The Renaissance is, in its work and its intellectual 
 tendencies, as little to be limited as the Reformation ; and 
 if both are limited to particular periods, — that in its bloom 
 to the second half of the fifteenth century, this to the first 
 of the sixteenth, — such a chronological limitation applies 
 only to the outbreak and founding of the two. 
 
 The Renaissance radically changed men's conceptions of 
 life and nature, fi'eed them from the powers which controlled 
 them in the Middle Ages, and stamped upon them an oppo- 
 sition to those powers which the Church itself, borne along 
 by the current of the time, did not observe, which it half 
 promoted, and which it did not recognize till much later, 
 when the first bloom of the Renaissance had faded, and the 
 Reformation had become powerful. The fundamental theme 
 of the Middle Ages was, the restoration and glorification of 
 the '■'■civitas dei" that kingdom of God on earth which, 
 through its divine ordinances, rules the world and binds indi- 
 viduals. The fundamental theme of the Renaissance starts 
 from the completely opposite key : it consists in the glorifi- 
 cation of man, his greatness and his fame ; in the worship 
 of the individual, his genius, his power, his immeasurable 
 natural freedom. If there ever was an age that believed in 
 the universal genius of man, in his omnipotence and magical 
 power, — an age that produced individuals of powerful minds, 
 and felt their charm, that deified the world of man in nature, 
 the state and art, — it was this. Its entire interest went out 
 to natural man, infinitely enlarged by his energy and his 
 endowments. In such a sense, far more comprehensively 
 and universally than we usually understand the term, can 
 we say of the Renaissance that it made the " Humanities " 
 
82 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 its subject. In the Middle Ages, the power to loose and 
 bind, concerning forgiveness of sin and eternal welfare, was 
 with the Church. In the Renaissance, it was the poets, the 
 orators, the historians, who had power to elevate and over- 
 throw, to glorify, and refuse to acknowledge, the merit and 
 the fame of man. Even Dante, with whom the first glimmer 
 of the dawning Renaissance began to shine,' invented a hell, 
 and peopled it, by means of his absolute power as poetic 
 judge of the world. The -Middle Ages reverenced saints: 
 the Renaissance reverenced great men, eminent for their 
 mental achievements ; their relics and their graves were 
 honored, and the memorable scenes of their lives. "The 
 ground upon which a good man treads is consecrated : after 
 a hundred years his words and deeds re-echo to his descend- 
 ants." This was spoken in the spirit of the Renaissance 
 (a language foreign to the Middle Ages, but still the native 
 tongue of our thoughts and feelings). We must know how 
 the Renaissance fundamentally changed man's conception of 
 himself, before we speak of the altered course of the sciences 
 and education. It called " modern man " into life, as one 
 of its ablest students has said in a comprehensive and 
 luminous work, setting forth the characteristics of this 
 powerful age.i 
 
 n. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCB. 
 
 The faith of the Middle Ages was led, by its worship of 
 relics, to Palestine, that it might actually see the Holy Land 
 and the holiest of graves. The Renaissance needed no 
 Crusades by means of which to find relics to worship. Italy 
 was its natural birthplace and home, — the classic land, the 
 grave of the most glorious past of the world. In the revival 
 of antiquity, Italy worshipped her own past world. Thus, 
 even in its origin, the Renaissance was not the artificial 
 product of the schools, but the natural course of the soar- 
 ing national self-consciousness, the subject and the theme 
 
 1 Jacob Burckliaidt: The Culture o£ the Italian Rouaissance (sec. ed., 
 18C9). 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 83 
 
 of national joy and self-glorification. Augustine, the last of 
 the great Fathers of the Church, saw in the old Roman 
 Empire and its people the consummation of the "' civitas 
 terrena,'' the world devoted to destruction, fallen through the 
 sin of paganism, the world which in its greatness and earthly 
 fame had reaped the reward of its deeds, and perished for- 
 ever. Dante, the first national poet of Italy, extolled anew 
 the Roman nation as the noblest and first of the world, to 
 whom the dominion of the world belonged by the favor of 
 God, independently of Church and pope. He celebrated 
 Rome as the august widow, waiting in impatient longing for 
 her Csesar. The Eternal City, connnanding reverence in her 
 ruins, filled him with enthusiasm. Some decades after Dante, 
 that adventurous tribune. Cola de Rienza, appeared, and in 
 the midst of destitute and down-fallen Rome attempted, in 
 disunited Italj% to improvise the restoration of the Roman 
 Empire. Augustine, who lived before the beginning of the 
 Middle Ages, saw the new ecclesiastical kingdom of the 
 world in its rising ; that of the Caesar's in its setting : Dante, 
 even at the threshold of the Renaissance, saw the earthly 
 salvation of the world in a new Augustus. 
 
 For the mental regeneration of antiquity, it was well that 
 such a Roman central power did not exist, that it Avas no- 
 where less possible than in Italy. Political unity and cen- 
 tralization would have fettered the powers which, for the 
 unfolding of the new mental life, required to be in perfect 
 freedom and activity. That complexity of individuality, that 
 richness of nature, and enlargement of feeling, that rivalry of 
 states and cities which called out, and cultivated, talent in 
 every direction, would, in that case, never have been devel- 
 oped. Decentralized Italy was as favorable to the rise of 
 the Renaissance as was decentralized Germany to that of the 
 Reformation. The disintegration of Italy in consequence of 
 the conflict between the pope and the Hohenstaufen, the 
 multitude and diversity of little states, the continual and 
 headlong changes in their fortunes, internal party conflicts 
 
84 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and external wars, the usurpers and despots, the invention 
 and employment of every means of power to promote politi- 
 cal interests, to exalt the fame of princes, to attract and win 
 the masses, — among others, splendid and imposing works of 
 art, — all these conditions of Italy during the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries involuntarily remind us of similar circum- 
 stances in Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries before 
 the Christian era. Then arose from the most active life that 
 richness- of knowledge of the world and of men, that wealth 
 of culture, from which Greek philosophy proceeded. This 
 analogy is significant. There are in the history of the world 
 scarcely two periods which present so many points of resem- 
 blance, grounded in the state of the nations between which 
 comparison is made. No wonder, therefore, that from such 
 conditions, from sucli a like condition of affairs in Italy, a 
 view of life and a culture were developed that felt their re- 
 lationship to antiquity, and again seized its neglected treas- 
 ures; that the Italians — the first of European nations that 
 became free from the Middle Ages — then recognized them- 
 selves as the descendants of the Greeks and Romans, and, 
 with this conception of themselves, entered upon the inherit- 
 ance of their past. We must, indeed, include all these fac- 
 tors, in order to understand the natural origin and character 
 of the Italian Renaissance, wliich opened the school of a new 
 universal culture to the rest of Europe. To tlie discovery 
 of ancient ruins, and works of art, was added the recovery of 
 authors, whose works were copied, multiplied, collected and 
 arranged in libraries. In the growing knowledge of these 
 works consists the literary Renaissance and the widening of 
 its scientific horizon. 
 
 In its greatest extension, this period reaches from the be- 
 ginning of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, 
 from Dante to Tasso. Its highest development, to fix the 
 period by means of the popes, extended from Nicholas V. 
 (1447-l-i55), the founder of the Vatican library, to Leo X. 
 (1513-1521), who, among the Muses of the Vatican, would 
 
THE PERIOD or THE RENAISSANCE. 85 
 
 gladly have failed to hear the outbreak of the German Refor- 
 mation. The two periods before and after this period of 
 greatest vigor may be called "early" and "late" Renaissance. 
 Some events which happened about the middle of the 
 fifteenth century were of the greatest importance in broad- 
 ening and deepening this new spiritual current ; viz., the 
 invention of the art of printing, and the renewal of the union 
 between the Latin and Greek worlds, — between the bloom- 
 ing Italian Renaissance and Greek scholars. The councils 
 of union called by Pope Eugene IV. were the occasion of a 
 meeting, which, although of no value to the Church, ex- 
 ercised a great influence upon the Renaissance. Greek 
 theologians were invited by a Roman ambassador, Nicholas 
 Cusanus, — a German by birth, who was himself animated 
 by the deepest ideas of Greek philosophy, — to the council 
 which was opened in Ferrara, and removed the next year 
 to Florence. A few years later, the Eastern Empire fell. 
 The capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) in- 
 creased the number of Greek scholars who fled to Italy, 
 and found a most welcome refuge there. The continued 
 settlement in Italy, strengthened by the last victory of the 
 barbarians, acquired the character of an intellectual colony,, 
 For the second time Italy deserved the name of Magnat 
 Grsecia. 
 
 m. THE COURSE OP DEVELOPMENT OP THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 We have now to notice more particularly the growth and 
 development of the philosophical Renaissance, which mediated 
 the transition from the Middle Ages to modern philosophy. 
 It consisted in a growing separation from scholasticism, in a 
 growing development of its own enfranchised impulse to 
 knowledge ; and this determined the law of its development. 
 It was not enough to reknow the culture and systems of an- 
 tiquity in their true forms, to excavate them, as it were, and 
 strip them from the overgrowths and disguises of scholasti- 
 cism. It was not enough to imitate their philosophy : it was 
 
86 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 necessary to imitate their philosophical spirit and originality. 
 The age must exert its own powers in seeking for a knowl- 
 edge of the world to satisfy its own need. Thus, the Renais- 
 sance was reproductive in relation to antiquity in the first 
 half of its work, and productive in the second, impelled by 
 the spirit of a new time. 
 
 1. The Neo-Latin Renaissance. — Ancient classic Rome, her 
 orators and poets, her models and instructors of rhetoric, the 
 systems and conceptions of life, of the Post-Aristotelian 
 philosophy, — epicureanism, stoicism, scepticism, — which 
 had become naturalized in her culture, lay nearer to the bud- 
 ding Italian Renaissance than ancient Greece and her culture. 
 The reproduction of this Roman culture is the Neo-Latin 
 Renaissance. The Neo-Latin Renaissance recognized its mod- 
 els in Cicero and Quintilian, and found its ablest representa- 
 tive in the Roman -Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457). In him the 
 opposition to the iliddle Ages and scholasticism was already 
 under full headway. Pure Latin, modelled after Cicero, was 
 opposed to the barbarous Latin of the Church ; philological 
 criticism, to the authenticity of ecclesiastical documents. 
 Valla examined the Vulgate, and pointed out its errors, 
 doubted the genuineness of the Apostles' Creed, refuted the 
 Constantinian origin of the territories of the pope in his 
 famous work " On the Erroneously Believed and Fabricated 
 Donation of Constantine." The Pseudo-Isidoric decretals 
 had, as it were, codified this fiction. The later papal system 
 did not rest satisfied with the donation. Constantine, it 
 held, had only given back to the pope what had always 
 belonged to him as the vicegerent of God. Even Dante 
 rejected the legality of the donation of Constantine, though 
 he did not dispute it as a fact. Valla proved that it was 
 never made, that the popes are robbers and usurpers, and 
 that they deserve to be deprived of their power. It is not 
 to be wondered at that this man was persecuted, and found 
 protection among the Aragonese in Naples. Far more re- 
 markable is it that Nicholas V. took him into his service. 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 87 
 
 Valla intended to write a work,- " P'or the Sake of Truth, 
 Religion, and Honor ; " but when he wished to return to 
 Rome, he declared himself ready to abandon it. His bold- 
 ness was due as much to ambition as to love of truth : he 
 desired it to bring him fame, but not misfortune. Tlie value 
 of martyrdom fell when the new interests of the Renaissance 
 were felt, and we cannot test tlie strength of his character 
 by a capacity for sacrifice which presupposes the power of 
 unshaken faith. 
 
 In a time when scholasticism still appeared the firm ally 
 of Aristotle, particularly in the department of logic, the 
 rejection of the former necessarily affected the latter. The 
 Neo-Latin Renaissance in its anti-scholastic and its anti- 
 hierarchical tendency became likewise the opponent of Aris- 
 totle and his logic. That is especially true of Valla and all 
 who followed him. In the text-books and practice of the 
 scholastics, the logic of Aristotle had acquired a ridiculous 
 and barbarous appearance. This was attacked by Valla and 
 his followers. Animated discourse, they urged, must be 
 accepted as a model in place of abstract and artificial forms 
 of thought ; instead of logic, rhetoric , instead of the dry and 
 unprofitable school-discipline of a barren manipulation of 
 words, unfettered and beautiful eloquence must serve that 
 form of culture which employs at the same time strength of 
 thought, and vigor of expression. 
 
 2. The Aristotelian Renaissance. — But the ouAvard march- 
 ing Renaissance could not leave the great master of Greek 
 philosophy in the hands of scholasticism. One of its tasks 
 was to restore the knowledge of Aristotle by means of his 
 own works, to tear his system from the control of the Church, 
 and to point out the opposition between him and her doc- 
 trines. This form of the development of the Italian Renais- 
 sance may be termed the Aristotelian. Its controversies 
 were continued during the sixteenth century, particularly in 
 the universities of Padua and Bologna. Its most j5rominent 
 representative, who was most in harmony with the spirit 
 
88 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the Renaissance, was the- Alantuan, Pietro Pomponatius 
 (1462-1525). Since the object of this movement was to 
 learn tlie true interpretation of Aristotle, the investigation 
 necessarily began with his commentators, and, because of the 
 disagreement between them, took the form of a controversy. 
 Averroes was the greatest of the Arabian, and Alexander of 
 Aphrodisias, " the commentator " (in the beginning of the 
 third century of the Chi-istian era), of the Grecian, ex- 
 pounders. Averroists and Alexandrists disputed in Padua 
 and Bologna. The Italian Renaissance, in the reproduction 
 of Greek philosophy, naturally preferred Greek expounders, 
 and followed their guidance. Pomponatius defended their 
 interpretations against Achillini and Nifo. The doctrine of 
 Aristotle was a system of development, which, founded on 
 the immanence of final cause, the unity of form and matter, 
 natural entelechy and its series of gradations, had led in its 
 last results again to a dualism of form and matter, God and 
 the world, mind and body. Thus, in the very nature of his 
 doctrine the monistic and dualistic tendencies were separated, 
 and therein lay the jDossibility of opposing interpretations of 
 it, according as the immanence of final cause or the tran> 
 scendence of God was the prevailing point of view from 
 Avhich it was considered and estimated. The first point of 
 view determines the naturalistic, the second the theological, 
 conception of the philosophy of Aristotle. The former was 
 first expounded among the Greek expositors by Strato, then 
 by Alexander, — the latter by the Neo-Platonists, from whom 
 it passed over to the Arabian philosophers, who made Aris- 
 totle accessible in the theosophic form to the scholasticism 
 of the West. If the Aristotelian system of development is 
 considered from its theological point of view, it appears as a 
 gradation of intelligences starting from the supra-mundane 
 Deity, each of which, embraced in, and ruled by, the higher, 
 governs a definite sphere in the cosmos of gradations, and 
 the lowest of which in the sublunary world constitutes the 
 mind of humanity. This was the fundamental form of the 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 89 
 
 doctrine of Averroes, which repelled scholasticism through 
 its pantheistic character, though its theological conception 
 of nature and the world attracted it. The aim now was 
 to purify the doctrine of Aristotle from the additions of its 
 Neo-Platonic, Arabian, and scholastic interpreters, to know 
 the true Aristotle, to ascertain the difference between him 
 and Plato, between him and the doctrine of the Christian 
 faith. The Italian Aristotelians, who agreed with Alexan- 
 der, were on their way back to the true Aristotle. There 
 was no point in which all these oppositions could so dis- 
 tinctly and actively appear, and at the same time so eagerly 
 arouse and hold the attention of the age, as in the question 
 concerning the immortality of the soul. Aristotle had taught 
 that the soul is the individual organic purpose of a living 
 body ; that the mind, or reason, is imperishable and immortal. 
 He had made a distinction between passive and active reason, 
 and affirmed immortality of the latter. Now the question 
 here arose, whether this immortal mind of man is also personal 
 and individual, whether there is a personal immortality, the 
 only immortality which has any value to the Church. If it 
 must be denied, according to Aristotle, there is, according to 
 him, no retribution for man in a world to come : there is 
 no world beyond the bounds of this life for the Church to 
 reach, and the power upon which all the authority of the 
 Church depends is gone. There is, in that case, an opposi- 
 tion between the doctrine of the Church and that of Aris- 
 totle as great as it is possible to conceive, and the whole 
 structure of scholasticism lies in ruins. If the mind, or 
 active reason (active in true knowledge), is explained both 
 as immaterial and individual, the personal immortality of 
 men, as Thomas intended, is proved by the help of the Aris- 
 totelian doctrine of the soul in majorem Dei gloriam. But 
 if active reason is identical with the universal mind of man, 
 immortality must be affirmed with Averroes, but personal 
 immortality denied. If, on the other hand, active reason, 
 according to the naturalistic conception, is regarded as a 
 
90 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 product of development, and always subject to individual and 
 organic conditions, there can be no kind of human immor- 
 tality, neither impersonal nor individual. Pomponatius so 
 argued in his famous work, '■'•Be Immortalitate Animce ' (1516). 
 Immortality is merely a matter of faith ; and, as such, Pom- 
 ponatius allowed it to pass unchallenged, and even affirmed 
 it. The already current opposition between faith and knowl- 
 edge, theology and philosophy, was thus developed in the 
 sharpest form, concentrated in the weightiest and most prac- 
 tically important of cases. It was an opposition between 
 Thomas and Aristotle : it related to the whole question of a 
 world beyond, — a world by means of which the Church 
 rules the world we live in. What could be more A^-elcome 
 to the secular and worldly spirit of the Renaissance than 
 such an indirect reference to the interests of the present 
 life? A series of great problems, which are immediately 
 connected with the destiny of man, were proposed anew, — 
 problems concerning the order of the world and the nature 
 of its necessity, concerning predestination and fate, concern- 
 ing the possibility of human freedom, — all of them themes 
 which Pomponatius discussed also. It was then established 
 that all phenomena, even pretended supra-natural phenomena, 
 like presentiments, magic, demons, etc., must be explained 
 by natural laws. In relation to the art of magic, Pompona- 
 tius likewise attempted such an explanation.^ 
 
 Now, if this explanation of things by natural causes could 
 in no way be obtained through a revival of the philosophy 
 of Aristotle, since the latter is in conflict not merely with 
 the doctrine of the Church, but also Avith that of nature, no 
 resource was left but for the Renaissance itself to attempt 
 the development of a new, natural philosophy, since that 
 kind of explanation was demanded. When Pomponatius led 
 
 1 For the most detailed account of Pomponatius, we are indebted to the 
 Italian scholar, Francesco Fiorentinl, who, in his two works P. Pomponatius 
 (18()8) and B. Telesio (1872-74), earned for himself great merit for his iavesti- 
 galiou of the philosophical Renaissance of the sixteenth century. 
 
THE PERIOD OP THE RENAISSANCE. 91 
 
 * 
 
 into the field the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul against the 
 Christian heaven, the time was no longer far distant when 
 the Aristotelian doctrine of the system of the universe was 
 to be overthrown by the discovery of the real heavens. 
 
 3. The Political Renaissance. — The immediate objects of 
 the modern consciousness of the world, — a consciousness 
 which awoke with the Renaissance, — are nature and the 
 State, the totality of the human cosmos. The time had come 
 when interest in the State also was revived, and when it re- 
 jected the guardianship of theology, of the whole scholastic 
 doctrine of the State, determined as it was by the authority 
 of the Church. In a contemporary of Pomponatius, one of 
 the most remarkable minds of the Italy of that time, this 
 Renaissance of the political consciousness reached its highest 
 and most concentrated expression, — in the Florentine, Nic- 
 colo MaccMavelU (1469-1527). The desire to revive political 
 thought, to devote all his energies to the State, impelled him, 
 with native and irresistible power, to an extent possible only 
 in the perfect freshness of a new time. " Destiny willed that 
 I should be able to speak neither of silk nor weaving of wool, 
 neither of profit nor loss : / must speak of the State, or be 
 completely silent," wrote he to a friend when the Medici 
 had banished him. He would pay any price for the privilege 
 of returning to political activity, " even if I should have to 
 roll stones." 
 
 From the pattern of the old Roman State, from the study 
 of history, from patriotic interest in the affairs of Italy, he 
 derived his instructions and his tasks. The physical life of 
 man can be known and judged only through nature ; the life 
 of the State only through history. Thus the political horizon 
 is widened to the historical. An interest in politics awakens 
 an interest in history ; find from the natural union of the 
 two, political history arises. In this sjDirit, Macchiavelli 
 studied Livy, and wrote the history of Florence. Man is at 
 all times the same : always like causes have like effects ; 
 effects change and deteriorate in relation to causes. These 
 
92 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 are some of the very evident and universal truths which 
 Maechiavelli repeated, again and again, and applied to his 
 own time and country. The greatness of ancient Rome, 
 and tire wretchedness of modern Italy: there the increasing 
 dominion of a growing and powerful people ; here the in- 
 creasing servitude of their descendants who are subject to 
 barbarians, and are a toy of foreign thirst for conquest : there 
 Home rising to the dominion of the world ; here Italy disin- 
 tegrated under foreign rule, invaded. Whence came that 
 greatness? whence this ruin? Why have the descendants of 
 the Romans degenerated ? Whence the chasm between the 
 Romans before Cjesar, and the Italians of the present? These 
 are the great historical questions which unceasinglj- occupy 
 the mind of Maechiavelli, which, prompted by Livy, he seeks 
 to answer in his " Discorsi," according to the laws of histori- 
 cal causality. The Italians of the Renaissance must be told 
 that they are, indeed, the most direct, but, also, the most 
 degraded, heirs of ancient Rome ; that regeneration requires 
 new exaltation. " Earn what thou hast inherited from tliy 
 fathers if thou wouldst possess it." Tiiis sentence, applied 
 to the heirs of the Romans, denotes that phase of the Italian 
 Renaissance which occupied the mind of Maechiavelli as 
 statesman and author. 
 
 He sought through his historical studies the means for the 
 political regeneration of Italy. This was his aim, liis real 
 patriotic task. The instructive model is the State, of which 
 Maechiavelli treats in his "Discorsi" on the first decade 
 of Livy, his comparing glance being constantly directed to 
 the present. The task of the present is the freeing of Italy 
 from barbarians, the restoration of its unity. The political 
 leformation of Italy can only j^roceed from an Italian city 
 which through its commonwealth, its republican constitution, 
 and its political development, is the richest and most experi- 
 enced. It can only be reached through a despotism which 
 knows and enijjloys all the means wherebj' power is estab- 
 lished, preserved, and extended. This city is Florence. The 
 
THE PEEIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 93 
 
 great-grandson of that great Florentine citizen who had been 
 called the father of his country, is the man who should be 
 the despot of Italy. The political vocation and importance 
 of Florence are evident from its history ; and it was to show 
 this that Macchiavelli had written it as far as the death of 
 the man in whose son (Lorenzo II.) he would gladly have 
 seen the ruler of Italy. In his book " On the Prince," he 
 aimed to describe to Italy the ruler which it needed, in order 
 to fulfil the first condition of its political regeneration ; 
 namely, to become a power. Thus, his books on the history 
 of Florence are connected with those on the State and the 
 prince. If we clearly realize the distinction between the pro- 
 gressive development of power in an able and vigorous peo- 
 ple, a people which endures no despot, and the weakness of a 
 degraded and corrupt nation, that requires a tyrant in order 
 to be brought and kept into unity, we shall see no inconsis- 
 tency between the author of the " Discorsi," who looks with 
 aversion upon the great Csesar, and that of the " Principe," 
 who desires for Italy a man like Caesar Borgia. And since 
 we know that questions of political power, least of all in a 
 corrupt people, can never be solved by moral means, it is 
 foolish to decry the book " On the Prince." Macchiavelli had 
 to describe a ruler, not a lay-brother, — one of those Italian 
 rulers in whom the age of the Renaissance had long been 
 accustomed to admire only their strength and success ; and 
 these have nothing in common with moral excellence. 
 
 Among the causes which made the Romans great and the 
 Italians contemptible, Macchiavelli lays special emphasis on 
 religion. And here the whole opposition between the politi- 
 cal Renaissance, and that of the Church, is evident. The 
 religion of the ancient Romans was the religion of the State, 
 and its preservation a patriotic and political duty. Christi- 
 anity, on the contrary, has been, from the beginning, con- 
 cerned with a world beyond this : its back is turned upon 
 the present world and the State. In its origin, it was un- 
 political; and it has alienated man from the State, and weak- 
 
94 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ened his political power. With this first evil, a second has 
 associated itself. The Christian religion has not remained 
 true to its original tendency: it has degenerated. On the 
 faith in heaven an ecclesiastical power on earth has been 
 grounded, and this has made itself master of the State. This 
 second and greater evil is the hierarchy and the papacj^, 
 which has its throne in Rome, and possesses a part of Italy. 
 There is no greater evil than the ecclesiastical State, the 
 greatest of all the obstacles to Italian unity. Here Macchi- 
 avelli attacks the worst antagonist of his reformatory plans. 
 Three cases are conceivable in the position of the papacy in 
 Italy : either the pope rules the whole of Italy, or only the 
 ecclesiastical State, or he is without all secular power — 
 merely the supreme head of the Church. In the first case, 
 Italy is not a State, but only a province of the Church ; in 
 the second, it is disunited — its unity impossible ; in the 
 third, which Dante had desired, the pppe requires the pro- 
 tection of a foreign power, which continually endangers the 
 independence of Italy. There is, therefore, no case in which 
 the papacy is compatible with the political reformation of 
 Italy. There is thus an absolute opposition between the 
 two, and ^Macchiavelli desires the destruction of the papacy. 
 In it he sees the root of evil. The papacy has corrupted 
 both religion and the State : it has made religion hypocriti- 
 cal, and deprived the State of power. It has been a centre 
 of corruption, and has poisoned the morals of nations. The 
 nearer they are to the head of the Church, the less religious 
 they are. Of Christian nations, therefore, the Romanic are 
 the most corrupt ; and of these, the Italians are the worst. 
 The aim of Macchiavelli cannot be mistaken : it was the 
 destruction of the Romish Church, — the secularization of 
 religion. His greatest preference was to substitute the re- 
 ligion of ancient, for that of modern, Rome ; the State for 
 the Church; patriotism for religion. He deifies the State. 
 Such a conception necessarily appeared in the course of 
 the Renaissance. Macchiavelli was filled by it, and he 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 95 
 
 stamped it upon this period with the incomparable force of 
 genius. 
 
 Pomponatius saw the contradiction between the doctrine 
 of immortality and philosophy : immortality is a matter of 
 faith, not knowledge. Macchiavelli saw the contradiction 
 between Christian faith in immortality and the true policy 
 of the State : man should concentrate his attention upon the 
 State. According to Pomponatius, the ecclesiastical kingdom 
 of heaven is without foundation : according to Macchiavelli, 
 the ecclesiastical kingdom on earth should be overthrown. 
 
 4. Italian Neo-Platonism and Theosophy. — The spirit of the 
 Renaissance was entirely engrossed with the present world ; 
 and in its boldest and most decided characters, this interest 
 amounts to the deification of the State and of nature. We 
 have seen in Macchiavelli one-half, as it were, of this affirma- 
 tion of the world, — the political, — and now we look for the 
 other. We find it at the end of the sixteenth century as 
 nature-philosophy and pantheism. This pantheistic view 
 of the world, deifying nature and the universe, was in con- 
 flict, not merely with the doctrine of the Church, but with, 
 that of Aristotle, which separates God and the world , and 
 since it was also the product of the Renaissance of the re- 
 vival of ancient philosophy, the starting-point of this tei>. 
 dency must be sought in Neo-Platonism. Here we find the 
 philosophical Renaissance advancing in a direction exactly- 
 the reverse of that taken by ancient philosophy itself. 
 Ancient philosophy proceeded from the problems of' cos- 
 mology through those of anthropology (Socratic) to- those 
 of theology, and resulted at last in that great religious- qiies- 
 tion which lay at the foundation of Neo-Platonism in its 
 most comprehensive sense. The Renaissance, on the other 
 hand, starting from the Middle Ages, sought the path to 
 the problems of cosmology through the theological view of the 
 world which it borrowed from the Middle Ages and still 
 retained. The philosophy of the ancients was naturally at 
 first most evident to the philosophy arising out of Christianity 
 
96 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 on the side most in harmony with its theological and reli- 
 gious spirit. This form of the philosophy of Greece, in which 
 the last period of antiquity and the first of modern times 
 touch each other, is religious Platonism. They reach their 
 hands across the Middle Ages ; and it might seem as if, after 
 a long pause in which the philosophy of antiquity had been 
 silent, it wished to continue exactly where it had left off in 
 the last Neo-Platonists. We see before us the Renaissance 
 in that trend of thought which advanced from the religious- 
 philosophical view of the world to that of the natural-philo- 
 sophical. Its starting-point was the Italian Neo-Platonism ; 
 its conclusion the Italian nature-philosophy. There we meet 
 with modes of thought which remind us of Proclus and the 
 last Neo-Platonics ; here, on the other hand, with such as are 
 akin to the first conceptions of the Ionic nature-philosophy. 
 Among those Greek theologians who appeared in Flor- 
 ence, where the union between the Greek and Roman Church 
 was planned according to the view of the latter, were Gior- 
 gios Gemistos Plethon and his pupil Bessarion of Trebizond 
 (1395-1472), the former an opponent, the latter a friend, of 
 the union, soon after cai-dinal (1439) of the Romish Church, 
 the defender and leader of the Platonic Renaissance in 
 Italy. Plethon promulgated a kind of new world-religion 
 which was to eclipse Christianity, and be not unlike pagan- 
 ism. He was a devout disciple of Proclus rather than of 
 the Christian Church, and won through his animated ex- 
 positions the first Medici to the Platonic philosophy, and 
 occasioned the founding of the Platonic Academy in Flor- 
 ence, in which that school of Athens seemed to revive which 
 Justinian had suppressed more than nine centuries before. 
 The contest between Platonists and Aristotelians was then 
 renewed. Bessarion defended Plato against those who mis- 
 represented him. He regarded Plato and Aristotle as the 
 heroes of philosophy, in comparison with whom the phi- 
 losophers of his own time were mere apes. He proposed 'to 
 divide the territory of knowledge between them, so that 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 9T 
 
 Plato should be the authority in theology, and Aristotle, in 
 the philosophy of nature. 
 
 The first problem of the Academy of Florence was the 
 revival of the philosophy of Plato, the knowledge of it from 
 the original sources, the diffusion of- this knowledge in the 
 West. The Florentine Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) solved 
 this problem by translating into Latin the works of Plato 
 and Plotinus. Ficino was educated by Cosimo to be an in- 
 structor of philosophy in his family and in the Academy of 
 Florence. His mode of thought was the Neo-Platonic. He 
 found in the philosophy of Plato the essence of all wisdom, 
 the key to Christianity, and likewise the means of spiritual- 
 izing and renovating it. The philosophy of Plato, according 
 to Ficino, is the great mystery in which all the wisdom of 
 the past has been deposited, by which all true wisdom of 
 after-times is permeated. Plato is the real heir of Pythag- 
 oras and Zoroaster. Philo, Numenius, Plotinus, Jamblicus, 
 and Proclus are the real heirs of Plato, and also the revealers 
 of the mystery of his doctrine. This light has shone upon 
 those teachers of the Christian wisdom, — John, Paul, and 
 the Areopagites. 
 
 Now, what is the principle of this mode of thought, the 
 fundamental characteristics of which are not new? It is 
 this: Christianity and Neo-Platonism are to be harmonized, 
 the theological spirit of the one with the cosmological spirit 
 of the other. Neo-Platonism is akin to Christianity in its reli- 
 gious motive, its striving for union with God : it is opposed to 
 Christianity in its pagan deification of the world. The world 
 in Neo-Platonism appears in a natural and necessary connec- 
 tion of divine and eternal orders, as a natural result of the 
 primordial being, as an unfolding of divine powers in a defi- 
 nite order of gradations : the cosmos appears as a divine 
 emanation, which naturally gushes forth from its primitive 
 source, and enters into an order of degrees of decreasing 
 perfection in the forms of the world of sense, that from this 
 point, where the divine life is farthest from its original 
 
98 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 source, it may struggle back again. In this system of 
 thought, union with God forms a moment in the eternal 
 circulation of the iiniverse, which, at its greatest distance 
 from its eternal and primitive cause, seeks to return. The 
 principle of Christianity is the salvation of the world through 
 Christ : that of Neo-Platonism is the (mediate) emanation of 
 the world from the divine primordial being.' Now, if Chris- 
 tianity is brought into harmony with Neo-Platonism, the 
 theological spirit of the first must enter into the emanistic 
 mode of thought of the second; assume, therefore, cosmo- 
 logical forms, and the divine mystery of the salvation of the 
 world must be conceived as revealing itself, not merely in the 
 Church, but also in the life of the world and of nature, and, 
 indeed, as flowing in a pure stream from the very depths 
 of the divine being. Nature is now regarded as a genuine 
 revelation of God, as a guide to union with God. It appears 
 in a religious significance which threatens the authority of 
 the Church. In the depths of nature the mystery of divinity 
 is concealed. He who penetrates nature, looks into the di- 
 vine being. Nature thus appears as the great mystery which 
 is to be revealed. 
 
 If this problem is solved, the veil is removed from divinity, 
 and the word of reconciliation spoken for all the contradic- 
 tions of the world. If we suppose the knowledge of God 
 dependent upon the fact of the salvation of the world in 
 Christ, we have the principle and form of (Christian) the- 
 ology. If we suppose the knowledge of God dependent 
 upon tlifi mystery. of nature, we have the principle and form 
 of theosophyt and this theosophical character is the next 
 form which philosophy, re-animated by Neo-Platonism, takes. 
 It is the first -step on ,the road to the nature-philosophy. But 
 from this point of view, nature does not appear as a subject 
 to be methodically investigated, but as a mystery for which 
 the word of solution is sought ; as a sealed book incapable 
 
 1 Cf. above, p. 31, and following. 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 99 
 
 of being opened by earthly powers, — a book for the under- 
 standing of which a key, as naysterious as the book itself, is 
 required. What, therefore, this theosophical spirit sought 
 was an esoteric doctrine to unfold the hidden meaning of 
 nature, and to solve its mystery. And as the Grecian logos- 
 idea went to meet the Jewish ideal of the Messiah, so this 
 theosophical spirit which Neo-Platonism aroused in the Chris- 
 tian world was attracted by the Jewish Cabala, which claimed 
 to have received from divine revelation in primitive times 
 the solution of the enigma of creation. In this union vsdth 
 the Cabala^ that Jewish Gnosticism, which in its fundamental 
 conceptions is akin to Neo-Platonism, we find the Platonic 
 theosophy distinctly expressed in the writings of Giovanni 
 Pico della Mirandola, the most talented representative of the 
 Italian Neo-Platonism. 
 
 The interest in Cabalistic doctrines and writings was an 
 active factor in the culture of the time, since attention was 
 thereby directed to Jewish literature, and the study of 
 Hebrew promoted. The circle of humanistic studies was 
 thus enlarged, and made to include Hebrew literature as 
 well as that of Greece. By the side of Erasmus, Reuchlin 
 arose, who made Hebrew the subject of scientific investiga- 
 tion, with a view of explaining the Holy Scriptures, and 
 understanding the Cabala. He made the acquaintance of 
 Pico, and through him became interested in the Cabala, and 
 eventually the first Hebrew scholar of the West. When the 
 theologians of Cologne, incited by a converted Jew, de- 
 manded the destruction of Hebrew literature, with the 
 exception of the Holy Scriptures, and, therefore, the eccle- 
 siastical condemnation of the Cabalistic books, Reuchlin 
 publicly defended this literature, and achieved a victory. It 
 was the first victorious conflict of Humanism with scholasti- 
 cism in Germany. The entire cultivated world followed the 
 controversy with their sympathy: the great parties of the 
 humanists and scholastics were arrayed against each other. 
 On one side were the famous men of the time, names 
 
100 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 noted in literature and science ; on the other, men of little 
 ability and as little reputation. The letters of the famous 
 men Avho congratulated the victor were followed by " Let- 
 ters of Obscure Men " (1515-7), that inimitable satire which 
 shows most plainly how far the humanistic mind had gone 
 beyond the scholastic, whose style entertained it only as a 
 subject of the keenest wit and satire.^ 
 
 5. Magie and Mysticism. — We follow the further course 
 of this theosophical mode of thought. If in nature divine 
 forces are active in a descending gradation, in which the 
 lower forces proceed from the higher, one divine life must 
 stream creatively through the whole universe : the lowest 
 must stand in an unbroken connection with the highest, the 
 earthly world with the heavenly ; and this unbroken con- 
 nection must transmit the invisible influences from above, 
 and the higher forces penetrate and govern all the lower.. 
 Nothing more, accordingly, seems necessary than to appro- 
 priate those higher powers, in order to rule nature in the 
 completest sense. Theosophy is now attracted more and 
 more by the image of nature, is more and more absorbed in 
 contemplating it, eagerly listening, as it were, to overhear 
 the secrets of nature, constantly striving to acquire her con- 
 cealed powers. In this direction it becomes magic, the great 
 art which rests on the deepest and most mysterious of sci- 
 ences. This phase of theosophy, the mago-Cabalistic trend 
 of thought, was developed by Agrippa von JVettesheim (1487- 
 1535). It was faith in nature as the problem in which 
 divinity is concealed : it was also faith in the solution of this 
 problem. If there are divine forces in nature, why cannot 
 man acquire them ? If he acquires them, and learns how to 
 use them, he becomes a magician. This possibility was a 
 belief of the age. In a series of strange characters, this tem- 
 per of mind was distinctly expressed, which, in the legend 
 
 • Cf. D. Fr. Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten (sec. ed., 1871), Book I. chap. viii. 
 pp. 17U-211. 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 101 
 
 of Faust, finally found its typical, and, in the poefti of 
 Goethe, its Pjomethean, expression.^ 
 
 " The spirit-world no closures fasten, 
 Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead ; 
 Disciple, up ! untiring hasten 
 
 To bathe thy breast in morning red." ^ 
 
 This passage which Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust, 
 was, in the sixteenth century, a really active factor in the 
 beliefs of men. Nor can we better express the conception 
 of the world which lies at the foundation of this belief, than 
 with the words of Faust, as he considers the sign of the 
 macrocosm : — 
 
 " How each the Whole its substance gives, 
 Each in the other works and lives 
 Like heavenly forces rising and descending, 
 Their golden urns reciprocally lending, 
 With wings that winnow blessing. 
 From heaven to earth I see them pressing, 
 Filling the earth with harmony unceasing." " 
 
 But how is it possible to appropriate these higher divine 
 forces in order that we may use them ? The first condition 
 is to apprehend them. They are concealed in nature and 
 the lower forms of it: they appear veiled, and, under the 
 hostile influences of external things, are hindered in a 
 variety of ways. These hinderances must be removed : this 
 veil must be torn away. It is, therefore, necessary even to 
 penetrate the material world, not to content one's self 
 merely with the consideration of the great spectacle of the 
 world's forces, but to disclose each in its properties, separat- 
 ing from it every thing which obstructs its action, and so 
 learning the arts of nature. Magic demands chemistry, 
 
 1 Cf. my work on Goethe's Faust, chap. i. pp. 21-35 (Stuttgart, Cotta, 1878). 
 ' Bayard Taylor's translation. 
 
102 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 chemical experiments. If we can remove all obstructions, 
 we can heal all diseases. The idea of a panacea lies in this 
 mode of thought, which, through chemistry, aims likewise 
 to promote medical science. But the important thing is, that 
 this phase of magic begins to have intercourse with nature 
 herself, makes trials of things, handles them, as it were, and 
 thus introduces experiment as the investigation of nature re- 
 quires. This practical, and therefore important, development 
 of magic was made by Paracelsus (1493-1541), a thauma- 
 turge, — still entirely in connection with its theosophical 
 principles. 
 
 Now, if the divine life is present and active in the inmost 
 nature of things, will it not likewise be active in the inmost 
 nature of man, in the very core of human nature ? Nowhere 
 can the divine mystery shine upon us more directly and 
 brightly and plainly than from the hidden depths of our own 
 being. All we must do is to force our way through the 
 barrier of our outer nature, and penetrate into the depths 
 where the spark of divine light shines. Here, also, a chem- 
 istry is necessary to separate every thing of a foreign or hos- 
 tile nature that penetrates from the outer world into our 
 inmost being, and disturbs our mind. The desires and 
 passions, which draw us into the things of the world, are the 
 dross which is mingled with the gold in the deep mines of 
 our souls. This mixture must be broken in pieces : the gold 
 must be separated from the dross, that the light may shine 
 out of the darkness, and fill all the powers of our soul. 
 There is a path which leads directly to God ; it goes through 
 the very centre of our being; it demands absorption into 
 ourselves, the quiet turning into our own inmost being, and 
 away from all worldly selfish pleasure, in a word, perfectly 
 sincere, profound, contemplative piety, by means of which 
 v.'e become what we are in the primary principle of our 
 being. That is not the path of magic, but of mysticism. 
 Both are forms of theosophy wliich seek the path to God 
 through the mystery of things. Magic takes its course 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 103 
 
 througli external nature ; mysticism, through internal ; that 
 through the mystery of nature ; this, through that of man. 
 Mysticism is the deeper and more abiding form, since it seeks 
 by a sure way which always leads to new discoveries. They 
 agree in that they seek the same goal, and strive to reach 
 it immediately, through the presageful' absorption into life 
 itself. They, therefore, agree in their aversion to tradition, 
 to the instructions of the school, to all learned and bookish 
 knowledge. They reject books with the feeling that some- 
 thing new gushes forth from themselves with original and 
 irresistible power. The passionate revolt against received 
 conceptions is only the expression of their revolt against the 
 past, the sign of the crisis in which the times divide. A 
 mystic like Valentin Weigel is not less satiated with the 
 learning of the schools than Agrippa and Paracelsus ! 
 
 Mysticism had passed through a series of stages of devel- 
 opment in the Christian world before it was borne along, in 
 the sixteenth century, by that theosophical current of thought 
 which started from the Platonic Renaissance, and united it 
 closely with magic. In its simple form, it is the expression 
 of the inner religious life, which, in the quiet depths of the 
 soul, seeks the way to God, the life within God through the 
 change in the human heart, without which Christian piety 
 cannot be conceived. This fundamental characteristic is 
 natural to Christianity, and, in the manifold forms which are 
 subject to the different spirit of different times, forms the 
 continual theme of all Christian mysticism, the inexhaustible 
 source from which a stream of living religion ever anew 
 gushes forth, whenever Christianity, through its ecclesiasti- 
 cal development, is in danger of becoming fossilized in dog- 
 mas, and losing itself in a labyrinth of worldly desires and 
 theological systems. Thus, the scholasticism of the Middle 
 Ages was mystical in its tendencies whenever it opposed or 
 supplemented the theology of dialectics and formalism, — 
 periods related to theology as feeling to a mere tenet, and 
 life to a doctrine. In the twelfth century the monks in the 
 
104 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cloister of St. Victor in Paris (the Vietorines ; Hugo, Richard, 
 Walter) introduce(i mysticism into ecclesiastical scholasti- 
 cism, and with increasing dislike opposed the doctrines of 
 the schools that religion might not be eaten up by theology. 
 In the following century, when the ecclesiastico-scholastic 
 view of the world had reached the final point in its develop- 
 ment, mysticism formed its salutary supplement, and found 
 its most powerful expression in Bonaventura and Dante, who 
 portrayed the life of the soul in the course of its development, 
 as if it were on its way to God. When the nominalistic 
 doctrine of knowledge began to be diffused, and the separa- 
 tion between knowledge and faith, philosophy and theology, 
 began, theology was obliged to confine itself to practical and 
 religious life, and even assume a mystical tendency. But 
 with the first movement towards ecclesiastical decentraliza- 
 tion, religious life also strove to throw off the bondage of 
 the Church, and to assert itself more independently than 
 ever before, and demand its own inner transformation as the 
 essential condition of holiness. We find, therefore, in the 
 last centuries of scholasticism, an ecclesiastical and an inde- 
 pendent mysticism, the latter independent of the Church. 
 The former was in alliance with the reformatory councils, 
 and found expression in the French theologians Pierre cTAilly 
 (1350-1425) and Johann Gerson (1363-1429); the latter 
 was the forerunner of the German Reformation : and its great- 
 est expounder was the Saxon Dominican, Meister Eckardt, 
 whom the German and Netherlandish mystics followed ; viz., 
 Suso (Keinrich Berg, 1300-1365), Johannes Tauler (1290- 
 1391), Johann Ruysbroek (1293-1381), and that unknown 
 citizen of Frankfort, the author of " The German Theology," 
 which Luther published a year after he posted his theses 
 against indulgences. The Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury developed a Protestant mysticism in Germany, wliich, 
 in opposition to the nascent scholasticism of Lutheranism, to 
 a slavishly literal faith, to a merely outward service of God, 
 to the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament, renewed the 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 105 
 
 old and eternal theme of spiritual regeneration, of the hell 
 of selfishness, of the heaven of self-denial, of the Christ 
 whom we must experience in ourselves in order to be saved 
 bi/ him. It was tliis religious, Protestant self-knowledge, 
 which in Casper SchwencJcfeld (1490-1561), Sebastian Franck 
 (1500-1545), Valentin Weigel (1533-1588), and Jacob Bohme 
 (1575-1624), opposed mechanical Lutheranism, and grew 
 stronger and stronger until, towards the end of the century, 
 it was compressed into the form of concord, and lost its power. 
 
 Jacob Bohme was the profoundest and ablest of those mys- 
 tics, and in him both these factors were combined ; viz., the 
 mago-Cabalistic view of the world, united with the Renais- 
 sance, — a view of the world which animated Paracelsus, — 
 and the mysticism which Protestantism called into life. The 
 divine mystery in man is identical with that in nature : if 
 the divine mystery in man is disclosed, the enigma and mys- 
 tery of creation are explained. Religious self-knowledge pen- 
 etrates the depths, the inmost, most concealed abysses of our 
 being. In regeneration, Bohme saw the manifestation of the 
 "inward," and the death of the "monstrous," man, who is 
 governed by selfishness ; in the birth of the natural (selfish) 
 will, the birth of things in general, which, by their own will, 
 tear themselves loose from God. There is, therefore, a pri- 
 mary state of things, or a Nature in God, which is related to 
 the life and revelation of God, as the natural will in man to 
 that which is born again. For the revelation of God is the 
 new birth and illumination of the world (humanity), which 
 reflects divine, as a mirror does natural, light. Bohme's 
 mago-mystical conception of the world was a theosophical 
 view of things, in which pious emotion co-exists with lively 
 imagination, filled with the images of nature. It was based 
 on the connection of, and the conflict between, the divine 
 and natural forces in life, whose goal can be none other than 
 "a being free from strife." 
 
 Religious self-knowledge is the ground of philosophical. 
 Eckardt's mysticism, which culminated in German theology, 
 
106 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was the forerunner of the Reformation. Protestant mysti- 
 cism, which culminated in Jacob Bohme, was a forerunner of 
 modern philosophy, and stands close to its threshold. 
 
 6. The Italian Nature - Philosophy. — We return to the 
 Renaissance to complete the course of its philosophical de- 
 velopment in the element peculiar to it. The revival of 
 Neo-Platonism resulted in a theosophical view of nature, 
 which at every step departed farther from the theological 
 conception of nature, of scholasticism, and of Aristotle, ex- 
 pressed its pantheistic character more distinctly, and which 
 finally terminated in a naturalistic view of the world com- 
 pletely opposed to scholasticism. According to this view of 
 the world, nature has a value of her own, manifests law, has 
 in and of herself the power and purpose of her activity, and 
 must, therefore, be explained by means of herself alone, not 
 by theological grounds, but ^'■juxta propria prindpia." This 
 is the trend of the Italian nature-philosophy, the last form of 
 that philosophical development of the Renaissance which 
 begau in the Platonic school of Florence. 
 
 The very problem which the Italian nature-philosophy 
 proposed, is completely opposed to the fundamental concep- 
 tion of Aristotle. It is impossible to explain nature by means 
 of itself, so long as the supra-mundane God is regarded as its 
 moving ground and cause. This conception of God is closely 
 connected with the doctrine that the universe is limited, with 
 the doctrine of the geo-centric system of the world, of the 
 opposition between the heavens and the earth, of the for- 
 mation of the elements by means of differences of motion 
 (change of place), through which the opposition between 
 the upper or heavenly element (ether), and the four lower 
 (fire, air, water, earth), is held to be evident. Fire, accord- 
 ingly, IS regarded as matter : warmth and cold, lightness 
 and heaviness, are opposite properties or states of matter. 
 In the foundations of the Aristotelian doctrine itself, there 
 is a conflict between the theological and naturalistic concep- 
 tions ; between metaphysics and physics ; between the tran- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 107 
 
 scendence and immanence of purpose ; between purpose 
 (form) and matter. 
 
 This modern naturalism, which opposes that of Aristotle, 
 was founded by Bernardino Telesio of Cosenza, in Calabria 
 (1509-1588). He was the leader of the natural philosoph- 
 ical school, the central point of which was the Academy of 
 Cosenza. Avoiding the Church, he took nature alone as his 
 guide. His forerunner was the adventurous Grierolamo Gar- 
 dano of Milan (1500-1577). He based philosophy on the 
 knowledge of nature, the inner connection of all phenomena, 
 the absolute unity of the living universe, and revived the 
 conception of the world-soul, which he conceived as light 
 and warmth. The Telesian doctrine, the real foundation of 
 the Italian nature-philosophy, simplifies principles, and in- 
 sists on their derivation from the observation of things them- 
 selves. Every thing in nature must be explained by means 
 of matter and force, matter and the conflict between its in- 
 dwelling forces, the activity of which consists in their expan- 
 sion and contraction, which are identical with light and 
 darkness, warmth and cold, and are concentrated in the sun 
 and the earth. Though the conception of Telesio was unde- 
 veloped, the doctrine of natural forces and the idea of their 
 unity were already pressing to the centre of natural philoso- 
 phy. Warmth was no longer regarded as matter, but as 
 motion, and the cause of motion ; and fire, air, and water, as 
 its effects. Therewith, the Aristotelian physics was aban- 
 doned in one of its principal points, — its doctrine of the ele- 
 ments ; and, since every thing is to be explained by natural 
 forces, knowledge must be derived from sensation, reason 
 from sensibility, our moral nature from our desires, virtue 
 from the impulse to self-preservation. Theological and reli- 
 gious questions aside, the system of Telesio is absolutely 
 monistic and naturalistic. His principal work, " On the In- 
 vestigation of Natural Causes," appeared in its first form in 
 1565, though the completed work was not published until 
 1587. 
 
108 HISTORY or MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 This doctrine, through its opposition to Aristotle, exercised 
 an involuntary attraction upon the Platonic mode of thought, 
 in the form in which it was revived by the Renaissance. 
 Francesco Patrizzi of Clissa, in Dalmatia (1529-1593), com- 
 bined the Neo-Platonism of Italy with the modern Italian 
 nature-philosophy founded by Telesio. The point where the 
 two come in contact is the doctrine of warmth and light, 
 which Telesio regarded as the moving and animating force 
 in nature, and with which the Neo-Platonists have always 
 compared the Divine being and his emanations. Patrizzi 
 distinguished and combined both significations, and regarded 
 the material and the spiritual light as proceeding from the 
 unity of the divine primitive light, the primary source of all 
 things, from which the series of emanations proceeds. That 
 is the fundamental thought which he sought to develop in 
 his "Nova de Universis Philosophia " (1591). In this system 
 the concept of the world-soul also has a place, so that Patrizzi 
 combined the doctrines of Telesio and Cardano within the 
 Italian nature-philosophy. Nevertheless, his doctrine, in its 
 Platonism, which was indeed hostile to Aristotle, but friendly 
 to the Church, appears as a step backward in the course of 
 this modern naturalistic philosophy. 
 
 Telesio and his followers were not concerned with the 
 revival of Aristotle or Plato, or with the controversies 
 between their revived schools. • The path upon which they 
 entered led to the Renaissance of nature herself in the mind 
 of man, to a naturalism so complete and unreserved that it 
 regarded transcendent conceptions as elements foreign to its 
 nature, as dead scholasticism, as the enslaving of nature by 
 theology, and rejected them accordingly. What Aristotle 
 had said of Plato, '■'■Amicus Plato, magis arnica Veritas!''' was 
 then felt concerning nature itself. It became the subject of 
 intense enthusiasm and affection. As Macchiavelli had dei- 
 fied the State, and had hated the secular power of the pope, 
 and the papacy itself, and had declared that it was the root 
 of political evil, so nature was then deified, and the doctrine 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 109 
 
 of the Church was attacked, — even the foundations of the 
 Christian faith. This bold step, required by the spirit of 
 the Italian Renaissance and its nature-philosophy, was taken 
 by the Dominican monk, Q-iordano Bruno, of Nola in Naples 
 (1548-1600), who rejected the habit of his order, and fled 
 adventurously over the world, as three centuries before him 
 his countryman, Thomas Aquinas, had risked every thing ia 
 order to flee out of the world into a cell of the Dominicans. 
 Thus the times change ! Bruno represented the naturalistic, 
 as Macchiavelli had done the political. Renaissance. His 
 theme was the deification of nature and the universe, 
 the divine, all-embracing unity, pantheism in opposition to 
 all ecclesiastical conceptions. This doctrine animated his 
 thoughts and poems, and seemed to him an entirely new 
 theory of the world, the new bond of religion and knowl- 
 edge, which he, as philosopher and poet, proclaimed. He had 
 exchanged the cowl of the monk for the thyrsus ! He felt 
 himself related to the philosophers of antiquity, who afiirmed 
 and taught the divine cosmos, — Pythagoras and Plato, the 
 Stoics and Epicureans. And they stood the nearer to him, 
 the less dualistic their systems and the more conformable to 
 the natural order of things. This is why he rates Plato 
 higher than Aristotle, Pythagoras than Plato, Epicurus and 
 Lucretius than the Stoics. On the other hand, he rejected 
 scholasticism, particularly that of Aristotle ; and the doctrine 
 of Duns Scotus was an object of intense aversion, since the 
 latter made nature subject to the divine arbitrary will. As 
 the system of things can only be one, our concepts must be 
 capable of being arranged systematically ; and hence he was 
 interested in, and gave some attention to, the so-called " art 
 of Lully." In opposition to the dualism of God and the 
 world, form and matter, he taught the absolute unity of 
 contradictions, — which the profound Nicholas Cusanus, on 
 the threshold of the Renaissance, had first stated, — and 
 made it the principle of his doctrine. The universe ap- 
 peared to him as the true and only revelation of God. 
 
110 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Therefore, he opposed the faith in the personal God-man 
 on which Christianity rests, and the sinful natvire of man 
 on which Catholicism bases its justification by the Church 
 alone, and Protestantism its justification by faith alone. 
 The axiom of Luther, " sola fide,'' is as little in harmony 
 with his view as the Romish " nulla solus extra ecclesiam." 
 Nature alone is the kingdom of God ; and it is to be found 
 only in the living and true perception of things, not in 
 books, nor can it be reached through the manipulation of 
 words. Entirely filled by an intense desire for the knowl- 
 edge of nature, Bruno felt an aversion to the philological 
 spirit of the Renaissance, to formalism, to logic and rhetoric. 
 Here, indeed, naturalism came in conflict with humanism in 
 the narrower acceptation of the term. 
 
 From Bruno's fundamental pantheistic conception, which 
 denies the existence of God external to and beyond the 
 world, and regards the universe as his complete presence, 
 the identity of God and the world, the unconditional imma- 
 nence of God immediately follows. " It pleases him to move 
 the world within himself, nature in himself, himself in nature 
 to enclose." The universe, therefore, is, like God, unlimited, 
 immeasurable, embracing countless worlds ; the starry heavens 
 are no longer the boundary of the universe ; the earth is no 
 longer its motionless centre ; there is no such absolute cen- 
 tre at all ; even the sun is only central in relation to the 
 system of the planets. Bruno therefore accepted the Coper- 
 nican theory of the universe (which had already been ex- 
 pounded), and defended it against the Aristotelian and 
 Ptolemaic system, to which the ecclesiastical view of the 
 world had adjusted itself. He went beyond Copernicus in 
 his inferences, and was indeed a forerunner of Galileo. 
 Whether between the pantheistic and Copernican doctrines 
 a necessary connection exists, is not here the question. So 
 much is evident : from the denial of the geocentric system, 
 the denial of the limited and the affirmation'of the unlimited 
 universe necessarily follow, whereby the usual conceptions 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. Ill 
 
 of transcendence fall to the ground, and the equality of God 
 and the world results. One can base the pantheistic concep- 
 tion of the world on the Copernican theory, and, conversely, 
 the Copernican theory can be deduced from pantheism. 
 Bruno chose this method. Through his agreement with 
 Copernicus, he is the most advanced of the Italian natural 
 philosophers, as in his character he is the boldest and fullest 
 of genius. 
 
 Now, the divine, all-embracing unity must be conceived as 
 embracing all that is and happens in the nature of things. 
 This is the unity that embraces all in itself, produces and 
 moves all, permeates and knows all, — matter, force, and mind 
 in one. The relation between God and the universe is 
 accordingly identical witli the necessary order of things or 
 of nature. Bruno's doctrine of the all-embracing unity is 
 naturalistic. God is related to the universe as producing, to 
 produced, nature. He is " tiatura naturans : " the world of 
 phenomena is " natura naturata" God, as causative nature, 
 or all-producing force, is both matter and mind, matter and 
 intelligence, extension and thought. In this point we see 
 in Bruno the forerunner of Spinoza. But nature is likewise 
 a living and divine work of art, in which the artist, working 
 within it, reflects and reveals himself, advancing from uncon- 
 scious to conscious nature, from the material expression of 
 his thoughts to the mental, from the " vestigia " to the 
 ^'■umhrce" which are the images of the divine ideas in us. 
 This natural and progressive revelation of God is a process 
 of development, in which the divine purposes or world-thoughts 
 dwell as impelling forces, and out of which they proceed as 
 objects of knowledge, like fruit from seed. The universe, 
 considered as a living work of art, is the self-development of 
 God. Grod is related, accordingly, to the world as the ground 
 of a development to all its forms and stages, like a germ to 
 its unfolding, like a point to space, like an atom to a body, 
 like a unit to a number. God is, therefore, the smallest and 
 greatest, and forms in truth the unity of all contradictions. 
 
112 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The world is contained in him potentially, — as Cujanus had 
 already said, — in undeveloped capacity, in a state of " impli- 
 catio:" in the world, God is in a state of ^^ expUcatio" of 
 infinite fulness, and unfolding, of his powers. Thus, the 
 universe appears as a system of development, the germs of 
 which are uninfolded powers, or monads of things. In this 
 point we see in Bruno the forerunner of our Leibnitz. The 
 Italian works which he published in London in 1584, lie in 
 the trend of thought which culminated in Spinoza ; while the 
 Latin didactic poems published in Frankfort-on-the-Main 
 (1591) shortly before his death, already prefigurated the 
 doctrine of monads. After he had fallen, through treachery, 
 into the hands of the Inquisition, filled by the " eroici furoris " 
 of his faith, he would not mitigate his sufferings by any kind 
 of recantation, and endured death by fire without any sign of 
 fear, in Rome, Feb. 17, 1600. "Ye tremble more than I," 
 said he to his judges, in the presence of the stake. He was 
 no atheist, but a " lover of God." His doctrine of the divine 
 and immeasurable universe, which he felt and proclaimed as 
 a new religion, formed the principal count in his indictment. 
 He died for pantheism, on the ground of which he main- 
 tained and defended the new theory of Copernicus. Two 
 thousand years after the death of Socrates ! 
 
 But however characteristic of modern times was Bruno's 
 passionate attack on the Church of the Middle Ages, he, 
 nevertheless, belonged to the philosophical Renaissance, not 
 to modern philosophy. He was not so independent as he 
 seemed to be. He was an innovator in intention rather than 
 in fact ; and, though original in his character and individual- 
 ity, his thoughts belonged, in good part, to the mental atmos- 
 phere of revived antiquity, and he appropriated them through 
 sympathy. The needle of the Italian nature-philosophy 
 unmistakably points to modern times ; but it was powerfully 
 deflected by the strong currents of the past, and, therefore, 
 still wavered in uncertainty. It was not the beginning and 
 the founding of modern philosophy, but the transition to it 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE EENAISSANCE. 113 
 
 from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. The men- 
 tal tendencies of the past and future are, therefore, mingled 
 in it; and it felt the threefold attraction of antiquity, the 
 ecclesiastical age of the world, and the spirit of modern 
 times. In none of its advocates does this mingling — which 
 is too peculiar to be regarded as the usual eclecticism — ap- 
 pear more comprehensive, and on a larger scale, than in the 
 last of this series, Tommaso Campanella of Stylo, in Calabria 
 (1568-1639), the countryman and younger contemporary of 
 Bruno. Like Bruno, he was a Dominican of a fiery and 
 poetic imagination, who was possessed and overpowered, as 
 it were, by the Telesian nature-philosophy ; and, like him, 
 he was persecuted, not so much on ecclesiastical as on 
 political grounds, having been suspected of a conspiracy 
 against the Spanish Government, for which he did pen- 
 ance by suffering seven times at the rack, and impris- 
 onment for twenty-seven years in fifty different prisons 
 (1599-1626). With Telesio, who gave him his starting- 
 point, and Patrizzi and Bruno, he strengthened the anti- 
 Aristotelian character of the new nature-philosophy. Like 
 Patrizzi, he advocated the Telesian-Platonic doctrines, which 
 were friendly to the Church ; but, in complete opposition to 
 Bruno, he maintained the ecclesiastical rule of the world, and 
 established, in his doctrine, an alliance between the Italian 
 nature-philosophy and the scholastic doctrine of the State, 
 between Telesio, the founder of naturalism, and Thomas, the 
 theological authority of the Dominicans. From the ieight 
 of the late Renaissance, Campanella descended, in his politi- 
 cal opinions, to a stand-point before Dante, and bitterly op- 
 posed Macchiavelli, that genuine representation of the political 
 Renaissance, whom he regarded as diabolical. At the same 
 time, this remarkable mingling of Telesianic-Platonic and 
 Thomistic conceptions, this synthesis of the Italian nature- 
 philosophy, Neo-Platonic (Areopagitic) and scholastic the- 
 ology, rests on principles which cause Campanella to appear 
 as the progenitor of the founder of modern philosophy. He 
 
114 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sustains the same relation to Bacon and Descartes, especially 
 the latter, that Bruno does to Spinoza and Leibnitz. 
 
 The natural knowledge of things rests on our experience 
 of external and internal facts : the former consists in sense- 
 perceptions, and is sensualistic ; the latter is reflective, and 
 consists in the consideration of self, in the immediate cer- 
 tainty of our own being, in the indubitable " I am." This is 
 the point where Campanella borders on Descartes, and seems 
 to anticipate the beginning of modern philosophy. We know 
 immediately not merely our own existence and its limits, but 
 also what we are, and in what the nature of our being con- 
 sists ; namely, in the power of knowing and willing. I am 
 a being with faculties, a conceiving, willing being. These 
 are my immediately evident fundamental properties or 
 " primalities." My faculty is consummated in power; con- 
 ceiving in knowledge or wisdom ; willing in love. But, since 
 my being is of a limited nature, I am subject to the opposites 
 of these perfections, — to weakness, ignorance, and hate. 
 Now, knowledge requires the unity and connection of all 
 beings ; and their fundamental properties must, therefore, be 
 analogous to each other. Thus, the certainty of my own 
 existence immediately reveals to me the ultimate principles 
 or primary grounds of things. By means of those "jsn- 
 malitates " of his own being, Campanella apprehends the 
 '■'• proprindpia" which constitute the subject of his new meta- 
 physic. The unconscious beings beneath me are in a lower 
 potenCe what I am in a higher. God is in the highest and 
 absolute potence what all finite beings are in a lower. He is 
 omnipotence, wisdom, and love. There is, therefore, no ac- 
 tual thing that does not feel and desire its being, that does 
 not feel and will by reason of its nature, even if in an uncon- 
 scious, obscure manner. Every actual being has at the same 
 time feeling of itself, will to being, impulse to self-preserva- 
 tion. The living can never result from that which is lifeless, 
 nor conscious feeling and perception from that which is des- 
 titute of feeling. The powers of conceiving and willing are, 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE EENAISSANCE. 115 
 
 therefore, the primitive forces which ground all existence, 
 the powers which animate and bring forth the gradation of 
 things. In this profound conception we find Campanella on 
 the road to Leibnitz, and opposed to Spinoza, to the same 
 extent as Bruno was related to him. He stands between 
 Telesio and Descartes, with Bruno between Telesio and 
 Leibnitz, but not, like Bruno, also between Leibnitz and Spi- 
 noza. The Telesianic doctrine of the opposition of, and con- 
 flict between, the forces in the nature of things, Campanella 
 grounds by maintaining that sense and sensation exist in all 
 things ; that from their impulse to self-preservation, the will 
 to existence, which already dwells in the resistance of an 
 inert mass, sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repul- 
 sion, follow: he bases it on the '■'■ sensus rerum," the entirely 
 original theme of his first philosophical work, which already 
 contained the fundamental thoughts of his metaphysics, and 
 appeared the same year (1591) in Naples, as Patrizzi's new 
 philosophy in Ferrara, and Bruno's Latin didactic poem in 
 Frankfort. 
 
 If the world is viewed from the stand-point of natural 
 things, it appears as a development, as a gradation of increas- 
 ing perfection and illumination, which terminates in God. 
 If God is taken as the stand-point from which it is consid- 
 ered, it appears as a creation of omnipotent wisdom and 
 love, which, in distinction from God, must be finite and in- 
 com'plete, and the farther it is from God, therefore, the less 
 perfect and the more obscure the members of the kingdom 
 of gradations which it forms, in which the intermediate king- 
 doms of ideas, minds, and souls cannot be wanting. The 
 spirit-world also includes the orders of angels, the heavenly 
 hierarchy, which the Areopagite had taught. Campanella's 
 doctrine of creation had its nearest type in Thomas, and his 
 conception of the descending gradation of the universe close- 
 ly resembles . the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation. But 
 in man, the world of spirits again ascends, springing out of 
 the da;rk bosom of nature. It must form a new kingdom of 
 
116 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 light, a "system of suns," a copy of the divine kingdom. 
 There must be one flock and one shepherd. Campanella, 
 therefore, requires the unity and centralization of religion, 
 of the Church and the State ; a kingdom of the world, which 
 unites in itself humanity arranged in the form of a grada- 
 tion, under a universal ruler over whom the vicegerent of 
 God on earth is enthroned, the supreme head of the Church 
 of the world, as a copy of the divine omnipotence, the 
 Romish pope. A poetic, retrospective, earnest reconstruction 
 of the ecclesiastical age of the world of the times of Inno- 
 cence III., a philosophical dream, after Dante had imprecated 
 the secular power of the papacy, and Macchiavelli, his ec- 
 clesiastical power also, and the Reformation had made the 
 incurable schism ! But why should not the fancy of the 
 Renaissance, which possessed the magical power of necro- 
 mancy, again dream this ideal of the Middle Ages in the 
 person of one of its youngest sons ? There was still between 
 the Platonic State and the Romish Church an old kinship, 
 which could overcome and inspire the lonely Campanella in 
 his dungeon ! 
 
 7. Scepticism as the Result of the Renaissance. — Even in 
 the last period of scholasticism, faith had no longer felt 
 knowledge as a support, but as an oppressive burden, and 
 had freed itself from it by the nominalistic theory of cogni- 
 tion. Human knowledge was directed to the world of nature 
 and sense, with the consciousness that its powers were in- 
 sufficient to grasp the nature of things. There was thus a 
 sceptical tendency in that scholastic doctrine which had 
 separated faith and knowledge. The Renaissance unsettled 
 faith in the Church, and in the transcendent and supernatural 
 world : it revived the philosophical systems of antiquity, 
 none of which were able to yield the scientific satisfaction 
 which the spirit of the new time sought and required. It 
 authorized an unfettered variety of individual opinions, and 
 was itself in no way inclined to submit to the trammels of a 
 system. An authority which usurps the empii-e of knowl- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 117 
 
 edge was in irreconcilable and fundamental conflict with the 
 primary origin and nature of the Renaissance. It was, there- 
 fore, an entirely natural result, when the culture of the 
 Renaissance, unable of itself to produce a really new system, 
 finally terminated in a scepticism which openly confessed 
 this inability, and reckoned belief in the knowledge of truth 
 among human delusions. 
 
 To such a sceptical consciousness the culture of the period 
 naturally suggested a trend of thought which reminds us of 
 the Sophism of the ancients, in which doubt was a source of 
 personal enjoyment, and so strongly increased the feeling 
 of intellectual power in the individual, that he seemed to 
 himself to be standing on a height with the kingdoms of be- 
 lief and knowledge at his feet. Man again imagines himself 
 " the measure of all things." It rests with him whether he 
 will defend belief to-day, or deride it to-morrow. The Italian 
 Renaissance must still develop this idle and boastful sophism ; 
 and it found the corresponding character in a younger contem- 
 porary of Bruno and Campanella, a man whose opinion of him- 
 self passed over into the extremest presumption. His name 
 was Lucilio Vanini, and he called liimself Griulio Cesare Vanmi 
 (1585-1619). In one of his dialogues he makes one of the 
 speakers cry out in the greatest wonder at the power of his 
 reasoning, " Either thou art a God or Vanini I " He modestly 
 answered, " I am Vanini ! " In his " Amphitheatre," he ap- 
 peared as the antagonist of the philosophy of antiquity, and 
 as the advocate of Christianity, the Church, the Council of 
 Trent, and the Jesuits. In the very next year, he wrote 
 the "Dialogues on Nature," "The Queen and Goddess of 
 Mortals," in which he plainly derided the dogmas of religion 
 and Christianity, though his irony was disguised by being 
 expressed in the form of a dialogue. A century had passed 
 since Pomponatius led naturalism into the field against the 
 Church, and cautiously grounded and disguised doubt of 
 the doctrines of faith. Vanini was a disciple of Pomponatius, 
 though he lacked his earnestness and originality of inquiry. 
 
118 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Almost at the same time, he played the roll of the sophistical 
 apologist, and shameless derider, of the Church. But the 
 age that followed the founding of the order of Jesuits, the 
 Council of Trent, the night of Bartholomew, no longer appre- 
 ciated such jests, and burned Vanini at the stake in Toulouse 
 because of his dialogues (1619). Not because of his char- 
 acter and his works, but only because of this tragic fate, 
 which is greater than the man, does Vanini appear alongside 
 of Giordano Bruno. ^ 
 
 There is a sceptical view of the world, which resulted 
 from the Renaissance as the ripe fruit of collective experi- 
 ence and worldly wisdom, and formed the final stage of its 
 philosophical development. In this confused variety of philo- 
 sophical hypotheses and systems, there was none which had 
 the power to produce a conviction of its truth. Their con- 
 flicts with each other were rather a proof of their weakness, 
 which, in such a wealth of culture and intellectual power 
 as the Renaissance possesses, must have its foundations in 
 human nature itself. Therefore, true self-knowled<je, tested 
 by experience, out of sympathy with intellectual arrogance 
 and the desires natural to it, is the problem to which the 
 whole intellectual condition of the world points. The more 
 correct and clear one's self-observation, the better he knows 
 others, and the more successfully he gains the stand-point 
 from which he can calmly observe things. " Cest moi, que 
 Je peins ! " This is the stand-point of Michel de Montaigne 
 (1533-1592) in the last stage of the philosophical Renais- 
 sance : this sentence was the acknowledged and universal 
 theme of his self-delineations or essays (1580-1588). He 
 was educated entirely in the spirit of the Renaissance, and 
 his mode of thought was the result of his education. Mon- 
 taigne knew himself ; and no one knew better how to estimate 
 the power of the educating influences which depend upon an 
 age, and which even determine the opinions of men. In the 
 
 1 Fr. Fiorentino: Bernardino Telesio, vol. ii. pp. 211-222. 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE. 119 
 
 world of men, individuals change ; in these, dispositions and 
 circumstances in life ; with these, opinions. He who knows 
 how opinions arise, will concede to none an objective value, 
 and regard each of them as the result of individual develop- 
 ment. A good-natured tolerance, therefore, based on a wide 
 knowledge of men, accompanied Montaigne's scepticism, 
 even in relation to the differences of religious beliefs which 
 had given rise to the civil wars in France. He despised the 
 conceit of truth of philosophical systems, and the puffed-up 
 learning which commentators heap on commentators. He 
 respected everywhere the individual right of opinions ; and 
 precisely in this respect Montaigne appears as the child of 
 the Renaissance, and his scepticism as the result of his cul- 
 ture. The more changeable and uncertain the world of 
 human conceptions and views, laws and customs, appears, 
 the stronger the coiitrast between that world and the law- 
 obeying and invariable course of nature, the living book of 
 creation, which Raymond von Sahunde, in his "Natural The- 
 ology " (1436), had already called the pure revelation of God. 
 Montaigne translated Raymond's work in his youth, and de- 
 fended it in the most comprehensive of his essays. To faith in 
 human knowledge and its bungling systems, he opposes faith 
 in nature, in its simplicity, and in its harmony with the posi- 
 tive revelation of God. He knew no wiser course than to 
 yield himself to nature, and follow her guidance. In this 
 faith in nature, Montaigne appears as a forerunner of Rous- 
 seau, also in that he rests this faith on self-observation, and 
 gives expression to it in the form of self-delineation. " C\st 
 moi, que je peins!" "I seek to know myself: this is my 
 metaphysics and physics." This sentence of our sceptic, 
 Rousseau also might have made his motto. 
 
 Montaigne stood on the threshold of modern philosophy, 
 but he did not cross it. It began where he stopped, with 
 doubt based on self-observation and self-examination, and 
 including belief in the existence and cognizability of nature. 
 It was doubt seeking and producing knowledge, which ani- 
 
120 HISTORY or MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mated Bacon and Descartes, the founders of modern philoso- 
 phy. Montaigne's father was a countryman of Bacon, who 
 took the form of the " Essays " as the model of his first 
 important work. Montaigne himself was a countryman of 
 Descartes. He was the type and leader of a sceptical mode 
 of thought which formed in Southern France, the last sta- 
 tion, as it were, between the Renaissance and Descartes. In 
 the preacher, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), this scepticism 
 became an exhortation to religious faith : in the professor of 
 medicine, Franz Sanchez (1562-1632),. it applied itself to a 
 natural observation of tilings. Its fundamental thought is 
 expressed in that sentence of Charron's, " The proper study 
 of mankind is man." 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 121 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERIOD OP THE REFORMATION. 
 
 rr^HE origin of modern philosophy was dependent upon an 
 -*- epoch-making fact which shook the foundations of the 
 culture of the Middle Ages, destroyed its limits, and, by the 
 union of all the forces necessary to the crisis, so transformed 
 the whole human conception of the world, that the founda- 
 tions for a new period of culture were firmly laid. This 
 comprehensive and fundamental transformation, which is in 
 no way limited to ecclesiastical changes, is the Reformation, 
 the boundary between the Middle and Modern Ages of the 
 world. Never in the world has a greater change taken place 
 in a shorter time. In the short space of a half-century, 
 human consciousness in all its principal forms was trans- 
 formed: a multitude of reforming forces crowded together 
 to bring the Middle Ages to an end. They worked in the 
 most different departments, destroying old conceptions of 
 the world and of life, and acting independently of each other, 
 and yet in wonderful harmony. We have become acquainted 
 with the stages of transition in which the Renaissance was 
 tending towards modern times. We must now show in what 
 respects it was a factor in the Reformation itself. 
 
 There are two objects which man immediately presents to 
 himself, — the world and himself. His theory of the world 
 consists in the connection and development of these two 
 conceptions, and in his theory of the world the highest 
 form of his culture. Both are subject to self-delusion, and 
 are true only to the extent to which they have seen through, 
 
122 HISTORY OF MODERN I'HILOSOPHY. 
 
 and freed themselves from, the deceptive appearances of 
 things. The first conception, vsrhose object is the existing 
 world, may be called the view of the external world, the 
 second, whose object is human nature itself, the view of the 
 inner world of man. The latter culminates in the certainty 
 of a highest purpose which we serve, a highest power upon 
 whom we depend : in this form it is religious. The view of 
 the outer world, on the other hand, finds its definite objects 
 and problems in the present world. The given world is 
 humanity, in the development of which we are included, 
 the material world, in which humanity lives, the all or 
 the cosmos, in which this material world is comprehended. 
 Humanity, the earth, the universe, are accordingly the 
 objects comprehended in our view of the external world. 
 We, therefore, distinguish in it three great departments of 
 human culture, the Historical, the G-eographical, and the Cos- 
 mographioal. The object of the first is humanity in its devel- 
 opment ; that of the second, the earth as the dwelling-place 
 of man; that of the third, the universe as the totality of 
 material bodies. From these forms of our view of the outer 
 world, we distinguish our inner religious consciousness as 
 deeper than any of them. If we compare the modes of 
 thought which prevailed in all these departments before the 
 Reformation, with those which were accepted after it, the 
 greatest changes are evident at the first glance. The human 
 view of the world in all its departments, in all its essential 
 conditions, appears fundamentally and completely trans- 
 formed. This transformation is the Reformation. 
 
 I. THE NEW VIEW OF THE WORLD. 
 
 1. The Historical View — First of these, the historical view 
 was greatly enlarged, and so transformed that the conception 
 of humanity was freed from the limits by which its horizon was 
 bounded in the Middle Ages. From the point of the Middle 
 Ages, an impassable chasm lies between the pagan and the 
 Christian world. There is au absolute opposition between 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 123 
 
 them, — an opposite which excludes all connection, and which 
 the doctrine of Augustine liad stamped deeply upon the con- 
 sciousness of the Church. And just as profound were the 
 darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages with reference 
 to antiquity and classic culture. The Church itself was 
 interested in concealing the historical and human conditions 
 of its development, that it might thereby promote faith in 
 its divine origin. The Middle Ages had only as much knowl- 
 edge of the human world and its history as the Church 
 permitted, and with such knowledge a scientific historical 
 view was impossible. The revival of classic learning broke 
 through the barriers set by the Church ; antiquity was dis- 
 covered anew ; the feeling of kinship with the spirit of its 
 art and philosophy permeated and renovated the Western 
 world, and in the admiration and imitation of these works of 
 classic paganism, men felt their relationship, not merely with 
 Christians, but with the whole human race. Their mode of 
 thought became humanistic at the same time with their 
 studies : art and philosophy followed in the same direction. 
 A new, rich, and comprehensive idea of humanity unfolded 
 itself: an abundance of problems to which no limit was set, 
 and which could only be solved by historical investigation, 
 forced their way into the field of scientific vision. We have 
 already described the period and culture of the Renaissance 
 in their fundamental characteristics, and mention them here, 
 not merely as a transition to the Reformation, but as a con- 
 stituent of the latter, taking the word in its widest sense. 
 The Renaissance contained the reformation of the historical 
 view of the world. 
 
 2. The Greographical Vieiv. — The discovery of the new 
 world in geography followed the discovery of the old in his- 
 tory. In consequence of the former, humanity learned more 
 and more of its development ; in consequence of the latter, 
 of the heavenly body which it inhabits. There the knowl- 
 edge of history, here that of the earth, was immeasurably 
 extended. Even the Crusades, planned and carried on by 
 
124 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the ecclesiastical spirit of conquest, awakened the spirit of 
 travel, which resulted in those first discoveries in the won- 
 derful countries of the Orient. Then came the world-thirsty 
 spirit of the Renaissance, — filled with the spirit of business, 
 — which the Italian seaport cities particularly cultivated. It 
 was no accident that the great Oriental travels were made 
 by Venetians, and the epoch-making discovery itself by a 
 son of Genoa. 
 
 In the second half of the thirteenth century, the elder Poli 
 of Venice wandered over Eastern Asia. Marco Polo, their 
 younger companion, who accompanied them on their second 
 journey, made his home in China and India (1271-1295), and 
 by the histories which he wrote earned for himself the title 
 of " the Herodotus of the Middle Ages," at the time when 
 the Crusades unsuccessfully ended, and Dante was beginning 
 his career. The sea-route to India was then the great prob- 
 lem of commerce in the West, the solution of which was 
 sought by the circumnavigation of Africa, or by a trans- 
 atlantic voyage. This second thought, tearing itself away 
 from the shores of the old world, was the boldest. If it suc- 
 ceeds, the epoch-making work is done. 
 
 If the greatest extent of Asia is from East to West, and if 
 the earth is round. Eastern Asia must approach our portion of 
 the earth from the West, and the smaller the surface of the 
 earth, the closer Eastern Asia must be. Under these pre- 
 suppositions, both of which are false, Christopher Columbus 
 conceived and solved his problem. He had a firm belief in 
 the Western world, and based it besides on some actual 
 indications which were more certain than those assumptions. 
 He discovered land in the West, supposing that he had 
 reached India. Five years later, the Portuguese, Vasco da 
 Grama, sailed around the southern cape of Africa, and com- 
 pleted the sea-route to India. 
 
 It must now be discovered that the world in the West is 
 not Asia, but forms a continent by itself, separated from the 
 eastern coast of Asia by an ocean. The next problems were 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 125 
 
 the discovery of this ocean, the circumnavigation of America, 
 the circumnavigation of the earth, the discovery, conquest, 
 and colonization of the new continent. All this was done 
 within a single generation. The Spaniard, Balboa, crossed 
 the Isthmus of Darien, and discovered the Pacific Ocean 
 (1513) ; the Portuguese, Fernando Magellan (Magalhaens), 
 sailed around the southern point of America, and discovered 
 the southern ocean. To him belongs the fame of having 
 begun, and made possible, the first circumnavigation of the 
 earth, if he did not himself complete it. The Portuguese, 
 Cabral, discovered Brazil (1500) ; Fernando Cortez, the great- 
 est of the Spanish conquistadors, conquered Mexico (1519- 
 21) ; Pizarro discovered and conquered Peru (1527-31). 
 With the victorious wars of the English against Spain, in 
 the time of Elizabeth, a new epoch in transatlantic life 
 began. It consisted in the union between North America 
 and England, in the beginnings of a colonial foundation of 
 a state supported by German culture. Francis Drake was 
 the first successful circumnavigator of the globe (1577-80) : 
 some years later Walter Raleigh discovered the coasts of 
 Virginia, and planted the first germs of the English North- 
 American colonies. 
 
 All these achievements, each of which comprehended new 
 problems, were conditional upon the discovery of Columbus : 
 in it lay the reformation of the geographical view of the 
 world. 
 
 3. The Cosmographical View. — After the historical view 
 had become so enlarged as to include the whole human race 
 and its history, and the geographical view had made room 
 for the various continents and seas of the earth, but one 
 further step remained, — the discovery of the earth itself in 
 the universe, its place and position in the cosmos, the dis- 
 covery of the earth among the stars ! To the point of view 
 of sense, which is the first, and for the consideration of the 
 heavenly bodies, as it appears is the only possible one, the 
 universe seems to be a sphere, whose arch is the firmament, 
 
126 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY- 
 
 and whose fixed centre is the earth itself, about which the 
 moon, the sun, and the planets revolve ; between the moon 
 and the sun, the two inferior planets. Mercury and Venus ; 
 beyond the sun, the three superior ones. Mars, Jupiter, and 
 Saturn. Each of these heavenly bodies shares the daily revo- 
 lution of the heavens, and has at the same time a sphere 
 peculiar to itself (transparent to us, and therefore invisible), 
 to which it is attached, and by whose motion the different 
 revolutions of the planets are explained. This geocentric 
 view of the world was the cosmography of the ancients, 
 excepting the Pythagoreans, who, on dogmatic grounds, 
 imagined a central fire in the middle of the universe, and, 
 because of supposed properties of the number ten, maintained 
 the existence of a counter-earth. On false presuppositions, 
 they taught a system of the universe that was not geocen- 
 tric, — a system containing data upon which, unsystematized 
 and disconnected in antiquity, the heliocentric hypothesis 
 was based. The Aristotelian doctrine of the world was 
 based on the geocentric conception and the theory of the 
 spheres. But the motions of the planets contradicted the 
 doctrine of their circular, sphere-determined revolution ; and 
 since this was a fundamental part of the theory, the problem 
 remained to account for their irregularities on the theory of 
 the sphere. Finally the Alexandrine astronomer, Ptolemy, 
 gave an ingenious and final solution, in the second century 
 of the Christian era, in his work on the arrangement of the 
 planetary system (M.e.yaX-q SuWafts, called " Almagest " in the 
 Arabian translation). The planets move, as he taught, 
 around the earth in circles, whose centres move on the 
 periphery of another (deferent) circle. These circles are 
 called epicycles , and the curve which the planet so describes, 
 epicycloids. But the real path of the planets by no means 
 coincides with the hypothetical. In very many cases, the 
 observed place of the planet does not correspond with the 
 calculated : the planet is not precisely where it ought to be, 
 according to the geometrical construction. New contradic- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 127 
 
 tions are constantly appearing between the actual course of 
 the planets and the theoretical, and new epicycles must con- 
 stantly be added to set aside these contradictions. A dis- 
 trust of the Ptolemaic doctrine arises in view of these facts 
 and the belief in the simplicity and regular course of nature. 
 It cannot be that nature acts so irregularly and intricately. 
 The doctrine cannot be true : it must make some false 
 fundamental presupposition. What is this? is now the 
 question. 
 
 Now, this entire conception is based on the presupposition 
 that the planets move about the earth, and that the earth is 
 in the centre of the universe. To get rid of epicycles, the 
 first of these two suppositions was abandoned : the planets 
 do not move about the earth. Their orbits are now related 
 to the sun, and the conception of these orbits is cleared up. 
 By the true distance of the planets, which the Danish 
 astronomer, Tycho de Brahe (1546-1601), calculated, it was 
 proved that the planets actually revolved around the sun. 
 The Ptolemaic system calculated the relation of the radii of 
 the epicycles to the radii of their deferents. Tycho calculates 
 the relation of .the first to the radii of the orbits of the planets, 
 about the sun, and found that the radii of the epicycles sus- 
 tain exactly the same relation to the radii of the deferents^ 
 as to the radii of their orbits about the sun. In every 
 point of its epicycle, Mercury appears at an equal distance 
 from the sun ; Venus likewise. What is true of the in- 
 ferior planets, is proved of the superior ones also. Of aW 
 the planets, therefore, the sun forms the centre of its ept 
 cycles, or, what is the same thing, the deferent is the path 
 of the sun. In the Ptolemaic system, the centres of the 
 epicycles are empty : the sun now appears as this middle- 
 point of the orbits of all the planets. In reference to the- 
 sun, therefore, the orbits of the planets no longer appear 
 epicycloidal, but circular. The epicycles are analyzed : the 
 planets describe their orbit about the sun in the periphery 
 of their deferent. Under this presupposition, which annuls 
 
128 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the theory of epicycles, and thereby essentially changes the 
 Ptolemaic system, the centre of the cosmos is yet an open 
 question. It is possible that the sun is the centre of the 
 orbits of the planets, and yet moves about the earth as 
 the cosmical centre. If so, the second fundamental pre- 
 supposition of the Ptolemaic system is true, and also the 
 ordinary and ecclesiastical conception. Both these cases are 
 conceivable : the planets move about the sun, which itself 
 moves about the earth as the cosmical centre ; or, the planets 
 move about the sun, which forms also the cosmical centre, 
 and what appears as motion of the sun is in truth the motion 
 of the earth, which is, therefore, no longer the motionless 
 centre of the universe, but a planet among planets. The 
 sun and the earth change their places and their rdles in the 
 universe. According to the one conception, the earth, 
 according to the other, the sun, is the cosmical centre. 
 That is the geocentric, this the heliocentric, hypothesis. 
 Ti/cJw de Brake defends the first ; the German astronomer 
 and canon, Nicholas Copetnicus (1473-1543), the second. 
 Both are distinguished from the Ptolemaic system, in that 
 tliey put the sun in the centre of the orbits pf the planets ; 
 but the system of Tycho shares with the Ptolemaic the 
 geocentric supposition ; while the Copernican annuls this 
 also, and, therefore, subverts the old system in its principle. 
 The Copernican theory precedes that of Tycho, which, there- 
 fore, appears not as the preliminary stage of the Copernican, 
 but rather as an attempt to mediate between that theory and 
 the Ptolemaic hypothesis. Copernicus's epoch-making work, 
 " On the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies," was published 
 shortly before his death (1543). 
 
 From the point of view of Copernicus, the cosmographical 
 view of the world is very simple and clear. The conception 
 of sense is fundamentally denied, while it is explained in an 
 extremely evident manner. The actual revolution of the 
 earth about its axis explains the apparent (daily) revolution 
 of the heavens : the actual motion of the earth about the 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 129 
 
 sun explains the apparent (yearly) motion of the sun about 
 the earth, and likewise the apparent epicycloidal orbits of the 
 planets. This supposition immeasurably enlarges the con- 
 ception of the universe. If the earth changes its place in 
 space, why does not this change appear in relation to the 
 fixed stars ? In the two points of the earth's orbit which are 
 most distant from each other, the axis of the earth points to 
 the same stars. A change of place, therefore, equal to the 
 diameter of the earth's orbit, i.e., to forty millions of miles, 
 appears as nothing in relation to the fixed stars. The fixed 
 stars must, therefore, appear infinitely distant ; or, to speak 
 according to the conception of the celestial globe, the diame- 
 ter of the sphere of the fixed stars must appear infinitely 
 great. This refutation of the Ptolemaic theory is likewise the 
 completest refutation of the conception of sense (common 
 sense), and is, therefore, an exceedingly instructive example 
 for every department of human thought, — an example of 
 which succeeding philosophy often avails itself. Kant gladly 
 compared his work with that of Copernicus. For the funda- 
 mental error of all earlier astronomy lay exactly in this, that 
 it was involved in a delusion concerning its own point of 
 view, which it represented to itself, on the authority of the 
 senses, as the motionless centre of the universe : now, the 
 apparent motions of the heavenly bodies must be acknowl- 
 edged as the actual, the appearances as real facts. The failure 
 to reflect on one's own point of view and one's own procedure 
 produces delusion. There is in this respect no grander and 
 more instructive example than the history of astronomy. 
 
 The work of Copernicus was dedicated to Pope Paul III., 
 and in the preface, written by Osiander, was represented as 
 a mere hypothesis, though Copernicus himself was completely 
 convinced of its truth. Tycho, with his re-affirmation of the 
 geocentric doctrine, opposed this system ; and so the new 
 theory appeared uncertain, and ill a position exposed to sci- 
 entific attack. The next work, therefore, was so to ground 
 the Copernican theory by a series of new proofs, that its 
 
130 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 truth should be put beyond scientific question, and Tycho's 
 counter-assumption be deprived of all force. This was done 
 by G-alileo Cralilei of Pisa (1564-1642), one of the great- 
 est natural philosophers of all times, in whom the Italian 
 Renaissance rendered its highest service, and produced a 
 reformer of science. While he was professor in Pisa (1587- 
 92), he reformed the doctrine of motion by discovering the 
 laws of projectiles and falling bodies. The same force of 
 gravity (centripetal force) which attracts bodies on the sur- 
 face of the earth towards its middle point, attracts the earth 
 towards the sun, and causes its revolution in connection with 
 the force of impetus or projection (centrifugal force) exerted 
 at the same time. The knowledge of this truth must have 
 convinced Galileo of the truth of the heliocentric doctrine, 
 even before he made in Padua (1592-1610) his great astro- 
 nomical discoveries. In the year 1597, he declared, in a let- 
 ter to Kepler, that he had been for many years a disciple of 
 Copernicus. The Aristotelian doctrine of the unchangeable- 
 ness of the heavens (the firmament) was overthrown when 
 Galileo observed the appearance and the vanishing of a star 
 in Ophiuchus (1604). With the aid of the telescope, which 
 he improved after it had been invented, and first applied to 
 the examination of the heavenly bodies, he made in the year 
 1610 those wonderful discoveries which completely established 
 the truth of the heliocentric system. He discovered the re- 
 semblance of the moon to the earth, the satellites of Jupiter, 
 the rings of Saturn, the changing phases of light of Venus 
 and Mercury, similar to those of the moon, and, finally, the 
 spots on the sun and their motion, from which he inferred 
 the revolution of the sun about its axis. The sun is the 
 centre of the planetary system, not the motionless and abso- 
 lute centre of the universe. The universe is immeasurable 
 in extent. The imagined vault of the heavens falls down as 
 the spirits of knowledge cry out, " Vanish, ye dark vaults of 
 heaven ! " 
 
 Galileo's telescopic discoveries are pure triumphs of the 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 131 
 
 Copernican system. If Copernicus was right, his opponents 
 had replied, the inferior planets must exhibit phases of light 
 similar to those of the moon. Since the effect does not exist, 
 neither can the cause. Galileo discovered the phases of 
 Venus, and silenced his opponents. 
 
 There are still in the Copernican doctrine, problems to be 
 solved, and conceptions to be corrected. It represents the 
 planets as revolving in circular orbits about the sun, and 
 with this view still maintains the theory of the spheres of 
 the ancients. But the actual, correctly observed motion of 
 the planets is not uniform : thej'' move, now more rapidly, 
 now more slowly ; and this changing velocity depends upon 
 their distance from the sun. The sun, therefore, is not in 
 the centre of their orbits, and their orbits are not perfect 
 circles. The next problem, accordingly, is to find the form 
 and the law of these orbits. The motion of the planets 
 must in like manner be in harmony with law : there must be 
 a definite relation between the time of their motion, and the 
 space through which it extends. To find this relation, is the 
 second problem. The times of the revolution of the planets 
 are different : the farther they are from the sun, the longer 
 the time of revolution. The length of the period of revolu- 
 tion depends upon the greatness of their distance, and be- 
 tween them a definite relation must exist : to find this, is the 
 third problem. When these laws are discovered, the har- 
 mony of the world which the Pythagoreans once sought is 
 actually discovered in its true figures and numbers. These 
 problems were solved by John Kepler, the German astron- 
 omer and mathematician of Weil in Wiirtemberg (1571- 
 1630), Galileo's contemporary, admirer, and friend. His first 
 discovered law explains the form of the orbits of the planets 
 as an ellipse, in one of the foci of which lies the centre of 
 the sun. His second law defines the relation between the 
 spaces and times of the motion of the planets: a straight 
 line from the centre of the planets to the centre of the sun 
 (radius victor') describes equal areas in equal times. The 
 
132 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 third law defines the relation of the time of revolution of 
 the planet to its distance from the sun : the squares of the 
 times of revolution around the sun are as the cubes of 
 their mean distances from it. Kepler's laws rest on his ob- 
 servation of the planet Mars, which he published in his im- 
 portant work, " Nova astronomia " (1609). But one problem 
 remained to be solved, in order to complete the first epoch of 
 modern astronomy. The laws which Kepler discovered by 
 observation and induction must be derived or deduced from 
 one principle, which Galileo had already apprehended. Isaac 
 Newton (1642-1727), the greatest mathematician of England, 
 solved this problem by discovering the law of universal 
 gravitation. 
 
 As the transatlantic discoveries were conditional upon the 
 achievement of Columbus, so Copernicus furnished the point 
 of departure for those astronomic discoveries which ground 
 the new view of the universe. 
 
 4. Inventions. — The spirit of invention goes hand in hand 
 with the spirit of discovery. New inventions of the greatest 
 importance were made, in part accompanying and support- 
 ing the great discoveries, in part following and promoted 
 by them. The literary discoveries which diffused the light 
 of . antiquity over the world were accompanied by the art 
 of printing ; the transatlantic discoveries would have been 
 impossible without the compass; new instruments, both of 
 observation and calculation, were required for further prog- 
 ress in astronomical discoveries. There are no inventions 
 of more importance in scientific investigations than the 
 telescope and microscope, neither of which was invented 
 by Galileo himself, though he reconstructed and improved 
 both. For the calculations used by science, there are three 
 mathematical discoveries of the greatest importance: viz., 
 logarithms, by means of which great calculations are simpli- 
 fied and facilitated; analytical geometry, — discovered by 
 Descartes contemporaneously with modern philosophy, — 
 by which geometrical problems are solved by calculations; 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 133 
 
 the higher analysis, or infinitesimal calculus, — discovered 
 by Newton and Leibnitz, — by which the variations of quan- 
 tities are subjected to the calculus. 
 
 11. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. 
 
 1. Trial of Galileo. — Wherever the Reformation over- 
 threw the barriers of ecclesiastical conceptions, the opposition 
 between the old and new theory of the world was manifest; 
 but nowhere else was it so strong as in thQ transformation 
 of all the old conceptions of heaven and earth, for which a 
 modern Archimides had actually found a fulcrum. And 
 nowhere else had the Church so many and so powerful allies 
 as in the maintenance of the limited and geocentric universe, 
 for which both the senses and the authorities of antiquity 
 bear testimony. The interest of the faith of the Church is 
 here united in the closest manner with the Aristotelian and 
 Ptolemaic system. The two fit each other as scene and 
 action : the earth, the centre of the world ; the appearance 
 of God upon the earth ; the Church, the civitas del on earth, 
 the centre of humanity ; hell under the earth, heaven above 
 it ; the damned in hell, the saved in heaven beyond the stars, 
 where the orders of the heavenly hierarchy ascend to the 
 throne of God ! This whole structure of limited and local 
 conceptions totters and tumbles as soon as the earth ceases 
 to be the centre of the universe, and heaven its dome. There 
 are indeed far deeper conceptions of heaven and hell, 
 grounded in the Christian religion, and guaranteed by mysti- 
 cism, than those ; but the latter were the home, if I may so 
 speak, of the ecclesiastical consciousness of the Middle Ages 
 — with its conviction of the supremacy of the Church — and 
 of the faith of ecclesiastical people ; and that consciousness 
 and faith could not be separated from them. There is in this 
 point, therefore, a comprehensive, fundamental opposition 
 between the ecclesiastical and Copernican systems, — an oppo- 
 sition which could not be concealed, which could not but be 
 evident to the world, and which appeared the more serious 
 
134 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in view of the characters of the founders of the modern view. 
 They were not freethinkers, like Bruno and Vanini, chal- 
 lenging the Church; they were her obedient sons, and 
 desired nothing less than to injure her, though they were 
 at the same time entirely devoted to science ; they merely 
 sought to explain, and actually did explain, universally 
 known, enigmatical facts, which were incomprehensible from 
 the old stand-point. The suit which the Roman Inquisition 
 brought against, the Copernican system, in the person of 
 Galileo, is a lasting and memorable monument of this col- 
 lision between ecclesiastical policy and scientific inquiry. 
 It occurred in the beginnings of modern philosophy, and, as 
 we shall see, exercised a momentous influence upon it. 
 
 In his controversy with the Jesuits concerning the dis- 
 covery and explanation of the spots on the sun (1613), 
 Galileo had for the first time publicly declared his belief in 
 the Copernican doctrine, and thereby so excited the anger 
 of the monastic orders, that he became an object of suspicion 
 to the Inquisition, whose attention had already been directed 
 to him. The Copernican system, which had been propa- 
 gated for seventy years, and permitted as an hypothesis, was, 
 at the command of Paul V., examined and rejected by the 
 theologians of the holy ofSce, who were acquainted with 
 the subject. The heliocentric doctrine must be regarded 
 as contrary to reason and heretical; the non-geocentric as 
 contrary to reason and erroneous. This decree was pub- 
 lished Feb. 24, 1616. On the following day. Cardinal Bel- 
 larmin received papal instructions to admonish Galileo, who 
 was then in Rome, to abandon the Copernican doctrine. If 
 he refused, the Inquisition must proce^ against him. Ga- 
 lileo at once submitted (Feb. 26). No further inquisitorial 
 action was therefore necessary, no formal, specific prohibi- 
 tion. That this was the disposition of the matter and the 
 nature of Galileo's acquittal, is proved beyond doubt by 
 the papal instructions to Bellarmin, Feb. 25 ; the report of 
 the latter in the session of the Holy Office, March 3 ; the testi- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE KEFORMATION. 135 
 
 monial given to Galileo by Belkrmin, May 26 ; and, finally, 
 by expressions of Galileo himself in letters written at this 
 time. March 5, 1616, by a decree relating to the Coper- 
 nican theory, issued by the Congregation of the Index, the 
 writings which maintained the truth of that doctrine were 
 entirely forbidden ; others provisionally, until they were 
 corrected. The latter denoted those which, after the correc- 
 tion of certain passages, represented the Copernican view, 
 not as truth, but as an hypothesis. Among these was the 
 work of Copernicus himself. It cannot be doubted, there- 
 fore, that, after those proceedings relating to Galileo in the 
 spring of 1616, the Copernican theory was still tolerated as 
 a mathematical hypothesis. To gain a wider privilege, — the 
 privilege of proving and defending the heliocentric system 
 as such, — Galileo labored in vain during another stay in 
 Rome (1624), notwithstanding the fact that Urban VIII. 
 was favorably disposed towards him. In the mean time, by 
 a second irritating polemic against one of the Jesuit fathers 
 (1618), he had increased the number of his enemies who 
 wished to destroy him. The wished-for opportunity came. 
 In the year 1632, there appeared with the papal license, 
 " Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Most Important 
 Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and Copernican." Its 
 form as a dialogue held the matter within the tolerated 
 limits of hypothetical treatment. The title expressly declared 
 that no decision was intended to be given, that only the 
 grounds for each of the theories were to be set forth. But 
 certainly no capable man could doubt on which side the 
 weight of argument lay, according to this dialogue. But a 
 condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition was only possible 
 if every kind of exposition of the Copernican had been for- 
 mally forbidden to him personally. Such a special prohibi- 
 tion did not exist, and in the position of affairs was 
 impossible. But a means was found of avoiding this diffi- 
 culty. The prohibition by means of which alone the 
 wished-for condemnation could take place, was forged by 
 
136 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 his enemies ; and the official report of facts of Feb. 26, 1616, 
 was falsified, to bring it iii harmony with this forgery. On 
 this forgery, undiscovered until the most recent times, though 
 now proved, rested the unprecedented suit which ended 
 with Galileo's condemnation.! June 22, 1633, almost seventy 
 years old, he was obliged to renounce and forswear the 
 Copernican system, in the Church of the Dominicans, Maria 
 sopra Minerva, in Rome. He remfijined a prisoner until his 
 death, if not in the dungeons of the Inquisition, at least in 
 their power and under their eyes. He was neither imprisoned, 
 nor tortured on the rack ; and he was far from retracting his 
 retraction. " But it moves, for all that ! " Galileo may have 
 thought ; but he certainly did not say it. He suffered every 
 thing patiently, that he might be able to return to the free- 
 dom of his thoughts and investigations, which he rightly 
 valued more highly than such a martyrdom. The Romish 
 Church could not forbid the motion of the earth : instead of 
 that, it has put the works of Copernicus and Galileo on its 
 Index, and let them stand there more than two hundred 
 years. 
 
 III. THE RELIGIOUS REFORMATION. 
 
 1. Protestantism. — But however complete the transforma- 
 tion of men's conceptions in the departments of history, 
 geography, and astronomy, — transformations which freed 
 the horizon of man from its limits, and extended it immeas- 
 urably, — they would have been insufficient of themselves 
 to introduce a new principle of life into the development 
 of humanity, and make a world-epoch in the comprehensive 
 sense of the term. These reformatory achievements bore 
 their fruits in art and science ; i.e., oil heights of human 
 culture which in the most cultured ages are accessible only 
 to a few. They can prosper without making a fundamental 
 change in the feelings and education of humanity. The 
 
 1 Galileo Galilei and the Romish Curia. According to the authentic 
 sources by Karl von Gebler (Stuttg. Cotta, 1870). Concerning the forgery and 
 the history of its discovery, cf. pp. 95-112. 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 137 
 
 Church promoted the Renaissance. Generally speaking, the 
 Renaissance was indeed Avithin the pale of the Church, and 
 would have composed its differences, come to terms, with 
 it. It was not the infidelity of the clearing-up period, 
 contented with its enjoyment of culture, which the Church 
 had to fear. It was weak in comparison with the Church 
 because of its numbers, its need of undisturbed leisure, and 
 its indifference to matters of faith. Even the heroes of the 
 reformation of science, the great discoverers, like Columbus, 
 Copernicus, and Galileo, were loyal sons of the Church, 
 who never entertained the idea of breaking with it. The 
 united culture of the Renaissance was incapable of shaking 
 the foundations of the ecclesiastical rule of the world so 
 powerfully as to destroy it. 
 
 The Church rests on religious foundations, and rules 
 people through its hierarchical constitution. Only, there- 
 fore, by means of religious motives which relate to those 
 principles, and force their way into the hearts of people, 
 can the decisive attack be made against the Church. To 
 move the world, the fulcrum must be sought without it. 
 It is otherwise with the Church : he who would overthrow 
 the authority of the Church, and transform the foundations 
 of its faith, must take his stand within it, and, indeed, in 
 the very depths of its faith. This transformation and reno- 
 vation of the religious consciousness is the Reformation in 
 the ecclesiastical sense, without which, the Middle Ages, 
 in spite of all discoveries, would have lived on. 
 
 As little as the Church accidentally and suddenly assumed 
 the form of the hierarchy and the Roman papacy, as little 
 did the Reformation accidentally and suddenly appear in 
 opposition to it. It came from the Church itself, in which 
 it gradually matured. There never was an ecclesiastical 
 age without reformatory emotions and desires. Always in 
 the midst of the secularization occasioned by the progress 
 of human affairs, the Church has felt the desire, natural to 
 it because of its Christian spirit, for spiritualization and 
 
138 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 purification. But the direction in which the reform was 
 sought, varied with the period. To free Christian life from 
 the entanglements of the world, and to alienate it there- 
 from, the monastic orders of the first centuries arose. To 
 free the ecclesiastical hierarchical state from the bonds of 
 feudalism, Gregory VII. appeared as a reformer of the 
 hierarchy. When the Roman ecclesiastical rule of the world 
 had reached its height, Innocent III. saw the unity of faith 
 threatened by an invasion of heretics, who even then opposed 
 the Gospel to the Church; and he declared the urgent 
 necessity for a reformation of the laity, in reference to 
 ecclesiastical faith. When, finally, the unity of ecclesiastical 
 rule in the papacy itself was destroyed by the schism, the 
 councils of the fifteenth century came with the problem 
 to reform the Church in its head and members. The 
 problem remained unsolved and insoluble. It Avas impos- 
 sible to restore the Church by the reformation of the papacy, 
 and the repression of that anti-hierarchical tendency. This 
 impossibility could not have been more glaringly shown 
 than by the flames of the stake, at which the reformatory 
 council of Constance burnt Huss. The flames in which he 
 perished, illuminated for the Reformation the road from 
 Constance to Wittenberg. Since it could not come from 
 above, it must come from below, reaching its crisis in Luther, 
 when the times were ripe, a hundred years after the death 
 of Huss. 
 
 The Reformation of the sixteenth century based the 
 opposition of religion to the Church on the foundation of 
 Christianity. This opposition, which, on religious grounds, 
 attacked the system of the Church all along the lines, we 
 call Protestantism — using the term in a wider sense than 
 its historical origin suggests. Negatively, it consists in the 
 denial of Roman Catholicism; positively, in the ground of 
 faith on which it rests, without which it never would have 
 become a religious power. The principle of Protestantism, 
 what it affirms, is evident from what it denies. The religion 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 139 
 
 of the Middle Ages consists in faith in the Church as a 
 divine and infallible authority, in the obedience of faith, 
 which believes what the Church teaches, and does what it 
 commands, which, like all other obedience, has to prove itself 
 by external works. The ideal of this faith is ecclesiastical 
 activity, the performance of the duties of worship, and of 
 actions agreeable and serviceable to the Church. He who 
 does more in the service of the Church than she requires, 
 acts meritoriously. Believers are justified in the eyes of the 
 Church, and therefore before God, by meritorious works, — 
 works done in obedience to the Church. This obedience of 
 faith consists, therefore, in faith in justification by cultus 
 and by works. That is faith in the doctrine of salvation 
 by works which regards human actions as meritorious, and, 
 therefore, concedes and affirms human freedom. The ex- 
 ternal work is independent of the temper of mind in which 
 it is done; it is '■'■opus operatum;'''' and from the point of 
 view of the Church, we can understand why it makes 
 its supremacy independent of the dispositions of individuals, 
 and, therefore, regards obedience to the Church as the 
 characteristic and essence of piety. Now the guilt of sin 
 stands between man and God ; and this can be blotted out 
 only by complying with the ordinances of the Church, by 
 confession and penance ; it can be atoned for only by eccle- 
 siastical penalties, the duration of which is proportioned to 
 the sin, and may even extend into the world beyond. There 
 are many kinds of ecclesiastical and pious works ; and since 
 the Church determines their worth with a view to her own 
 interests, it is in her power to set one off against the other, 
 for one external work to substitute another of a difi'erent 
 character, to accept an equivalent for penance that may 
 shorten its duration, or even atone for the sin altogether. 
 A fine that enriches the Church may even be such an equiva- 
 lent. Now, if penance, the condition of forgiveness of sin, 
 is sold for gold, forgiveness of sin itself is also sold. But, 
 if penance is once made a matter of ecclesiastical exchange, 
 
140 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 there is nothing to hinder the acceptance of a fine as an 
 equivalent for the sake of the need of the Church. Thus the 
 system of indulgences arose, for which the additional justifica- 
 tion by dogma was not wanting as a necessary consequence 
 of faith in justification by works. Since there are in the 
 Church so many whose penances more than counterbalance 
 their sin, so there may also be those who sin more than they 
 do penance, and make good the deficit by money. If the 
 surplus of the penance of saints is for this cause transferred 
 to the account of sinners, the deficit in their penance is 
 made good. 
 
 The system of indulgences makes perfectly evident the 
 absolute opposition between the Church and religion. Re- 
 ligion requires deep repentance — a repentance that wrings 
 and transforms the heart — as the condition of forgiveness of 
 sins : the Church accepts money as an equivalent for repent- 
 ance ! It was here that a religious re-action set in against 
 the system of the Church. The Reformation began with the 
 thesis which Luther posted on the door of the church in 
 Wittenberg (Oct. 31, 1517), since it was the cause of re- 
 ligion against the Church. If it was at first only the misuse 
 of indulgence which Luther attacked in his theses, — he con- 
 demned it as a means of eternal salvation, not as a substitute 
 for ecclesiastical punishment, — the earnestness of his reli- 
 gious nature compelled him to go on unceasingly. For the 
 system of indulgences is no accidental abuse: it follows 
 naturally from the dofctrine of the holiness of works, as the 
 latter does from the obedience of faith required by the ab- 
 solute authority of the Church, which is independent of 
 motives and dispositions. And Luther's motive was his 
 anxiety for the salvation of the human soul, to which the 
 Romish Church had been unfaithful. This motive urged 
 him on. He soon rejected the dogmatic ground of indul- 
 gence, the doctrine of works of supererogation, faith in saints, 
 the confession of individual sins as though they were numer- 
 able. He denied the doctrine of salvation by works in prin- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 141 
 
 ciple, and, therefore, attacked its foundation ; viz., the hierar- 
 chical system of the Church, the primacy of the pope, the 
 infallibility of councils. The final and necessary result was, 
 that he disputed the authority of the Church in matters of 
 faith, therefore the duty of the obedience of faith, and de- 
 clared, for the sake of religion, the freedom of faith. Then 
 the Reformation was in its element ; it appeared, in comparison 
 with the Catholic Church, as the religious work of revived 
 Christianity ; in comparison with Roman Catholicism, as the 
 national work of the German people. This position, which 
 Luther's epoch-making writings on the Lord's Supper, the 
 captivity of the Church, and the improvement of the Chris- 
 tian state, set forth, was won by the strong man through 
 severe struggles, since the yoke that he shook off was his 
 own, and it pressed heavily upon his conscience. 
 
 What Protestantism denies, accordingly, is justification by 
 works. No work has a power to atone for sin : every work, 
 however holy it may seem, may be a mere " opus operatum" 
 done in a merely outward mechanical way without any feel- 
 ing whatever, and, as such, is of no avail for salvation — is 
 rather injurious to it because of the trust falsely reposed in 
 it. All ecclesiastical works — even the most thorough re- 
 nunciation of the world — may be strictly performed without 
 effecting any change in the inner man. Such works, there- 
 fore, have no religious value. Religion consists in mpral 
 regeneration, in that transformation of the heart which con- 
 sists in faith, — in faith in justification, not by the Church, but 
 by Christ. The affirmation of Protestantism is, " Salvation 
 is by faith alone." This faith is not a work which human 
 free-will can do or deserve, but an act of divine grace which 
 takes hold of man without regard to the dogmas of the 
 Church, which are the works of man. Thus, the Reforma- 
 tion returned to the sources of Christian faith and Christian 
 doctrine, that it might restore Christianity itself from its 
 primary conditions. In opposition to the dogmas of the 
 Church, it rests on the Holy Scriptures as the records of the 
 
142 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 revelation of God ; on the doctrines of the apostles, particu- 
 larly of Paul, who first threw off the yoke of the law, and 
 rejected the works of the law, and proclaimed justification by 
 faith; on the doctrines of the Fathers of the Church, par- 
 ticularly of Augustine, who first turned a blaze of light upon 
 human guilt in all. its extent as the work, and, at the same 
 time, the loss of freedom, and put it in the very centre of 
 the doctrine of the Church — that inalienable guilt, clinging 
 to the very core of human nature, which the Church had 
 made salable ! Not the offering of gold, but the sacrifice of 
 the human heart and its selfishness, leads to salvation. That 
 was the theme of that " German Theology," which Luther, 
 for this very reason, prized next to the Bible and Augustine. 
 Every one must make an offering of himself, of his own 
 sinful heart: therein consists the universal priesthood of 
 Christians in opposition to the consecratory priesthood of the 
 Church and the sacrificial priesthood of the sacrament. 
 From this point of view, we see why the reformers opposed 
 the hierarchy and its exaltation in the cultus of the Church, 
 particularly the Lord's Supper; why they transformed the 
 doctrine of the sacraments, especially of the Lord's Supper. 
 This explains why the purification and simplification of 
 cultus was a principal object of the Reformation, one of its 
 essential problems, its starting-point, indeed, where it felt 
 most simply and strongly. The real home of the reUgion 
 of a people is cultus, and this culminates in the Lord's 
 Supper. 
 
 The transformation, therefore, of the doctrine of the Lord's 
 Supper is the most immediate and effective transformation 
 of the religious life of a people. 
 
 We have the fundamental facts before us which Protes- 
 tantism afiirmed, — the facts in which the great reformers, 
 Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, were agreed ; viz., faith in the Scrip- 
 tures, belief in the teachings of Paul and Augustine, the 
 purification of the cultus of the Church, the transformation 
 of the doctrine of the sacrament. Differences arose within 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 143 
 
 the doctrine of Augustine concerning predestination, within 
 that of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper concerning the 
 real presence of Christ. Calvin maintained the doctrine of 
 predestination and election, in all its hardness and logical 
 rigor, which even Augustine had not ventured to do. 
 Zwingle denied every kind of mystical or magical transub- 
 stantiation, maintaining that the sacrament is purely sym- 
 bolic. In spite of the conflict which urgently enjoined union 
 against the common enemy, these differences were not com- 
 posed, and Protestantism was divided in the period of the 
 Reformation into the Lutheran and Reformed creeds. 
 
 The Renaissance began before the Reformation, and also 
 was contemporary with it. The revival of learning, of 
 studies in Greek and Hebrew, necessarily led to new and 
 clearer views concerning the origin of Christianity, to a new 
 and better understanding of the Bible, and therewith to con- 
 clusions which the Reformation required for the investiga- 
 tion of' history and the Scriptures. It owed its scientific 
 equipment to the Renaissance. When the rising German 
 Reformation, and the German Renaissance, which came from 
 Italy, were at the same time in full bloom, there was a 
 moment when each availed itself of the other, in the clear 
 consciousness of their common origin, and their common 
 national exaltation. The spirit of the new period affected 
 men's minds "verj powerfully. The regeneration of Chris^ 
 tianity wished to go hand in hand with that of antiquity, 
 and that of the German people and empire with both. The 
 scientific and religious Reformation sought to be national 
 and political also. This idea found an expounder in TJlrich 
 von Sutten, and was powerfully stated in his last writings 
 (1519-23). But the political Reformation necessarily failed, 
 since the religious Reformation made a deeper chasm in the 
 German Empire than ever before. Moreover, the Reforma- 
 tion and the Renaissance came in conflict. That intellectual 
 aristocracy which wished to live and shine in the quiet enjoy- 
 ment of the high culture of antiquity, was incompatible with 
 
144 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the revolutionary tumults of people whom the Reformation 
 had unshackled. The doctrines of ancient philosophy, — 
 affirming the freedom of the will, — which the Renaissance 
 had revived, were inconsistent with the Augustinianism of 
 Luther's doctrine, that man is completely destitute of free- 
 dom. This opposition between the Renaissance and the 
 Reformation was embodied with typical completeness in the 
 controversy between Erasmus and Luther. But the ideas 
 of religion were very powerful in that period, and even led 
 the spirits of the Renaissance into their service. From this 
 side came Zwingle, with his simple and natural conception 
 of the Lord's Supper, which Luther rejected with the charac- 
 teristic expression, " We have a different spirit from yours ! " 
 But even among the German reformers, there was one who 
 combined both tendencies, Melanchthon, — who received his 
 training from the Renaissance, and entered into the service 
 of the German Reformation, — a kinsman and disciple of 
 Reuchlin, Luther's associate, nearest friend, and helper. He 
 combined the religious and liberal spirit of the Renaissance, 
 and was able to endure contrasts offensive to Luther, being 
 inclined to certain compromises between Catholicism and 
 Protestantism, between the Lutheran and the Reformed ten- 
 dencies. Lutheranism would not tolerate these compromises. 
 After it became dogmatically fixed in the Augsbui-g con- 
 fession (1530) ; after it was more narrowly and inflexibly 
 developed through the settlement of religious differences at 
 Augsburg (1555) ; finally, after the adoption of the forms 
 of concord made impossible any compromise with the re- 
 formed branch of Protestantism, and destroyed the work of 
 Melanchthon, — German Protestantism also split into the 
 Lutheran and Dutch-reformed Churches ; and that ecclesias- 
 tical-political division of Germany, which paved the way for 
 the Thirty Years' War, was completed. 
 
 The Reformation was not responsible for the political dis- 
 integration of Germany, though it did indeed promote it 
 and increase it. This consequence was so necessary and 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 145 
 
 unavoidable, that it affords no ground for reproach. Without 
 the disintegrated and decentralized Romish Empire of the 
 German nation, the Reformation would never have been pos- 
 sible, as the Romish Church would not have been possible 
 without the centralized power of the ancient Roman Empire, 
 nor the Renaissance without the division and decentraliza- 
 tion of Italy. It was not an accident, but an historical ne- 
 cessity in the condition of affairs that then existed, that the 
 Reformation arose in Germany and Switzerland. Its central 
 points were Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva. Luther was 
 the leader of the German Reformation in Wittenberg (1517- 
 1546), Zwingle of the Swiss in Zurich (1519-1531), and 
 Calvin in Geneva (1541-1564). In the course of the six- 
 teenth century, the Reformation spread from these points 
 over Europe, and became a great historical power. The 
 Scandinavian State Church was modelled after the Lutheran 
 (1527-37), those of Scotland (under Knox, 1556-73) and the 
 Netherlands after the Reformed (Calvinistic). The Nether- 
 lands won their political and religious freedom by a war with 
 Spain (1566-1609). In England, the Reformed Episcopal 
 State Church took the place of the Romish (1534-71) ; in 
 Italy, the Reformation fermented in isolated phenomena ; in 
 Spain, the fermentation was checked ; in France, it produced 
 the religious civil wars. 
 
 2. Tlie Counter-Reformation and Jesuitism. — Through the 
 Reformation the opposition between Protestantism and Ca- 
 tholicism in Western Christianity arose, based on principles 
 which make compromise impossible. Protestantism denies 
 the authority of the Church. Its basis is the opinions and 
 convictions of individuals, who, by their agreement, form 
 congregations, but do not grant that unconditional authority 
 which alone constitutes the power of the Church. Hence 
 the unity of Protestantism in its opposition to Catholicism, 
 and its divisions as regards itself, which latter appear as 
 weaknesses in comparison with the Catholic Church. It was, 
 therefore, the interest and the policy of the Romish Church 
 
146 - HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to strengthen its unity and authority anew against Protes- 
 tantism, and, by setting aside certain abuses, to forever ex- 
 clude from itself, by solemn anathemas, all the motives, 
 which, in its eyes, had made faith weak, and given it a dis- 
 position to revolt. This formal denial and condemnation of 
 Protestantism became the theme of the counter-Reforina- 
 tion which the Council of Trent accomplished (1545-1563), 
 — the last ecumenical council but one. 
 
 But the principle of Catholicism was not satisfied by the 
 simple condemnation of Protestantism : it required the de- 
 struction of the enemy, the reconquest of apostate nations, 
 the restoration of the Church of the Middle Ages. A new 
 equipment and organization of ecclesiastical powers were 
 required for the solution of this problem, the first step in 
 which was a conflict with the Reformation. A new order of 
 the Church, devoted to this special purpose, was necessary ; 
 and this was founded (1534) by Ignatius von Loyola (1491- 
 1556) in the " Society," or, to use the characteristic and 
 martial title, " Company," of Jesus, which first received the 
 papal sanction in 154Q. If the religious objects of the 
 Romish Church are identical with their political ends, that is, 
 the preservation and increase of their power in the world, 
 Jesuitism is identical with Roman Catholicism, and is, as it 
 were, the principle of which the ultramontane system is the 
 result. Two tendencies, so fundamentally different in prin- 
 ciple that one would never combine them in thought, were 
 united in the spirit of the order of the Jesuits; viz., the 
 most enthusiastic readiness to sacrifice themselves for an 
 ideal of the past, the restoration of the Church of the 
 Middle Ages, — and that, too, after the Renaissance and the 
 Reformation, — and the most far-seeing policy, thoroughly 
 acquainted with all the questions of the present, with every 
 change in the condition of affairs, with every means that 
 promotes power, and at the same time skilled and resolute 
 in their application, and systematic in their combination ! 
 Who -would have thought that the dreamy enthusiasm of a 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 147 
 
 Don Quixote, and the policy of a MaocMavelU, could be 
 united in a common cause ? They were united in the .order 
 of the Jesuits. Never in the history of the world has the 
 spirit of Macchiavelli, although hostile to the Church, mani- 
 fested itself more powerfully, more effectively, more fearfully, 
 than in the order of the Jesuits, whose sole purpose was to 
 advance the cause, and increase the power, of the Church. 
 Jesuitism is ecclesiastical Macchiavellism. And perhaps no 
 man ever lived who was so much like Don Quixote as his 
 countryman, Ignatius von Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, 
 who first turned from the romances of chivalry to the legends 
 of saints, from Amadis to Franciscus, and then, before the 
 picture of Mary on Montserrat, held his nightly watch, as 
 the knight of La Mancha had done in that village tap-house, 
 which was to him a knightly castle. Without that enthusiasm 
 for the past, ravished by the pictures of the saints of the 
 Middle Ages, the idea of the order of the Jesuits would 
 never have suggested itself. Before Ignatius von Loyola 
 became a soldier of Jesus, he had vowed to become a knight 
 of Mary. It was in the same year that Luther appeared 
 before the Diet of Worms. The new order sprang into ex- 
 istence at the same time with Protestantism, and, as the 
 Company of Jesus, was firmly organized in opposition to its 
 enemy. 
 
 The Church was in danger : it could be re'scued, and re- 
 stored to its old power, only by the unconditional acceptance 
 of its central authority, by the permanent dictatorship of 
 the Pope. Hence unconditional and blind submission to the 
 will of the Pope, that obedience which is equivalent to mili- 
 tary subordination, was the peculiar vow of the Jesuits, 
 which, in connection with the three customary vows of 
 chastity, poverty, and obedience, ^ constituted the specific 
 character of these new monks. The world which they in- 
 tended to fight and conquer could not be overcome by re- 
 treating into a cloister, but only by the most influential life 
 in the very midst of the world, interested in all that interests 
 
148 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 men. In the order of the Jesuits, two characters were united 
 which elsewhere have always been separate ; viz., the monk 
 and the man of the world, the former, in the most inflexible, 
 the latter, in the most pliant, form. This union, which 
 marks an entirely new stage in the history of monks, existed 
 for the exclusive service of the Romish-monarchical Church, 
 which sent out the disciples of Loyola against unbelievers, 
 particularly against Protestants, with the injunction, "Go 
 ye into all the world." As once the Jewish-Christian legends 
 represented Peter as following the hated apostle, who bore 
 Christianity to the heathens, step by step, that he might 
 destroy his work, so these new followers of Peter were ap- 
 pointed to pursue the hated Reformation — this new Paulin- 
 ism — everywhere, and to undermine it. Their activity in 
 their character of men of the world was much more power- 
 ful in attaining the ends of the Church than the exercises of 
 orduiary monks, which robbed them of time and strength. 
 Hence the Jesuits were not required to perform those ascetic 
 and ceremonial duties which regulate the unoccupied life of 
 monks. 
 
 We have seen that unconditional, instant obedience con- 
 stitutes the particular purpose of the order and the vow 
 of the real professed {prqfessi quatuor votorum). Corre- 
 sponding to this was the strictest subordination and grada- 
 tion in the Constitution of the order. It rose from novices 
 to scholastics, to their worldly and spiritual coadjutors, to 
 the professors of the three vows, to those of the fourth who 
 are their real missionaries, and reached its head in the gen- 
 eral who rilled the great order divided into colleges, provinces, 
 and countries. Owe purpose animated every member, pro- 
 ducing that uniform and trained type which showed cool, 
 measured reserve and a winning self-possession in the play 
 of the features and the expression of the countenance. The 
 duties of the order enjoined the wisdom of the serpent, which, 
 in this case, was incompatible with the harmlessness of a 
 dove. The conversion of heathen nations, which even the 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE KEFORMATION. 149 
 
 first Jesuits undertook in India, China, and Brazil, formed the 
 foreign part of their mission. At home their effort was to rule 
 over Christian nations. They sought to accomplish this end 
 by the employment of three means, — cultus, education, and 
 the governing of States, — and they were successful. Since the 
 most imposing, splendid, pictorial cultus is the most national, 
 they did all in their power to enlarge and enrich cultus in this 
 direction. Even their art was characterized by rich, overladen 
 gorgeousness, lacking in taste, though it pleased the people. 
 It lay entirely in their interest to favor dogmas relating to 
 cultus, to enlarge the cultus of Mary, and, in the doctrine 
 of immaculate conception, to make common cause with the 
 Franciscans. To be a knight of Mary was the first ideal of 
 their founder ! That the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 pope became a formal dogma of the order, was the immediate 
 result of their principles. To promote the interests of the 
 Church, they adapted their pedagogical system to the culti- 
 vation of common people, of people of the world, of scholars, 
 of theologians and preachers, and so fitted it to the needs of 
 the time that even their enemies acknowledged their schools 
 as typical institutions of learning. Through their power 
 over the people, they gained power over the State. For the 
 power of the State rests on the people, as the power of the 
 Church rests on God. The monarchy of the Church (papacy) 
 is an emanation from the divine absolute power, and is, there- 
 fore, absolute and unchangeable. Secular empires, on the 
 contrary, rest on the sovereignty of the people, and, therefore, 
 are just only so long as they promote the well-being of the 
 people, which is inseparable from the welfare of the Church. 
 Since the Church could not then control the State directly, 
 it had to do it indirectly by means of the people, who were 
 absolutely dependent in spiritual matters, and sovereign in 
 political affairs. Hence the Jesuits were the first to pro- 
 claim the sovereignty of the people, by means of which 
 princes could be dethroned ; and they had to be dethroned, if, 
 by apostasy from, or disobedience to, the Church, they were 
 
150 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 unfaithful to the cause of the people. Such an apostasy or 
 disobedience converted princes into tyrants. The same 
 Jesuits, who, in Catholic and orthodox courts, were the 
 aristocratic educators and father-confessors of princes, were 
 revolutionists in the country of apostate or suspected princes, 
 who taught the duty of killing tyrants, and not only caused 
 it to be done, but glorified it. Thus, the Jesuit Mariana 
 praised the murderer of Henry III. in his work on royalty 
 (1598). They taught, that when a prince becomes an apos- 
 tate, i.e., a tyrant, his people have not merely the right, but 
 the duty, to revolt from him. 
 
 The Jesuits were not content with weakening Protestant- 
 ism through their influence upon cultus, education, and the 
 State: they placed their lever still deeper, and sought to 
 overturn and destroy the very foundations of Protestant- 
 ism. The doctrine of justification by faith and grace rests 
 on the terribleness of human guilt, on that Augustinian 
 doctrine of original sin, which deprived man of freedom, and 
 made him the slave of his selfishness. To get this cardinal 
 point of tlie Protestant creed out of the way, and to com- 
 pletely obscure it in the thoughts of men, was the real object 
 of the Jesuit Morals, which we only rightly understand when 
 we so conceive its origin and purpose. The more earnestly 
 Protestantism conceived the guilt of sin, and felt it as the 
 ground of anguish of conscience, — this was the source of 
 the Reformation, — so much the less stress did the Jesuits 
 lay upon it. The Protestant doctrine of faith and grace is, 
 in their opinion, a great noise about nothing ! Protestants 
 have conceived sin much too mystically and tragically. 
 When it is simply and intelligently considered, it is not such 
 a terrible matter : it does not consist in a mystical guilt of 
 the race, which corrupted every one at once and forever, 
 but in single actions, each of which requires to be considered 
 and judged in its circumstances and intentions. Thus, sin 
 is casuistically conceived, and its importance very greatly 
 diminished. The compact mass of guilt which presses man 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 151 
 
 to the earth, is pulverized, as it were. In their doctrine of 
 Morals, the Jesuits were the most pronounced individualists. 
 The entire object of their system was to make sin a trifling 
 matter, by analyzing the fall of sin into individual falls. 
 Hence their casuistry, which finds contradictions everywhere, 
 and transforms scruples into problems of conscience, the 
 solution of which first decides whether man has sinned, or 
 not. "When conscience begins to refine, it ceases to judge. 
 To weaken its office as judge, the keenness of casuistry 
 interposes, of which the Jesuits make a great display. In 
 every single auction, the purpose must first of all be examined. 
 "Who will condemn a purpose, the motive of which is, or 
 may be, the attainment of a worthy end, or the opinion of 
 an approved authority? "When the motives of an action 
 are in this way made probable, and transformed into grounds 
 of excuse or approbation, it is in good part justified. Hence 
 the importance of prohability in the Jesuit Morals. Prob- 
 ability is the art of making conscience a calculation of 
 probabilities, and such a one, indeed, as diminishes the 
 probability of sinful motives. Now, every purpose is, accord- 
 ing to its nature, internal: we must, therefore, distinguish 
 between the professed and real purpose, upon which last 
 alone the sinfulness of an action depends. In consequence 
 of secret reserve (the so-called reservation, or restriction), 
 an action may indeed be inconsistent with the professed, 
 but conformable to the true, purpose, and thereby justified. 
 Reservation is the art of excluding wicked motives from 
 actions, or, more correctly, from the judgment concerning 
 them. The greater the sin, the more improbable the assump- 
 tion that it was committed with perfect clearness of knowl- 
 edge, and with the purpose of sinning. Hence the greater 
 the sin, the less becomes its probability, so that mortal sins 
 finally become so highly improbable as to be practically 
 impossible. In this way, one brings his purposes entirely 
 under his will : he can bend them, or let them be bent, by 
 reasons of probability and reservations, entirely according to 
 
152 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his convenience. It is as easy, with the help of such a 
 system of morals, to get rid of sin, as it appears difficult, 
 according -to it, even to sin at all. The freedom not to sin, 
 which, according to Augustine and the reformers, man com- 
 pletely lost, the Jesuits restored to him in full measure; 
 and they laid great emphasis upon Pelagianism in the 
 doctrine of the natural freedom of man. 
 
 The moral worth of actions is not, accordingly, determined 
 by the actual disposition and intention, as they seem to be, 
 but hj judgment concerning such disposition and intention. 
 But the Church is the judge; and the whole Morals of 
 the Jesuits was used, and was intended to be used, as an 
 anti-reformatory instrument and means of power in their 
 hands. The reformers made the Church dismal and unen- 
 durable to the sinner with their doctrine of the value of 
 works : the Jesuits made it more comfortable and easy than 
 it had ever been before. After sins have been transformed 
 into pardonable weaknesses, forgiveness itself remains ; but 
 it can be bestowed by the Church only after the perform- 
 ance of sacramental duties, otherwise the sin remains un- 
 forgiven and condemned. The more frequently one sins, 
 the oftener he must confess ; and it is scarcely necessary to 
 say, that, with the Jesuitical confessors, absolution from sin 
 was as simple and light a matter as sin itself. For- 
 giveness depends merely upon obedience to the Church, 
 upon the strict performance of ecclesiastical duties, upon 
 ecclesiastical correctness, in which alone piety consists. God 
 is the Father of him only whose Mother is the Church. It 
 gives to the dear God very great and particular joy to par- 
 don good children who live to please their Mother, and who 
 earn the approbation of their teachers, the Jesuit fathers. 
 So simple and natural is the grace of God, of which the 
 reformers made so nebulous a doctrine ! Not till the proba- 
 bility Morals of the Jesuits had infinitely diminished the 
 guilt of sin, and had made the forgiveness of sins a natural 
 result, was it possible to understand, as the Jesuit Escobar 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 153 
 
 said, the meaning of those words of Jesus, " My yoke is easy, 
 and my burden is light " ! 
 
 It is the natural inclination of men to regard their sins as 
 a light matter, and to excuse themselves : hence the Morals 
 of the Jesuits accords with the feelings of the world ; it is the 
 justification of man in his ordinary life, the self-palliation of 
 the natural man transformed into an art and a system ; a 
 theory of Morals arranged to suit the palate of worldly 
 pleasure, plainly more akin to the spirit of the Renaissance 
 and the illumination (^Aufkldrung') than the mystical doctrine 
 of Luther and the gloomy Calvin. The Jesuit Morals sus- 
 tains the same relation to men's usual modes of action that 
 Macchiavelli's doctrine of the State sustains to the practice 
 of politics. Instead of feeling a virtuous horror at both, 
 people of the world should rather wonder that they have 
 spoken this prose all their lives. " To appear good is better 
 than to be good," said Macchiavelli, because he knew how 
 little genuine goodness of heart accomplishes in political 
 affairs. In like maimer the Jesuit Morals necessarily regards 
 the appearance of holiness as better than holiness itself, for 
 holiness can only come from a transformation of the will and 
 a discord in our own nature, which always disturbs faith in 
 authority, and endangers obedience to the Church. With 
 Macchiavelli, the power of the State ; with the Jesuits, the 
 power of the Church, — was the one end to which the doctrine 
 of Morals had to be adapted and accommodated. That the 
 Jesuits so successfully showed men how they could remain 
 sinful, and be loyal to the Church, is the explanation, in great 
 part, of the powerful influence which they exercised on the 
 society of an immoral period, particularly on such courts as 
 that of Louis XIV., who had the highest appreciation of the 
 privilege of being able to sin, without detriment to his piety. 
 
 3. Jansenism. — In opposing the Reformation, the Jesuits 
 also opposed Augustinianism, and in it a principle of the 
 Catholic Church. The question arose whether the Church 
 should of itself subvert this principle, or not rather preserve 
 
154 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and restore it, and upon it as a foundation reform itself? 
 The Church was exposed to two dangers, — to apostasy from 
 herself through Protestantism, to apostasy from Augustinian- 
 ism through Jesuitism. The two evils must be avoided by a 
 revival of Augustinianism within the Church, acting there 
 in opposition to the Jesuits. This movement originated in 
 Catholic Netherlands, and fought its fiercest battles in 
 France. It might be termed Catholic Protestantism, because, 
 without apostasy from the Church, it shared with the Ref- 
 ormation its Augustinian-moral principle. Its founder was 
 Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), professor of theology in Lyons, 
 whose great work on Augustine appeared the same year 
 that the Jesuits celebrated the first centennial of their 
 order (1640). 
 
 The feeling that the Catholic Church required a religious 
 and moral purification, existed before the Reformation ; and 
 it was by no means completely stifled by the Council of Trent 
 and Jesuitism. It worked on here and there, and, particu- 
 larly in France, it awoke anew the spirit of contemplative, 
 world-renouncing piety, and earnestness of repentance : it 
 stimulated men to the religious and strictly conscientious 
 performance of the duties imposed by the Church as the 
 condition of salvation, and the duties of worship, and hence 
 prevented Catholicism from being completely absorbed by 
 Jesuitism. Augustine's doctrine of the sinful nature of man, 
 and Jansen's revival of Augustinianism, corresponded to this 
 feeling. Under the reforming guidance of a strict and pious 
 abbess, Angelica Arnauld (made abbess in 1607), a lonely 
 nunnery in the country. Port Royal des Champs, was ready 
 to receive this doctrine ; and it was propagated in the subor- 
 dinate cloister. Port Royal de Paris, founded in Paris in 1625 ; 
 and under the influence of a man who was Jansen's most 
 intimate and most congenial friend, Du Verger, abbey of 
 St. Cj^ron, it became imbued with the principles of Jansen- 
 ism. In the asylum of the country cloister, there were a 
 number of able men, among them, men eminent in science 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 155 
 
 and theology, with the same religious aims in life, and living 
 in the same anchoretic manner, who undertook the defence 
 of Jansenism, and appeared before the public as an ecclesias- 
 tical-religious party of great intellectual power. They were 
 the men of Port Royal, at whose head were the theologian 
 Antoirie Arnauld — " the great Arnauld " (1612-1694) — and 
 the mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-67), " the genius of 
 Port Royal." The Church was already feared within the 
 Church. The contest with the Jesuits arose of itself : the 
 contest against the authority of the pope was provoked by 
 the latter. In 1653 Innocence X. condemned some positions 
 of Jansen as heretical, which the Jansenists denied to have 
 been taught by Jansen at all. After a second bull (1654) 
 had fixed this point also, Arnauld disputed, not, to be sure, 
 the right of the pope to decide concerning dogmas, but his 
 power to decide concerning matters of fact (1655). Whether 
 certain propositions are heretical, the Pope can decide ; but 
 whether they actually occur in the works of Jansen, is a 
 question as to a matter of fact (^question dufait}, and can be 
 decided only historically, and not by an authoritative declara- 
 tion. Such a limitation of the papal authority is the denial of 
 its infallibility, the characteristic dogma of the Jesuits. The 
 doctors of Sorbonne condemned Arnauld by a majority of 
 votes, a third of which were cast by monks. " Our antago- 
 nists," said Pascal, " have more monks than reasons ! " 
 
 As early as ten years before, before the first bull condemned 
 the assertions of Jansen, Arnauld had taken up the fight 
 against Jesuitism, supported though it was by the king and 
 the bishops of the court. We have seen the connection 
 between the casuistical Morals of the Jesuits, and their 
 stress on ecclesiastical observances, on frequent confes- 
 sions and communions, in all of which inward repentance 
 and earnestness of penance were completely disregarded. In 
 his work " On Frequent Communion," Arnauld shows the 
 sterility of the Jesuit Morals ; and in another, he attacks the 
 " Theological Ethics of the Jesuits " itself (1643). To favor 
 
156 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Jesuitism, and condemn Jansenism, papal infallibility was 
 arrayed against historical truth; and the papal authority, 
 whether through its own error or deceit, was misused and 
 degraded to sanction falsehood. It was time to turn a full 
 blaze of light on Jesuitism, upon all its machinery, even to 
 the mainspring of its action, to strip it of disguises, and lay 
 it bare before all the world as a system of falsehood, which 
 converts error into truth, and sin into righteousness. This 
 was done in a series of letters which followed Arnauld's 
 attacks on papal infallibility, and, under the name of " Louis 
 Montalte," were directed to a friend in the province. They 
 were " Pascal's Provincial Letters " (" Lettres provinciales," 
 1656-57), — one of the greatest and most successful of the 
 few masterpieces of polemical literature because of the im- 
 portance of its subject, the power of its arguments, and the 
 perfectness of its exposition, which employed all the re- 
 sources of language, even the burning energy of wit. Of 
 the men of Port Royal, Pascal was the most intellectual, 
 and the most courageous in his convictions. He stripped 
 the disguise from Jesuitism as no one else has done, either 
 before or after him, and denied papal infallibility without 
 the reservations, which he found ambiguous, and even 
 Jesuitical, in the Jansenists. It is impossible to change 
 the nature of things by an authoritative decision of the 
 Church. The decision against Galileo as little proves that 
 the earth rests, as the decision against the antipodes proves 
 that there are none. If popes ever err, they are not infalli- 
 ble, even in matters of faith. In this avowed opinion, Pascal 
 was on the road from Catholicism to Protestantism. He 
 had seen the indecision of Jansenism, since it was una,ble 
 longer to acknowledge the authority of the Romish Church, 
 and still did not dare to reject it. This indecision was its 
 ruin. The old Port Royal was destroyed : at the instigation 
 of the Jesuits, the Pope issued the bull Unigenitus (1713), 
 condemning Quesnel's New Testament, not caring whether 
 Augustinian and biblical doctrines also fell under the anath- 
 
THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION. 157 
 
 ema ; in union with the State, he destroyed French Jansenism 
 in 1730. 
 
 Catholicism and Protestantism are world-historical opposi- 
 tions, which embrace and eihaust the principles of religious 
 life within Christianity. Hence, no mingling of the one 
 with the other is possible ; no compromise between them, 
 no existence of the one in the other, no intermediate forms. 
 Whatever occupies an intermediate position is always a 
 variety of one of the two, and, taken by itself, an impotent 
 mongrel. Faith, submitting to authority, and religious lib- 
 erty (I mean by the latter, not an empty phrase, but that 
 which Luther demanded), are utterly antagonistic religious 
 principles, the conflict between which led the Reforma- 
 tion to apostasy, and the Church to the decrees of the 
 Council of Trent. That Protestantism cannot prosper in 
 Catholicism, that no temper of mind akin to it can live in 
 the Church, and under the principle that faith must submit 
 to authority, Jansenism experienced in its own case, and 
 proved to the world a second time. French Jansenism of 
 the seventeenth century serves as a proof, as it were, that 
 the German Reformation of the sixteenth century calculated 
 rightly when it declared its revolt against Catholicism. 
 
 Catholicism and Protestantism are also stages in the reli- 
 gious development and education of the Christian world. The 
 former is still far from being outgrown: the latter is far 
 from being perfectly developed. 
 
1,38 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COtTRSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE Reformation was a freeing and renovation of the 
 spiritual life of unlimited range. By putting an end 
 to the Church's control over the conscience, and rejecting 
 the obedience of faith and the doctrine of the holiness of 
 works, it threw off the chains which, for the sake of 
 human salvation, had shackled and bound human labor. 
 If the performance of ecclesiastical works does not con- 
 tribute to salvation, their neglect cannot jirevent it: if 
 asceticism, celibacy, voluntary poverty, unconditional obedi- 
 ence, aloofness from civil and political life, do not make 
 religious perfection, as this indeed cannot be made at all, the 
 natural and harmless pleasures of life, marriage and a family, 
 the performance of civil duties and labors, participation in 
 the affairs of State and in the business of the world, do not 
 injure or endanger the well-being of the soul. The victory 
 over the world by the solution of its problems, by self- 
 sacrificing labor, must rather contribute to human purificar 
 tion, and thereby to salvation. The labor of man in the 
 service of civilization is not incompatible with his labor for 
 himself, for his own purification and moral development ; and 
 since Protestantism must require these, it cannot hinder that ; 
 it must permit it, and, from the stand-point of its own histori- 
 cal problem of education, it must even require it. Thus, 
 religion no longer restrains man from labor and a career in 
 the world: it makes him free, and authorizes him even to 
 seek out and solve the problems of the world. In this point. 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 159 
 
 the religious spirit of the Reformation again met the human- 
 ism of the Renaissance, not to antagonize it, but to increase 
 its pleasure in secular labor, and to free it more perfectly 
 than it had itself been able to do. It is a one-sided and 
 miserable conception, both of the Reformation and the Renais- 
 sance, Avhich regards the former as the opposition to, or even 
 protest against, the latter. 
 
 Among the new problems of human labor, the first was 
 that of science and knowledge. Philosophy had to enter the 
 road which the Reformation made and opened. It followed 
 the example of the latter. As the Reformation sought to 
 restore Christianity out of its original sources, God, man, 
 and the Bible, so philosophy desired to renew human knowl- 
 edge out of its inexhaustible sources likewise, independently 
 of all traditions of the past, of all conditions which do not 
 lie in itself, i.e., in its own faculty of knowledge. The 
 Reformation in philosophy consisted in such a renewal. As 
 soon as this problem was fully and clearly conceived, this 
 independence declared, new knowledge sought in this spirit, 
 the epoch of modern philosophy began. Modern philosophy 
 was founded in the first third of the seventeenth century, 
 and stretches on to our day. From the time it was founded, 
 to the development of its last historically notable systems, 
 about two hundred years have passed by. The countries in 
 which it has been chiefly developed are England, France, the 
 Netherlands, and Germany ; and these are the countries which 
 were most powerfully affected by the Reformation. It suf- 
 fered its severest contests in France, stood them successfully 
 in Germany, and victoriously terminated them in England 
 and the Netherlands. These countries, in part attacked, in 
 part overcome, by the Reformation, have been the leaders 
 of modern philosophy ; since the end of the last century, it 
 has been chiefly in the hands of the Germans, out of whom 
 the Reformation proceeded. 
 
 It is easy to survey the course of its inner development. 
 It seeks to know things by means of human reason, and 
 
160 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 therefore begins in entire confidence in the possibility of 
 sixch knowledge, in complete trust in the power of human 
 reason. It rests on this assumption, and is dogmatic, accord- 
 ingly, in its first form. Since it presupposes knowledge, it 
 must make the nature of things its object, independently 
 of the conditions of knowableness ; and the explanation of 
 all phenomena, even the phenomena of- mind, its problem, 
 to be solved by means of the essential principles of nature. 
 In its fundamental tendency, accordingly, it is naturalistic. 
 Now, the true faculty of knowledge must be but one, like the 
 true knowledge of things. But there are two faculties of 
 the human mind through which things become objects of 
 consciousness; viz., the sensibility and the understanding. 
 In the very beginnings of modern philosophy, therefore, there 
 arises a conflict between opposing theories of knowledge, — a 
 conflict which the common problem and presupposition does 
 not prevent, but rather excites. One party declares that the 
 only true knowledge of things takes place through sense- 
 perception ; the other, through the understanding, or clear 
 and distinct thought. The former regards experience (em- 
 piricism) as the only means of solving the problem of phi- 
 losophy; the other, the understanding (rationalism). This 
 solution, therefore, must first be sought in the opposite 
 trends of empiricism and rationalism. The nominalistic doc- 
 trine of knoAvledge prepared the waj' for empiricism. As 
 soon as this appears in complete independence, the epoch 
 of modern philosophy begins, and the former [causes the 
 development and opposition of rationalism. With what 
 right is obvious. Things must be known as they are, 
 independently of the manner in which we perceive them, 
 in which they appear to our senses. We cannot, therefore, 
 perceive the true nature of things: it can be learned only 
 by thought. This is the point out of which that great con- 
 troversy proceeds, in which modern philosophy was engaged 
 in the first part of its development, and which marks each 
 of its stages by an antithesis. 
 
COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 161 
 
 The empirical philosophy was founded by the English- 
 man Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in the years 1605-1623. 
 It -was developed in England by Rohhes and Locke, the 
 founder of Sensualism (1690). From this point, it separates 
 into two branches, — in the English-French illumination 
 {Aufklarung), which terminates in Materialism, and in the 
 logical development and culmination of the sensualistic 
 doctrine in the English philosophers, Berkeley and Hume 
 (1710-1740). I have expounded this branch of modern 
 philosophy, which recognizes Bacon as its founder, in a 
 particular work, to which I here refer my reader because 
 it is only separated from the present work on account of 
 reasons ^ not connected with its subject-matter. 
 
 The Frenchman, B,en6 Descartes, founded Rationalism. 
 He laid the foundation of a new doctrine of rational princi- 
 ples, the principal stages of which appeared in France, the 
 Netherlands, and Germany. These principal stages are 
 denoted by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, as those of 
 Empiricism are by Bacon, Hohbes, and Locke. Parallels are 
 naturally suggested which are likewise antitheses, — Bacon 
 and Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, Locke and Leibnitz. 
 Locke forms the starting-point of Voltaire and the F'rench 
 illumination ; Leibnitz, of Wolf and the German. The 
 fundamental development of modern metaphysics from 'Des- 
 cartes to Leibnitz, to indicate the literary limiting points, 
 falls between the years 1636 and 1715. 
 
 Now, the fact of knowledge under the dogmatic presup- 
 position, both of Empiricism and Rationalism, is neither 
 explained nor explicable. The necessary consequence, there 
 fore, was a denial of its possibility. This was made by Rume 
 in whose Scepticism the opposing trends of thought converge, 
 and complete their course. Philosophy stands at a new 
 and decisive turning-point : it can no longer presuppose the 
 
 1 Francis Bacon and his Followers. The History of the Development of 
 the Empirical Philosophy. Second and revised edition. Leipzig: F. A. 
 Brockhaus, 1876. 
 
162 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 possibility of knowledge, but must inquire into and establish 
 it in the first place. The nature of things is conditioned by 
 their knowableness. The problem of knowledge is the first 
 of all problems. Hume disturbed the dogmatic slumber 
 of philosophy. The first whom he awoke was Kant, the 
 founder of the critical epoch (1781), which divides modern 
 philosophy into the dogmatic and critical periods, and con- 
 trols the philosophy of our century. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 DESCARTES' LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 DESCARTES' PERSONALITY AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF 
 HIS LIFE. 
 
 I. TYPE OF LIFE. 
 
 "TTT^ITH the founders of the modern period of philosophy, 
 ' ' it was not the business of professorships and schools, 
 but of an inmost call, and a free, independent leisure. It 
 was no longer the aim to transmit a traditional doctrine, but 
 to originate the elements and principles of a new one. The 
 " munus professorium " of scholastic times did not, therefore, 
 lie within the scope of these first philosophers: they had 
 enough to do, to come to terms with their own thoughts and 
 desire for truth. Apart from the leisure which they devoted 
 to philosophy, they either lived on the theatre of the great 
 world, in pursuit of objects more satisfying than a professor- 
 ship to their ambition and their thirst for experience, or they 
 devoted their lives entirely to the quiet service of knowl- 
 , edge. They were either men of the world, like Bacon and 
 ?fi,vv>^ ■OftscaT-toa, or lecluses, like Descartes and Spinoza. The 
 characteristics of both types were, however, to a certain 
 extent, united in Descartes. Compared with Bacon and 
 Leibnitz, he appears as a philosophical recluse, who, out 
 of inmost inclination, despised both the splendor and obliga- 
 tions of a worldly position, and felt so powerfully the desire 
 for knowledge, that every opposing ambition was silenced, 
 even the desire for scientific fame. "I have no desire at 
 all " said he, at the close of his description of himself, " to 
 be regarded as a man of importance in the world; and I 
 
 165 
 
 <7 
 
166 HISTORY or MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 shall always count -the enjoyment of undisturbed leisure a 
 greater favor than the highest earthly preferments." In 
 this respect, he strongly resembles Spinoza. Yet, in com- 
 parison with the latter, Descartes appears as a distinguished 
 and wealthy man of the world, whose place was in the 
 society of the great, who entered for a short time into their 
 enjoyments, and always remained at home in their customs, 
 carefully preserving, also, an outward harmony with the 
 world in which he lived, and avoiding, even anxiously fleeing 
 from, all conflicts with its regulations, — conflicts which 
 Spinoza certainly did not seek, but which he courageously 
 endured, — finally, who was rich enough to satisfy his burn- 
 ing thirst for the world and experience in a life of varied 
 activity, and in long and numerous journeys. In Spinoza's 
 life, the Wanderjahre were wanting, which were to Descartes 
 a school with a long course of study which he thoroughly 
 completed. As his doctrine contained the germs from which 
 Spinoza and Leibnitz develop their systems, so his character 
 and type of life unite the characteristics of both, but so 
 unite them that the man of the world is ruled by the 
 recluse, and the desire for knowledge decides the funda- 
 mental direction and form of his entire life. 
 
 It was the desire for truth that caused Descartes to enter 
 into the activities of the world, and to lead an almost adven- 
 turous life. It was not the great world, as such, that attracted 
 him, but reflection upon it; and when his thirst for expe- 
 rience was satisfied, he found, in the perfect and free leisure 
 of solitude, his true and contented form of life. He lived 
 ever only for himself and his intellectual culture. Both 
 from natural inclination and on principle he sought to avoid 
 all external conflicts. He was not able to do so altogether, 
 but he never sought them. He knew why he sustained a 
 friendly relation towards the world. His conservative atti- 
 tude was as much the result of deep reflection as it was 
 natural. It was determined not merely by his method and 
 principles, but was a necessary consequence of the nature 
 
DKSCARTES: THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 167 
 
 of his mind: the unrest of his mind was so great that he 
 needed outward quiet, and nothing could induce liim to 
 sacrifice it. 
 
 But he avoided no i7mer struggle, however great and power- 
 ful. When one makes of truth a duty, he owes it first of all 
 to himself. To be true to one's self is the fundamental con- 
 dition of all truthfulness. Most men boast of their candor 
 towards others, and live in the greatest blindness concerning 
 themselves; and, of all deceptions, self-deeeption is the worst 
 and most frequent. From this most destructive enemy of 
 truth, Descartes wished to protect himself by the most search- 
 ing self-examination and the boldest doubt. All apparent 
 truth and pretended knowledge consist in an intellectual self- 
 deception which is, at bottom, a moral one. This was the 
 enemy with whom Descartes fought, and he did not let him 
 go until he was certain he had conquered him. In this 
 struggle for truth, in this fight against intellectual self-decep- 
 tion in every form, Descartes was one of the greatest and 
 most fearless of thinkers. A look into these uiner conflicts 
 which some of his writings portray exactly as he experienced 
 them, sufSces to give us a knowledge of the man, whom a 
 mere surface view so little penetrates, and often so falsely 
 and ignorantly estimates. In the whole range of philosophi- 
 cal literature, there is no work in which the struggle for truth 
 is portrayed in a more animated, personal, captivating man- 
 ner, and, at the same time, more simply and clearly, than 
 in Descartes' essay on method and his first " Meditation." 
 That irresistible desire for knowledge, that disgust with 
 book-learning, that distrust of all scholars, that aversion to 
 all instruction and improvement by others, that thirst for the 
 world and life, that longing for a fundamental and complete 
 mental renovation, are in those writings conspicuous charac- 
 teristics ; and they are expressed so powerfully nowhere else 
 but in a German poem. If we bring before our minds the 
 profound critic and thinker in the " Faust " of Goethe, who, 
 struggling after truth, falls into a maelstrom of doubts, and 
 
168 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 resolves to seek it henceforth only in himself and the great 
 book of the world, flees out of his study into the wide world, 
 which he hurriedly and adventurously roams over without 
 being captivated by it ; if we seek in actual life for a man 
 corresponding to this picture, who has lived all these char- 
 acteristics, and experienced all these conflicts and changes, — 
 we shall find no one who exemplifies this exalted type so per- 
 fectly as Descartes, who lived not far from the period which 
 began to develop the Faust legend. There was even in his 
 life a moment of search, when he allowed himself to be seized 
 by the hope of help from magic. 
 
 The life of the philosopher naturally divides itself into 
 three parts, which cause the course of its development to 
 stand out so distinctly within the above sketched outlines, 
 that their limits and names are self-evident. The first six- 
 teen years is the period of instruction ; the next sixteen, the 
 period of travel ; the last twenty-two, the time of his master- 
 ship and works. 
 
 n. THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE (1596-1612). i 
 
 Our philosopher comes from a distinguished and wealthy 
 old French family of Touraiue. The name was Des Quartes 
 in the old mode of writing it : in the fourteenth century it 
 appears in the Latin form De Quartis. Distinguished birth 
 was at that time a passport into the highest public ofiices, in 
 which, especially those of the Church and the army, some 
 members of his family had distinguished themselves. Be- 
 sides the army and the Church, the parliaments, the highest 
 
 ' The most important of Descartes' writings for tlie knowledge of his life 
 and development is his Discours de la Methode. In my translation, Rene 
 Descartes' Principal Works for the Grounding of his Philosophy (Mannh., 
 1863). As biographical expositions are to he mentioned, A. Baillet: La Vie de 
 M. Descartes (2 vols., Paris, 1691. Abridged, Paris, 1692). Thomas : iSloge 
 de Ren(5 Descartes (17(57). Besides, Notes sur I'Eloge de Descartes (OSuvres 
 de Descartes, publ. par V. Cousin, t. i, pp. 1-117). The Notes are given in ex- 
 tracts. Fr. Bouillier: Histoire de la Philosophie Cart&ienne (2 vols , Paris, 
 1854). J. Millet: Histoire de Descartes avant 1637 (Paris, 1867), depuis 1637 
 (Paris, 1870). 
 
DESCARTES: THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 169 
 
 courts of France, offered a field of public activity suited to 
 one of distinguished birth ; and the counsellors of parliament 
 formed a particular class of French nobles, an official nobility 
 the most independent of all by reason of its position. One 
 of his family was Archbishop of Tours. His grandfather 
 fought against the Huguenots. His father, Joachim Des- 
 cartes, took the robe, and became counsellor of parliament in 
 Rennes. The traditions of his family were not adapted to 
 educate a philosopher, to say nothing of a reformer of phi- 
 losophy and a renovator of knowledge. They were rather 
 fitted to restrict the career of Descartes within the usual and 
 pleasant course of the loyal nobility, and to make him averse 
 to the innovations of the time. But this family spirit was 
 not without influence in the life of our philosopher. It was 
 •partly due to it, that Descartes, notwithstanding that freedom 
 of mind which he insisted upon in science as in life, notwith- 
 standing that most fundamental reform in thought which 
 proceeded from him, was deeply averse, not merely on prin- 
 ciple, but radically, to every violent and arbitrary reform in 
 public life, to every kind of subversion in Church and State, 
 and, in this respect, never ceased to be an old French noble- 
 man of conservative stamp. But this family spirit, on the 
 other hand, could not prevent him from becoming more and 
 more estranged from his family, since his life was devoted to 
 science, far from the walks of public activity : particularly, 
 it could not prevent the elder brother of Descartes from 
 looking down contemptuously upon him, even when he had 
 made the name of Descartes famous throughout the world. 
 With his father, who marked his scientific tastes even when 
 a child, and wished to indulge them, his relations always re- 
 mained the most tender. 
 
 The estates of the family, upon which the father of Des- 
 cartes resided by turns during the parliamentary vacation, 
 lay in South Touraine and Poitou. I mention particularly 
 La Haye, which belonged in part to Descartes, and Perron. 
 Ren^ Descartes was born in La Haye the last of March, 1596, 
 
170 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 — the third child of the first marriage. His mother (Jeanne 
 Brochard) died a few days after his birth, of consumption, a 
 disease which her son inherited. The pale face of the child, 
 his weak body, and a dry cough, permitted, in the opinion of 
 the physician, no hope that he would live. That, neverthe- 
 less, the child was kept alive, was due to the care of his nurse, 
 to whom Descartes always showed a grateful memory. To 
 distinguish him from his brother, he was called " Rene Des- 
 cartes Signeur du Perron," after the little estate Perron, 
 situated in Poitou, which he was to possess. In the family 
 he was called simply "Perron." He himself attached no 
 importance to his title as a nobleman, called himself in the 
 world simply " Ren^ Descartes," in his Latin writings " Re- 
 natus Descartes." The Latinized and abridged " Cartesien " 
 was disagreeable to him. Small, and of delicate health, his 
 body required in childhood the greatest indulgence : it was 
 necessary for him to avoid all mental exertion, and he could 
 only prosecute his studies as play. Nevertheless, his extraor- 
 dinarily strong desire for knowledge showed itself so actively, 
 and at such an early age, that his father was accustomed to 
 call him in jest his little philosopher. When he finished his 
 eighth year, he seemed strong enough to take up a regular 
 course of study. At the beginning of the year 1604, in the 
 royal palace at La Flfiche, in Anjou, a new school was started, 
 founded by Henry IV., and intended to be the first and most 
 distinguished school for the French nobility. After the king 
 had sacrificed his faith to his crown, and, through the Edict 
 of Nantes, had assured toleration to those of his old faith, he 
 wished to show favor also to his enemies the Jesuits. By an 
 act of indiscreet magnanimity, he recalled them into the 
 country from which they had been driven ten years before 
 (1594), after the first murderous attack which one of them 
 had ventured upon his life. The father of the "great 
 Arnauld " had already written his philippics against them. 
 The king now gave to the order the palace of La Fleche, 
 and committed to their management the school in which a 
 
DESCARTES: THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 171 
 
 hundred French nobles were to be educated. It was endowed 
 with royal magnificence and generosity. As a mark of his 
 favor, he had ordered that his heart should be buried in the 
 Church of La FlSche. 
 
 Descartes was among the first pupils, and remained there 
 until he finished the course. He had not merely gone 
 through the studies taught in the school, but he had com- 
 pletely outgrown them, when, in his seventeenth year, he 
 left the institution. The rector of the school. Father Char- 
 let, was related to him, and interested himself particularly 
 in the pupil recommended to his protection, who, — which 
 is rarely the case with boys of genius, — through obedience, 
 fidelity to duty, and desire for learning, very soon became a 
 really exemplary scholar. Charlet committed the boy to 
 the special tutorage and care of Father Dinet, who after- 
 wards became provincial of the order, and confessor of the 
 kings Louis XIII. and XIV. To the authority of this man, 
 who was kindly disposed towards him, Descartes appealed 
 when, in the times of his scientific controversies, Bourdin 
 invidiously attacked him. There Descartes first became 
 acquainted with Marin Mersenne, who later entered the order 
 of Minims (hermit brothers of the holy Francesco de Paolo), 
 and whom, when their school-days were over, Descartes 
 again met in a fortunate hour in Paris. I mention hio name 
 at once, because he had the first place among Descartes' 
 friends. When the new doctrine began to spread abroad in 
 the scientific world, and to be an object of attack in many 
 points, and when many explanations were necessary, Mer- 
 senne, who was in the capital of France, while Descartes 
 was living in the most concealed retirement, was, as it were, 
 the scientific and business agent of his friend. He was 
 called the resident of Descartes in Paris and the dean of the 
 Cartesians. When they met in La Fl^che, Mersenne, who 
 was eight years older, was already in the last part of the 
 course of study, while Descartes was commencing it: the 
 former was already studying philosophy when the latter 
 
172 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 began grammar. The greatest event during the school-life 
 of Descartes which came within the range of his experience, 
 was the murder of Henry IV. He was among the chosen 
 pupils who, on the 10th of June, 1610, solemnly received the 
 heart of the king. 
 
 The studies of the school began with the ancient lan- 
 guages, which Descartes learned with ease : he not merely 
 read the ancient poets, but even enjoyed and imitated them. 
 Then followed a two years' course in philosophy, — in the first 
 year, logic and ethics ; in the second, physios and metaphysics. 
 It was when the boy was ripening into the young man, and 
 his spiritual consciousness began to be very active, that 
 Descartes became acquainted with the studies of the philo- 
 sophical course (1610-1611). These branches had the great- 
 est influence upon Descartes, in that they utterly failed to 
 satisfy his thirst for knowledge, challenged his judgment, 
 provoked his criticism, and gave the first occasion to the 
 doubt by means of which he finally cut himself loose from 
 the schools and from science in the scholastic form. Finally 
 came mathematics, which completely took possession of his 
 hungry mind, and, among all the sciences taught in the 
 school, was the only one which satisfied him, and incited him 
 to further study of it. This fact illuminates for us the nature 
 of his mind. He cared not for polymathy, but only for the 
 certainty, clearness, and distinctness of knowledge ; i.e., for 
 actual knowledge, not for the confused knowledge of a 
 multitude of objects, but for the kind of knowledge. His 
 thirst for knowledge was not at all for polymathy, but was 
 absolutely philosophical. What he sought was not the cog- 
 nition of this or that object, but truth, clearness and distinct- 
 ness of concepts, evident sequence and order in his thoughts. 
 This is why mathematics fascinated him, and satisfied him 
 beyond all other sciences. It gave him an illustration of 
 what knowing really is, and wherein true knowledge is dis- 
 tinguished from false. It pointed out the direction which 
 thought must follow in order to find truth. Even then. 
 
DESCARTES; THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 173 
 
 therefore, mathematics was important to the young scholar, 
 not merely because of its problems, which so eagerly occu- 
 pied him, but pre-eminently because of its method. This 
 method was the criterion by which he judged science in 
 general. And to the same extent to which his mind was 
 accustomed to clearness and distinctness of conceptions in 
 mathematics, to a course of thought by which new truths 
 are reached, he was astonished to find the opposite in the 
 remaining sciences : in the syllogism, the absence of a method 
 of thought by which discoveries are made ; in ethics, unfruit- 
 ful theories ; in physics and metaphysics, obscure, dark, and 
 uncertain conceptions, of which, indeed, their systems con- 
 sist, resting on the most uncertain foundations. Already it 
 IS evident that he will not continue to apply himself to 
 mathematics as the particular science which best suits his 
 endowments, but that he will find his attitude with refer- 
 ence to science in general by reflecting upon it; that he 
 will use it as a means of cultivating his mind, and gain- 
 ing a point of view from which to make an independent 
 and wide survey over the territory of human knowledge 
 as such. Mathematics becomes the criterion by means of 
 which he tests every cognition. It awakens in him the 
 philosophical spirit, which, conformably to the nature of his 
 desire for knowledge, finds its first satisfaction in math- 
 ematics, and bears its first fruits there. The preference for 
 this science was in Descartes the first characteristic of the 
 methodical thinker, as his aversion towards the philosophy 
 of the schools was the first manifestation of the sceptical. 
 And so ripens already in the scholar the problem to which 
 he gave his entire life, — the fundamental reformation of the 
 sciences hy means of a new method based on the analogy of math- 
 ematics. At first the goal lay in the dark distance, but 
 already it is clear to him that the right method of thought 
 is the only way to truth; that this method must be dis- 
 covered, or, what amounts to the same thing, that the spirit 
 of mathematics must be made fruitful in philosophy. 
 
174 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The method which Descartes sought to discover, and which 
 he wished to introduce into philosophy, was not an art of 
 orderly exposition : such an art already existed in the syllo- 
 gism. Its purpose was not to expound the known, but to 
 discover the unknown, to deduce and develop it method- 
 ically from the known. He was less interested, therefore, 
 in the proof of mathematical propositions than in the solu- 
 tion of mathematical problems, in analysis and algebra. 
 When he was listening while at school to an exposition of 
 the ordinary analysis, it is said to have occurred to him that 
 this analysis is nothing but algebra ; that the latter contains 
 the key to the solution of geometrical problems ; that the 
 magnitudes of geometry can be expressed by means of equa- 
 tions, and its problems, therefore, arithmetically solved. 
 Therewith the first thought of a new science was conceived, — 
 a thought in the highest degree fruitful to it, — the science of 
 I analytical geometry, of which Descartes was to be the founder. 
 This great discovery was the first result of his methodical 
 thought. He mastered mathematics from the side of method ; 
 regarded it as an instrument for the solution of problems, 
 and knew how to use it for the most difficult solutions in 
 a new and skilful manner. In this way mathematics is 
 studied by its masters, and Descartes intended to become 
 such a master while he was still a pupil. He continued to 
 occupy himself quietly with mathematical- problems which 
 he proposed to himself, and solved by means of his method. 
 Nothing was more agreeable to him than these lonely medi- 
 tations, which were favored by the indulgence granted to 
 him on account of his state of healtli. Pie was allowed to 
 rise later in the morning than the rest of the pupils. In these 
 early hours spent in bed, he communed with his thoughts 
 in the most undisturbed and active manner. They were 
 the hours of his most unoccupied and fruitful leisure. He 
 so accustomed himself to this mode of work, that he con- 
 tinued it in after-life, and gathered in full measure the gold 
 of the morning hours. 
 
DESCARTES: THE FIRST PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 175 
 
 Let US hear how Descartes himself describes the state of 
 mind in which he found himself at the end of his course at 
 school. "From childhood on," says he, glancing back to 
 that time, " I have been educated for the sciences ; and as I 
 was made to believe, that by their help I might acquire 
 a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life, 
 I was ardently desirous of being instructed in them. But 
 when I had finished the entire course of study, at the close 
 of which one is usually admitted into the order of the 
 learned, I completely changed my opinion ; for I found 
 myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was 
 convinced that I had derived no other result from my desire 
 for learning than that I had more and more discovered my own 
 ignorance. And yet I was studying in one of the most 
 famous schools of Europe, in which I thought there must 
 be learned men if such were anywhere to be found. I had 
 then learned all that my fellow-students had learned ; and, 
 since my desire for knowledge was not satisfied with the 
 sciences actually taught us, I had read all the books that 
 had fallen into my hands, treating of the subjects acknowl- 
 edged to be the most curious and rare. I knew the judg- 
 ment others formed of me. I saw that I was considered not 
 less capable than my fellow-students, although among them 
 were some who were already fixed upon to fill the places 
 of our instructors. And finally our age appeared to me as 
 rich and fertile in powerful minds as any earlier one. I 
 was, therefore, led to take the liberty of judging all men by 
 myself, and of concluding that there were no sciences of 
 such a nature as I had previously been given to believe." 
 In this survey of his life, he reviews the sciences taught at 
 the school, — the ancient languages, rhetoric, poetry, mathe- 
 matics, ethics, philosophy. He states that in each he fomnd 
 something useful, but that none of them, mathematics, ex- 
 cepted, had a right to be called science, in the strict sense 
 of the term. Even the existing mathematics seemed to him 
 limited and unphilosophical, and the school-philosophy every- 
 
176 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 where uncertain and doubtful. " Therefore," he continues, 
 " I completely abandoned the study of books as soon as my 
 age permitted me to leave the subordinate position of a 
 scholar, and I resolved no longer to study any other science 
 than that which I could find in myself or in the great hook of 
 the world. I therefore spent the rest of my youth in travel- 
 ling, in visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse 
 with men of different tempers and positions in life, in col- 
 lecting varied experience in the situations into which for- 
 tune threw me, in proving myself, and so reflecting upon 
 my experiences that I might derive some benefit from them. 
 And in this way I gradually extricated myself from many 
 errors which darken our natural understanding, and make 
 us less capable of listening to reason. But after I had spent 
 several years in thus studying the book of the world, and 
 in making every possible effort to gather experience, I at 
 length resolved to study myself in the same manner, and 
 to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths 
 I ought to follow. And I succeeded, as I think, much 
 better than if I had never left my country and my books." 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 177 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SECOND PERIOD OP HIS LIFE (1612-1628) : THE WANDEE- 
 JAHEB. (a) LIFE IN THE WORLD AND AS A SOLDIER. 
 
 I. ENTRANCE INTO THE WORLD. 
 
 TN August, of the year 1612, Descartes left the school of 
 -■- La Fldche. The first sixteen years of his life lay behind 
 him. The wanderings upon which he entered continued 
 as long, — ^the study of the world, from which, in a riper 
 epoch of his life, he was to return into his inmost self. 
 Upon the period of school-culture followed the period of 
 self-culture, — self-formation in the literal sense of the word. 
 He would accept nothing from without and on good author- 
 ity, but would deduce every thing from himself; would 
 penetrate, prove, discover every thing by means of his own 
 thought. The school-culture was the result of an aggregate 
 accumulated by many minds, composed of all sorts of con- 
 fused opinions, without method, internal order or harmony. 
 As soon as he perceived this, his faith in the teachings of 
 the school was gone forever. With all the gratitude and 
 regard which Descartes always felt for his instructors (with 
 a certain preference, indeed, for the Jesuits), he thought 
 himself indebted to his training at school for only the 
 smallest part of his performances. He often remarked to 
 his friends, that, without the education which his father gave 
 him, he would have written the same works, only he would 
 have written them all in French, none in Latin. 
 
 It was a long journey from the first doubt of the existing 
 state of science to the discovery of new and sure principles. 
 
178 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and its termination still lay in the dark distance. It was 
 with Descartes a moment of complete uncertainty as to his 
 life. The learned professions had no attractions for him, 
 and he was not sure of his calling to philosophy; he be- 
 lieved that he had talent for the mechanical arts; but his 
 father. intended him for a military career, according to the 
 custom of the family, after his elder brother entered the 
 profession of law. But he was not then strong enough for 
 military service ; and in order to strengthen himself, and 
 prepare for his future calling, he practised riding and fencing 
 at Rennes, where he staid for a time after he left school. 
 The path of a French cavalier leads through the distin- 
 guished society of Paris. At the commencement of the 
 following year, Descartes went to Paris, attended by some 
 servants, in order to become acquainted with the fashions 
 and customs of the great world through intercourse with 
 companions of his rank. For some time the excitement of 
 the new life, with its numerous diversions and enjoyments, 
 pleased him ; and he floated with the stream. But the great 
 needs of his thinking nature soon awakened when he met 
 men whose mental natures were akin to his. He became 
 acquainted with the mathematician Mydorge, and met again, 
 in the cloister of the Minims, his school-friend, Mersenne, 
 the philosopher among the monks, with whom he entered 
 into an intimate and active intellectual intercourse, which 
 continued, unfortunately, only for a short time, since Mer- 
 senne was sent to Revers as instructor of philosophy by the 
 provincial of his order (1614). Scientific conversation was 
 dearer to Descartes than play, which was his most agreeable 
 amusement among the cavaliers. Suddenly he vanished 
 from the distinguished society. No one knew where he 
 was. He lived in Paris, in an out-of-the-way house in the 
 suburb St. Germain, entirely secluded, concealed from his 
 friends, even from his family. He occupied himself entirely 
 with mathematics, associated only with some scientific men, 
 and avoided going out where his acquaintances might see 
 
DESCARTES; THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 179 
 
 him. He lived thus two years in the metropolis of the 
 world, sought in vain. Finally, towards the end of the year 
 1616, one of his friends, whom he had been avoiding, hap- 
 pened to see him on the street. That put an end to his 
 freedom and retirement. He had to consent to go back into 
 the society which had lost all charms for him. It was no 
 longer play, but music, which most delighted him, and at 
 the same time excited his thoughts. He could live a dis- 
 sipated life, but never a thoughtless one. What occupied 
 him immediately became an object of reflection. He prac- 
 tised knightly exercises, and at the same time wrote an 
 essay on the art of fencing. He played ; but what attracted 
 him was, not the winnings, but the calculations by which he 
 endeavored to avoid the chances of play. In music it was 
 chiefly the mathematical relations of vibrations which gave 
 him material for thought. His next work, the first of those 
 which have been preserved, was an essay on music. 
 
 II. MILITARY SERVICE IN HOLLAND (1617-19). 
 
 The political condition of France had as little power to 
 engage the interest of Descartes as intercourse with the 
 nobility. The greatest event of that time was the summon- 
 ing of the States-General of the kingdom, the last in France 
 before 1789. While the whole of Paris flocked to see the 
 solemn procession of deputies to the Charch of Notre Dame, 
 Descartes, who had already fled to his retirement in St. 
 Germain, was absorbed in mathematical studies. The affairs 
 of the court were at that time in the most wretched con- 
 fusion. The queen-mother, Maria of Medici, ruled under 
 the influence of an unworthy favorite, Marshall d'Ancre, 
 whom she had elevated to power. The princes forcibly 
 opposed this disgraceful rule ; but its overthrow resulted 
 only in the transfer of power from the favorite of an ambi- 
 tious and corrupt queen, to a weak king who was under a 
 guardian. One favorite put the other out of his way by 
 causing him to be murdered. He was murdered in Paris 
 
180 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in 1617, during Descartes' residence there ; and under such 
 circumstances, it was natural for him to avoid service in the 
 French army, and to prefer to serve in a neighboring country 
 friendly to his own land. 
 
 With the armistice of 1609 the United Netherlands, after 
 a long and persistent struggle, had won the first acknowl- 
 edgment of their independence. France favored this rising 
 Protestant power because of her old hatred of the Spanish- 
 Austrian monarchy, and permitted her warlike sons to bear 
 arms there under the leadership of those who fought a com- 
 mon enemy. Many French nobles had already taken ser- 
 vice under Maurice of Nassau. ' Descartes followed them. 
 In May, 1617, he went to Breda, and entered as cadet into 
 the service of the Stadtholder. That the pupil of the Jesuits 
 should be a soldier of the son of the great Prince of Orange 
 will not surprise us when we consider the circumstances of 
 the time. We shall soon see that the same man, now a 
 volunteer under Maurice, continued his military career under 
 the flag of Tilly. We have in general no right to make so 
 much noise about his military career as foolish panegyrists 
 have attempted, a thing to which he himself gave no occa- 
 sion. He lacked both the military ambition and the bodily 
 strength which make soldiers by profession. He wished to 
 become acquainted with the great and strange world as a 
 drama in which he could be a spectator, not an actor. His 
 military services were his first mode of travelling, and of 
 finding an opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the 
 world. Implements of war interested him from the side 
 of their mechanical inventions, and the methods employed 
 in fortifications and sieges were subjects of his reflections. 
 Every kind of crudeness in camp and field was repulsive to 
 him. His tabard was a passport, as it were, by means of 
 which he had an opportunity of seeing in the easiest manner 
 all those things which attracted his curiosity. He was less 
 a soldier than a tourist, and chose a military life, not as a 
 career, but as a costume. For this reason he remained vol- 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 181 
 
 unteer, rejected promotion and pay, took the latter but once, 
 for the sake of the name, " as certain pilgrims do alms," and 
 preserved it as a memento of his military life. 
 
 In Breda he found an armed peace, which had still to 
 continue four years, and which left hira complete leisure. 
 Undisturbed, he devoted himself to his scientific pursuits, and 
 through a happy accident made the acquaintance of a man 
 with whom he could share them. The Stadtholder knew 
 how to value mathematics, and preferred them to all other 
 sciences on account of their importance to the art of war. 
 They were, therefore, prosecuted by the men of ability about 
 him ; and it befell that mathematical problems were posted 
 for solution on the walls. One day Descartes saw such a 
 problem, written in the language of the Netherlands, and 
 requested a by-stander to translate it into French or Latin. 
 As chance would have it, this by-stander was the scholarly 
 and highly respected mathematician, Isaac Beeckmann of Mid- 
 dleburg, who, surprised at the request of the French cadet, 
 explained the problem, stipulating, in jest, that Descartes 
 should solve it. The second day after, Descartes brought 
 him the solution ; and, in spite of the great difference in their 
 ages, this accidental acquaintance soon developed into a 
 friendly and scientific intercourse. At Beeckmann's urgent 
 suggestion, Descartes wrote in Breda (1618) his "Compen- 
 dium Musicse," which he dedicated to his friend, with the 
 earnest request that he keep it secret. This was first printed 
 after his death (1650). Probably he had at that time also 
 written an essay on algebra, and put it in Beeckmann's 
 hands ; since it appears from one of his later letters (Octo- 
 ber, 1630), that the latter had such a work. The friendship 
 of the two was disturbed by the boasting and indiscreet 
 vanity of the latter, who regarded the disparity of their ages 
 as a disparity of knowledge, and pretended that Descartes 
 was his pupil ; while the latter was conscious that his old 
 friend had learned much from him, and that Beeckmann had 
 taught him nothing more than he was accustomed to learn 
 
182 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from all things, even ants and worms, as he openly told him 
 in the letter above mentioned. 
 
 As in Paris, Descartes devoted himself to his thoughts, 
 and gave little heed to the stormy events which were hap- 
 pening around him. While external conflicts in the Neth- 
 erlands ceased for a time in consequence of the truce, 
 momentous conflicts broke out between political and eccle- 
 siastical parties. The ecclesiastical controversies which 
 disunited Protestantism in the Netherlands, had begun 
 between Jacob Arminius and Franz Gomarus, two profess- 
 ors of theology in the University of Leyden. The contro- 
 versy related to the question of unconditional predestination 
 and election, which Gomarus maintained in rigid Calvin- 
 istic fashion, and Arminius denied, defending the freedom of 
 the human will. It was the opposition between orthodox 
 Calvinism and rationalism which these two men embodied. 
 The controversy passed from lecturers' chairs to pulpits, and 
 soon became so general, and gained such strength, that it 
 divided the ecclesiastical life of the Netherlands into the 
 parties of the Arminians and the Gomarists. Since the year 
 1610, when the Arminians appeared as a ccyigregation, and 
 brought their confession of faith (" remonstrance ") before 
 the States of Holland and West Friesland, with a claim for 
 toleration, these two parties had stood opposed to each other 
 as Remonstrants and Counter-remonstrants. With these 
 parties in the Church, political parties were united, — the 
 monarchical party, headed by Maurice of Nassau (Prince of 
 Orange since February, 1618), and the Republican party, 
 under the leadership of John van Oldenbarneveld, grand 
 pensionary of Holland, and Hugo Grotius, recorder of Rot- 
 terdam. The party of Orange sided with the Calvinists, 
 and summoned a universal synod for the condemnation of 
 their opponents : the Republican party sided with the Armin- 
 ians, and insisted on the right of individual States to self- 
 government in ecclesiastical matters, a right which they 
 guarded with their own militia against the attacks of their 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 183 
 
 fanatical opponents. The Stadtholder then caused the 
 leaders of the opposite party to be taken prisoners, and 
 accused of high treason against the United Netherlands. 
 Oldenbarneveld was beheaded (May 13, 1619) ; the victory 
 was given to orthodox Calvinism by the decrees of the synod 
 of Dort (1618) ; the Arminians were condemned, and ex- 
 cluded from the community of churches. Gishertus Voetius 
 was one of their most violent and intolerant opponents at 
 that synod : we shall meet him hereafter as professor in 
 Utrecht, in the life of our philosopher. When Descartes left 
 Breda, he did not dream how disagreeable the victors of 
 Dort would make his later residence in the Netherlands. 
 
 ni. MILITARY SERVICE IN GERMANY (1619-21). 
 
 1. Campaigns. — The first two years of Descartes' life as 
 a soldier were of the most peaceful character. In Breda, he 
 had become acquainted, not with war, but with an armistice ; 
 and his most interesting experience there was his intercourse 
 with a mathematician. He could not permit his military 
 career to end in such an unwarlike way, and just then a war 
 broke out in Germany. The news of the disturbances in 
 Bohemia whicli resulted in the Thirty Years' War had already 
 spread in the Netherlands. The Protestants of the land were 
 in the armed defence of their rights, in open resistance to the 
 authority of the emperor, particularly to prevent the succes- 
 sion of Ferdinand, who was to inherit the crown of Boliemia 
 from his cousin Matthias, and had set himself the task of 
 uprooting Protestantism, first in the kingdom of his inherit- 
 ance, and then, where it was possible, in the empire also. 
 The counts Thurn and Mansfeld led the insurgents in 
 Bohemia: the forces of the emperor were commanded by 
 Bucquoi. The Emperor Matthias died on the 20th of 
 March, 1619. In spite of the protests of the Bohemians, 
 Ferdinand went to Frankfort as elector of Bohemia, was 
 chosen king of Bohemia, Aug. 28, 1619, and crowned as 
 Emperor Ferdinand II., Sept. 9. Even before his coronation, 
 
184 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the Bohemians had proclaimed a Protestant prince, Frederick 
 V. of the Palatinate, as their king. War for the Bohemian 
 crown was thus inevitable between the new emperor and this 
 counter-king chosen by the Bohemians. This, however, was 
 only the starting-point of a struggle which, from the position 
 of affairs, necessarily and immediately spread. The question 
 was not merely as to the possession of Bohemia, but in a 
 wider sense as to the existence of Protestantism. It was a 
 struggle between the Catholic and Protestant interests in the 
 empire, which stood in opposition to each other in the alliances 
 of the Union and Liga. Thus, the material lay ready for the 
 breaking out of a great European war which was to lay waste 
 the lands of Germany for thirty years. 
 
 Descartes exchanged the Netherlands for this scene of 
 action. In July, 1619, he went to Frankfort-on-the-Main, 
 saw there the preparations for the election of an emperor, 
 and was present at the coronation, the most magnificent 
 spectacle which the world of that time could show. Then he 
 took service in the Bavarian army, and so we find him at the 
 commencement of the Thirty Years' War a volunteer esquire 
 of the leader of Liga. The first movement of the Bavarian 
 army was against Wiirtemberg, the duke of which stood on 
 the side of the union. The army marched against Donawert, 
 but the campaign was interrupted by diplomatic negotiations : 
 they entered winter quarters, and Descartes spent the winter 
 of 1619-20 at Neuburg-on-the-Danube in the most perfect 
 solitude, — a solitude that proved fruitful for his thoughts. 
 
 The diplomatic interruption had come from France. The 
 emperor had sought an alliance with the French : the most 
 influential man at the court of Louis XIII. , the favorite of 
 the king, the Duke of Luynes, had been won over to the 
 Austrian party ; and under the Duke of Angouleme, a bril- 
 liant embassy went to Germany, to arrange the differences of 
 the hostile parties in the interests of the emperor. The em- 
 bassy at first stopped at Ulm, the imperial city of Swabia ; 
 summoned thither the hostile parties of the empire, and 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 185 
 
 efifected an agreement, according to which the war, at first 
 confined to Bohemia, was made the exclusive matter of Fer- 
 dinand, and Frederick of the Palatinate ; and the Protestant 
 princes of Germany were excluded from participation in it. 
 From Ulm, the embassy went to Vienna. The Duke of 
 Bavaria, as an ally of the emperor, led his troops to upper 
 Austria, conquered there the rebellious Protestants, united, 
 in Bohemia, with the imperial army under Bucquoi, and 
 their combined forces defeated, in the battle of Prague, the 
 Bohemian rebels and their king, Frederick of the Palatinate, 
 who fled to Schlesia the same day that the victorious army 
 entered Prague. 
 
 During this time, Descartes was not always with the army 
 in which he served. After the winter in Neuburg, he went 
 in June, 1620, to Ulm, where he met his countrymen, and 
 remained some months on account of his interest in science. 
 In September he went to Vienna, where the French embassy 
 was, and returned to the Bavarian army in Bohemia probably 
 a little before the battle of Prague. He remained in Prague 
 until towards the end of the year, then spent some months 
 in solitude on the southern boundary of Bohemia, engaged 
 in meditation. Since the Bavarian army had ended its cam- 
 paign, he joined the imperial army under Bucquoi in Mora- 
 via in the beginning of the spring of 1621, as he wished to 
 continue for a while his life as a soldier, which just then 
 offered to him an experience of war. The revolt in Hungary, 
 which had been allied with that in Bohemia, still continued 
 under Bethlem Gabor. The campaign of the imperial army, 
 in which Descartes served, was directed against this enemy. 
 His panegyrists pretend that he distinguished himself in this 
 campaign : he himself tells us nothing of it. Bucquoi took 
 Presburg, Tirnau, and other fortified cities, and fell in the 
 heroic battle of Neuhausel, July 10, 1621. The siege of this 
 city was raised July 27 ; and soon after. Descartes quitted the 
 service of the emperor, and ended his life as a soldier. Dur- 
 ing these three years (1619-21) he served in the Netherlands 
 
186 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 during the truce, was in winter quarters in Neuburg, and 
 served in the Bohemian and Hungarian campaign. It ap- 
 pears that in Neuburg, where the war called him to Bohemia, 
 he had already intended to abandon his life as a soldier, and 
 travelled from Vienna to Venice in order to make a pilgrimage 
 on foot from that place to Loretto. 
 
 2. His Solitude in Neuburg. An Inner Crisis. — We must 
 look deep into the life of Descartes to find the man himself. 
 We must seek for the events of most importance to him, not 
 in campaigns and battles, but in the winter quarters on the 
 Danube and in Bohemia, where he resigned himself entirely 
 to his meditations. His scientific interests followed him 
 everywhere. In Ulm he became acquainted with the math- 
 ematician Faulhaber, and remained there some months: in 
 Prague nothing interested him more deeply than reminis- 
 cences of Tycho Bralie. But of most importance to his 
 development was that residence in Neuburg, where, in the 
 deepest solitudes, he found the clew which gradually led to 
 the founding of the new philosophy. It was the time of a 
 crisis. Since he left La FlSche, the doubts which there 
 took possession of him had not let him rest : they had fol- 
 lowed him into the society of Paris, had driven him into the 
 solitude of the suburb of St. Germain, and been his com- 
 panions in the garrison of Breda. Mathematics alone seemed 
 to him to give certain knowledge. It satisfied him entirely, 
 and even became the bond of his friendships. Yet it did 
 not free him from the doubts that disquieted him. Its clear- 
 ness did not make the other sciences clearer : the certainty 
 of its truths did not protect him against the uncertainty of 
 philosophy. If we could only make philosophy as certain 
 as mathematics, if we could penetrate the nature of things 
 with mathematical distinctness, and form a philosophy accord- 
 ing to the method of geometry, we could build a system of 
 true philosophy, very slowly, to be sure, but with perfect 
 certainty. That was the problem which had gradually taken 
 shape in his mind, — as sceptical as it was mathematical, — 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 187 
 
 and the solution of which became united with the inmost 
 aim of his life. Philosophy lay before him like a dark 
 chaos: mathematics shone upon him from a perfectly clear 
 sky. If we could only let this light into that chaos ! But 
 how is it possible? On this question the mind of Descartes 
 was concentrated. He felt that he was standing at the door 
 of truth, and could not enter it. In every moment of soli- 
 tude, this importunate problem thrusts itself upon him, 
 though he cannot solve it. With a feeling of his own impo- 
 tency, he prays for light from heaven, and vows a pilgrimage 
 to Loretto. Since he can find no help in himself, he seeks it 
 without. It seems to him as if some one could explain the 
 riddle, as if the key were somewhere preserved as a secret 
 treasure, like the stone of the Wise, which only adepts 
 possess. In the midst of his doubts, he feels an impulse 
 towards mystics and magicians. In this mood he hears of 
 the " brotherhood of the Hosicrucians," which arose in a mys- 
 tical manner, and, consecrated to the service of truth, intends 
 to enlighten the world, and free the sciences from their 
 errors. It is impossible for any one outside of the society to 
 learn who its members are, and they dare not betray them- 
 selves in any way. The imagination of people is so much 
 the more active about them ; the most fabulous reports go 
 from mouth to mouth ; works are published in defence of 
 them and in opposition to them. The interest of our phi- 
 losopher is deeply aroused. He earnestly seeks to meet one 
 of them, perhaps through a work, the title of wliich has been 
 preserved, and which was to have been dedicated to the 
 Rosicrucians : but all his efforts were in vain ; he never was 
 able to discover a Rosi crucian, for the simple reason that 
 there were none. At the time when Descartes was seeking 
 them, the rumor of such a society had just arisen ; and the 
 published writings, which spread abroad their fame, their 
 plans for reformation, the wonderful history of their founder 
 and their order, had just begun to be circulated (since 1614). 
 The whole matter had no foundation in fact. It was an 
 
188 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 invention of the Suabian theologian, Valentin Andrese 
 (1586-1654), circulated by him for the purpose of disgust- 
 ing the world with magic and its pretended reformations, by 
 the most extravagant satire, and directing it to a genuine 
 reformation by means of practical Christianity. He wished 
 to scourge a folly of the time, and was compelled to discover 
 that he had promoted it in a high degree, by providing for 
 it new nourishment, which all the world greedily swallowed^ 
 The Rosicrucians were sought everywhere: they existed 
 nowhere. Never has a satire so completely failed of its 
 intended effect, and accomplished the exact opposite. It 
 became a universal mystification, gave birth to the fables 
 concerning the Rosicrucians, even duped a Descartes, and 
 made a Leibnitz curious fifty years after its origin.^ But 
 what shall we say when even in our day the latest French 
 biographer of Descartes accepts the Rosicrucians as an his- 
 torical fact, and even conjectures that Descartes was a mem- 
 ber of that brotherhood, whose founder or head at that time 
 was Andrese! To be sure, Descartes alwaj'-s denied that he 
 was a Rosicrucian, or that he knew any of them ; but that 
 proves nothing, since he dared not acknowledge it.^ 
 
 These moods of despondency in which Descartes felt help- 
 less, and vowed pilgrimages, and longed for the Rosicrucians, 
 passed by. Truth cannot be received from without, but 
 must be sought in a path that one discovers and makes for 
 himself. This right and sure road is Method, already typi- 
 fied in mathematics and logic. The point now is, to make 
 it universal, i.e., philosophical ; to simplify it, and free it 
 from all defects. Even then Descartes knew certain rules 
 which point out the path the mind must follow in seeking 
 truth: knowledge extends no farther than clear and dis- 
 tinct thought ; dark conceptions must be analyzed into their 
 elements, and illuminated step by step ; clear ones must be 
 so arranged and united that their connection may be as 
 
 1 Vol. iii. of this work (sec. ed.), pp. 72 and following. 
 ' Millet: Histoire de Descartes, vol. i. p. 93. 
 
DESCAETES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 189 
 
 evident as they are themselves. At first all is dark. "What 
 is required, therefore, is a universal and fundamental analysis 
 of our conceptions, — an analysis of them into their simplest 
 elements, the simplicity of which is equivalent to their 
 absolute clearness and certainty. These rules must not only 
 be given, but followed. They require a knowledge of self/ 
 illuminating the very core of our being, demanding all the 
 powers of our mind, and, therefore, our entire life, and aim- 
 ing at the instruction of self as the single purpose of life. 
 Every dependence upon the opinions of others is a devia- 
 tion from this goal, a false step in the direction of the life 
 which must preserve the greatest independence in thought 
 and judgment. But this independence reaches only so far 
 as thought : farther it ought not to reach, and cannot. Here 
 is the limit, and the failure to observe it would be likewise 
 a false step. Self-instruction, therefore, requires the greatest 
 self-limitation. Thought takes its own way ; and to find this 
 way, and systematize it, one mind is sufficient, and better than 
 many. In the world, on the other hand, complicated human 
 interests prevail, difficult to systematize, laboriously adjusted 
 to each other in the great organizations of society, which 
 have gradually arisen, and oppose every theory arbitrarily 
 obtruded upon them, every methodical regulation which 
 thought would introduce in accordance with its guiding 
 principle. There is in this point a sharp distiuction between 
 the theoretical and practical life : the former requires a sys- 
 tematic arrangement governed by one fundamental thought ; 
 the latter will not tolerate it. The reform of thought, there- 
 fore, is entirely different from that of society; and the 
 instruction of self, in its search for the truth, has neither 
 the time nor the ability to improve the world. A direct 
 application of theory to public and practical affairs is, in 
 Descartes' eyes, a most erroneous use of method, and, there- 
 fore, an unmethodical procedure of the most vicious charac- 
 ter, which he avoided on principle. The instruction of self 
 was for him the task of the whole of life, a purely personal 
 
190 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and private one, which he never sought to have accepted 
 as an example by others. That saying of Faust, "Do not 
 imagine that I could teach any thing to improve and amend 
 men," was with Descartes, not the bitter, but the good- 
 natured and modest, expression of the aim of his life. This 
 inability is likewise a nolition on principle. What has 
 happened in the arrangement of public affairs can be changed 
 and reformed only gradually. It is better for them to 
 remain as they are than to be suddenly overturned by an 
 abstract theory, and what is bad in them become worse than 
 before. By such considerations Descartes justified his con- 
 servatism. In his thoughts he intended to be free ; and he 
 avoided, therefore, every public position in life, related him- 
 self to the activities of the world, less as an actor than as 
 a spectator. He made no change in the outward form of 
 his life. From a feeling of piety and on principle, he re- 
 mained loyal to the laws of his land, to the religion of his 
 father, to the customs of his rank ; and he resolved before- 
 hand rather not to publish any thoughts that might conflict 
 with public authorities, than to disquiet men, and disturb 
 ideas long established in Church and State. This mode of 
 thought, to which we cannot allow the courage of the 
 reformer, aiming at the welfare of others, but to which we 
 must concede a wise caution, a ripe judgment, based on a 
 wide experience of the world, and a profound knowledge 
 of men, was already methodically confirmed, when, at the 
 age of five and twenty, Descartes left the army. His state- 
 ments concerning this matter are so simple and artless that 
 no one can read them and regard the cautious, at times 
 timid, conduct of Descartes as an affectation. " I was then 
 in Germany," he says, in his essay on method, "attracted 
 thither by the wars which are still going on in that country ; 
 and, as I was returning from the coronation of the emperor, 
 I spent the beginning of the winter in a locality, where, 
 without distracting conversation, and fortunately, also, with- 
 out any cares or passions, I remained the whole day alone 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 191 
 
 in my room, with full opportunity to occupy myself with my 
 thoughts. One of the first of these that occurred to me was, 
 that works composed of many parts are often less perfect 
 than those which are the work of a single hand. Thus, one 
 sees that the buildings which a single architect has planned 
 and executed, are generally more beautiful and commodious 
 than those which several have attempted to improve, by 
 making old walls serve purposes for which they were not 
 originally intended." " It is true that it is not customary to 
 pull down all the houses of a city, for the simple purpose 
 of rebuilding them in another form, and of making more 
 beautifiil streets ; but we certainly do see that many people 
 have their houses pulled down in order to rebuild them, 
 and that they are often even constrained to this when their 
 houses are in danger of falling down, and their foundations 
 are insecure. I was accordingly convinced that it would 
 indeed be absurd for a private individual to think of reform- 
 ing the State by fundamentally changing it throughout, and 
 overturning it with a view of restoring it amended ; and I 
 had the same opinion of any similar plan for reforming the 
 body of the sciences and their systems, as they are estab- 
 lished in schools. But I thought that I could do nothing 
 better with my opinions than to cast them off at once and 
 completely, that I might be able, by reflection, to put others 
 in their places, or even to restore the very same ones after 
 they had been vindicated by reason. And I was certain, 
 that, in this way, I should succeed in ordering my life far 
 better than if I built upon old foundations, and held fast to 
 principles which I had taken on trust in my youth, and 
 the truth of which I had not at any time tested. For, 
 although I was conscious of various difficulties in this under- 
 taking, they were not insurmountable, and not to be com- 
 pared with those which are involved in the slightest 
 reformation in public affairs. Only with great labor can 
 the huge bodies of society be set up again when they are 
 once overthrown, or even held upright when they totter; 
 
192 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and their fall is always very disastrous. Then their imper- 
 fections are always somewhat modified by time ; and many 
 of them, which no sagacity could have reached with equal 
 success, have thus been insensibly removed or corrected; 
 and, finally, these defects are in almost all cases more toler- 
 able than their arbitrary change. It is in this case as with 
 the roads that wind between mountains, and which daily use 
 has made so smooth and easy, that it is far better to follow 
 them than to seek a straight path by clambering over rocks, 
 and descending to the bottom of precipices. I shall never, 
 therefore, be able to approve of those restless meddlers, who, 
 called neither by birth nor fortune to the management of 
 public affairs, are continually projecting theoretical reforms 
 in public matters. And if I thought that this essay con- 
 tained any thing which could make me suspected of such 
 folly, I should be very sorry that I have consented to its 
 publication. I have never intended any thing more than 
 to reform my own thoughts, and base them on a foundation 
 entirely my own. And, although my satisfaction with my 
 work causes me here to give an account of it, I do not 
 counsel any one to make a similar attempt. Others, whom 
 God has more highly endowed, may, perhaps, entertain 
 more exalted purposes ; but I am afraid that even mine is 
 too bold for many. The resolve to strip one's self of all 
 past beliefs is not an example for every man." After Des- 
 cartes had developed his method in its theoretical and practi- 
 cal relations, and stated the maxims by which his life was 
 governed, he continues, "Having thus provided myself with 
 these maxims, and put them aside with those principles of 
 faith which I have ever held in the highest regard, I thought 
 I could take the liberty to renounce and examine the re- 
 mainder of my opinions. And, inasmuch as I hoped to be 
 better able to accomplish this work by intercourse with men, 
 than by remaining longer in solitude, where these thoughts 
 had occurred to me, T began travelling before the end of the 
 winter. And during the nine subsequent years, I did noth- 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 193 
 
 ing but wander, now here, now there, since I wished to be 
 a spectator, rather than an actor, in the dramas of the world ; 
 and since in every matter I carefully considered what might 
 be doubted, and prove a source of deception, I gradually 
 succeeded in rooting out all the errors that had crept into 
 my mind. Not that in this I imitated the sceptics, who 
 doubt for the sake of doubt, and seek to be always unde- 
 cided. My design, on the contrary, was to obtain certainty, 
 and to throw aside the loose earth and sand, in order to find 
 rocks or clay." " Thus, living apparently as those who have 
 nothing to do but to lead a pleasant and innocent life, and 
 who strive to enjoy their pleasures without vices, and engage 
 in all honorable diversions, that they may enjoy their leisure 
 without ennui, I was constantly progressing in the execution 
 of my plans, and perhaps making greater gains in the knowl- 
 edge of truth than if I had done nothing but read books, 
 and converse with scholars." ^ 
 
 3. The Epoch of the Crisis. — We have allowed Descartes 
 to speak at such length on account of the biographical im- 
 portance of his statements. Although they were not pub- 
 lished until eighteen years had passed by after the events of 
 which they give so luminous an account, their historical 
 truth cannot be doubted when we consider that Descartes' 
 love of truth and his accurate self-knowledge would certainly 
 exclude any deception of memory concerning the progress of 
 his own development. This account is the single, perfectly 
 trustworthy and authentic source of our knowledge of the 
 crisis of his life. It is accordingly certain that Descartes left 
 school a sceptic, trying to find truth, but ignorant of the 
 road to it ; that the guiding light began .to shine into his 
 mind during his retirement in Neuburg in the winter of 
 1619 ; that he there first saw the possibility and necessity of 
 applying the analytical method to the human mind and its 
 cognitions with the same certainty and success as he had so 
 
 1 Disoours de la M^thode. Parts II. et III. Cf. my translation, pp. 12-16, 
 27,28. 
 
194 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fortunately found in geometry. He had discovered the fun- 
 damental principle of analytical geometry when he ^formed 
 the important resolution to deal with himself instead of 
 quantities ; to analyze his own mind and its cognitions in 
 order to banish darkness, and come into light ; to so order 
 his entire life accordingly that it might be the constant 
 subject of this experiment of which he had no example, and 
 might reward him for his labor. In this resolution, all the 
 rules were contained which he then adopted for his guidance. 
 He still felt far from the goal that he hoped slowly and surely 
 to reach, but he felt that he was on the right road. At the 
 age of three and twenty, one has not yet that knowledge of 
 men or that experience of himself which ought to precede a 
 fundamental and methodical examination of himself. Ac- 
 cordingly, Descartes postponed it until he had completed his 
 " Wanderjahre," which he henceforth arranged with a view 
 to this problem of his life and method. The goal, sought on 
 this road, could be none other than the principles of modern 
 philosophy of which Descartes was the founder. Its germ 
 was planted in that solitude in Neuburg, but it required nine 
 years to come to perfect maturity. The certainty of the crisis 
 filled Descartes with enthusiastic joy: the view opened, and 
 in the distance the Olympic peaks of knowledge were ablaze 
 with light; we use his own figure. It seems that we can 
 determine the day of this remarkable epoch in his life : it was 
 the 10th of November, 1619. In the diary of the philosopher 
 relating to that time, which, so far, is unfortunately lost, — 
 our knowledge of it is derived from Baillet's accounts, and 
 from incomplete transcripts made by Leibnitz, and published 
 by Foucher de Careil, — there was a note with the heading 
 " Olympica," and in the margin, " On the tenth of Novem- 
 ber I began to make a wonderful discovery (intelligere ccepi 
 fundamentum inventi mirabilis}." In Leibnitz' transcript, the 
 year is 1620 : according to Baillet's account, the words of 
 Descartes were, " On the tenth of November, 1619, filled 
 with enthusiasm I discovered the foundations of a wonderful 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 195 
 
 science (cum plenus forem enthusiasms et mirabilis scientise 
 fundc^jienta reperirem)." The published statements of the 
 philosopher without further detail mark the beginning of the 
 winter of 1619 as the epoch of the crisis. In a longer note 
 in his diary, he says, " I shall be in Loretto before the end 
 of November, shall finish and publish my essay before Easter, 
 as I have promised myself this day, September 23, 1620." 
 The subject of that essay could be none other than that dis- 
 covery in return for which he had vowed the pilgrimage to 
 Loretto. He made the pilgrimage five years later : seventeen 
 years rolled by before , he published the work, — twenty, 
 indeed, if the principles of the system was the work 
 alluded to. 
 
 The accounts of the first discovery vary. His most recent 
 biographer supposes that the " scientice mirabilis " and the 
 " inventum mirabile " refer to different discoveries, the first 
 of which was made Nov. 10, 1619 ; the second, Nov. 11, 1620. 
 The subject of the first, he thinks, was analytical geometry 
 and also the new method of philosophy ; that of the second is 
 unknown, probably of a particular mathematical character, 
 and relating to equations. Now, this combination is purely 
 ■ arbitrary : in the diary of Descartes, so far as Leibnitz has 
 copied it, and Foucher de Careil has published it, there is not 
 one word under the date of Nov. 11, 1620. In the text of the 
 diary, Descartes says, " In the year 1620 I first began to per- 
 ceive a wonderful discovery;" on the margin, Nov. 10 is 
 written as the date of it; and we are further told, that 
 Descartes intended to make S- pilgrimage from Venice to 
 Loretto in November, 1620. 
 
 In the light of Descartes' statements, the most certain 
 opinion appears to be, that the 10th of November was the 
 epoch-making day when he conceived the first, fruitful 
 thought of his philosophy. (The year 1620 in connection 
 with this date is probably a mistake made by Leibnitz in 
 copying.) 
 
 Baillet informs us, on the authority of the diary, that, im- 
 
196 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mediately after the enthusiastic excitement of the eventful 
 day, Descartes had three remarkable dreams, which^e de- 
 scribed in detail, and interpreted as allegories of his past and 
 future. In the first, he seemed to be lame, driven by a storm 
 to seek protection in a church ; in the second, he thought he 
 heard a sound like thunder, and saw sparks of fire around 
 him ; in the third, he suddenly opened the poem of Ausonius 
 and read the words, "■ Quod vitce sectabor iter ? " After long 
 impotency and many inward struggles, Descartes had on the 
 day before heard the voice of truth, had suddenly seen light, 
 and found the path of his life.^ 
 
 '' In the Olympica (according to Leibnitz' copy) the following sentence 
 comes immediately after the date of his "wonderful discovery:" "In No- 
 vember, 1619, I dreamed of a poem that began with the words, ' Quod vitas 
 sectabor iter ?"' It is to be inferred from this, that immediately before, not the 
 year 1620, but 1619, was mentioned, with the marginal note, " On the tenth of 
 November," etc. 
 
 Compare Foucher de Careil: CEuvres in^dites de "Descartes, I. (Paris, 
 1859), Pre'f. ix.-xiii.; Introd. xi.-xv. Millet: Hist, de Descartes, I. pp. 74- 
 82, 96-98. 
 
DESCAETES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 197 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONTINUATION. (6) TEAVBL.S, AND SECOND RESIDENCE 
 IN PARIS. 
 
 TT^IGHT months passed by before Descartes returned to 
 -*-^ France from Hungary, where he ended his military 
 career. He wished to travel for some time, since his travels 
 were his studies in the great book of the world ; and his coun- 
 try at this time had little attiaction for him. The renewal 
 of the war with the Huguenots, and the pestilence which had 
 raged for a year in Paris, made a longer absence in foreign 
 lands agreeable. He travelled through Moravia and Silesia, 
 to Mark-Brandenburg and Pomerania, where we find him in 
 the beginning of the autumn of 1621, thence to Mecklen- 
 burg and Holstein, thence from Emden by way of the sea 
 to West Friesland ; and experienced during the voyage an 
 adventure which he narrated in a note of that time (under 
 the heading " Experimenta "), and in which his presence of 
 mind, and moral force, stood a successful test. The mariners 
 with whom he sailed intended to rob and kill him. Believ- 
 ing that he did not understand their language, they talked 
 about it quite openly ; but Descartes perceived their inten- 
 tion, and with quickly drawn sword and determined air so 
 frightened the robbers that he rescued himself and his ser- 
 vant. From West Friesland he went to Holland, where h& 
 remained a part of the winter. In The Hague, he visited 
 the court of the Prince of Orange ; and, directly after, that 
 of the Infantin Isabella in Brussels. In March, 1622, he re- 
 turned to France, came into possession of his inheritance from 
 
198 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his mother, and went to Paris in February, 1623. Among 
 the items of news which then attracted the attention of the 
 social circles of the metropolis, the events of the war in 
 Germany, and the brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, were the 
 most interesting. No one could speak more intelligently 
 concerning the most recent and important events of the 
 German war than Descartes, and his accounts were listened 
 to with the greatest attention. A report was also abroad, 
 that there were members of the Rosicrucians, that order of 
 "invisibles," in Paris, that Descartes was very closely con- 
 nected with them, that he was even a member of that myste- 
 rious brotherhood. The Rosicrucians even became a subject 
 of literary controversies at this time. Mersenne was engaged 
 in a controversy with the English scientist, Robert Fludd, 
 who defended them ; while Gassendi, who was afterward to 
 rival Descartes for the honor of being the first philosopher 
 of France, opposed them. After nine years Descartes again 
 met his old friend Mersenne, who had returned to Paris in 
 the mean time, and then lived near the Palace Royal, and 
 was working on the edition of his commentary on Genesis. 
 As to the Rosicrucians, Descartes could only reply in jest, to 
 the curious questions, that his presence proved that he was 
 not an " invisible." 
 
 He resided in Paris but a few months. After he had 
 again visited his family in Brittany, and sold his property in 
 Poitou, he started again upon his travels (September, 1623), 
 directing his course towards the south. He wished to be- 
 come acquainted with Italy, and live in Rome during a part 
 of the year of the jubilee that began Christmas, 1624. The 
 papal city was then, as it were, an abstract of the whole of 
 Europe. He went through Switzerland to Tyrol, and visited 
 in Innspruck the court of the Archduke Leopold; went 
 thence to Venice, and saw on Ascension Day the imposing 
 ceremony of the marriage of the doge with the sea; from 
 thence made a pilgrimage to Loretto, to fulfil the vow he had 
 made in Neuburg five years before. At the beginning of 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 199 
 
 the jubilee he was in Rome, and remained there until the 
 following spring. On his return he stopped at Florence, 
 and visited the court of the great duke, Ferdinand II. ; but 
 he did not see Galileo, the greatest man of the time, who 
 was afterward to exert a momentous influence upon his life. 
 The statement that he made the acquaintance of Galileo is 
 contradicted by his own declaration in a letter to Mersenne. 
 Before the middle of the year 1625, he returned to France 
 by Piedmont and over the Alps. 
 
 Near the beginning of the summer, Descartes went to 
 Paris, where he remained, with some interruptions, during 
 the three following years. Shortly before this, an otEce 
 suitable to his rank was offered to liim in Chattellerault, and 
 he seems to have thought of buying it ; but he gave up the 
 idea when he thought of it seriously, and, true to his first 
 resolve, preserved his independence and leisure. The circle 
 of his scientific acquaintances and friends increased ; he was 
 sought on all sides, and was even then considered as one of 
 the first mathematicians and philosophers of his time. In 
 this circle were to be found the ablest mathematicians, 
 physicists, and theologians of the metropolis. I mention the 
 names of Hardy, de Beaune, Morin, Desargues, Balzac, the 
 physician Villebressieux, the theologians Gibieuf, de la Barde, 
 de Sancy, and particularly his first patron, the Cardinal 
 B^ruUe. In the following years we find the physician Ville- 
 bressieux and the ahh6 Picot in intimate relation with Des- 
 cartes. His most intimate friends were still those of his first 
 residence in Paris, Mersenne and Mydorge, who was then 
 engaged in optical experiments and studies, and stimulated 
 Descartes to the investigations which afterwards bore fruit 
 in his " Dioptrics." Both of them were supported in these 
 studies by Ferrier, one of the first optical artisans of Paris, 
 who was skilled alike in the theory and technics of his art, 
 and who made the instruments sketched by Mydorge, and 
 with whom Descartes practised the art of polishing glasses. 
 Descartes esteemed him so highly, that there was no one 
 
200 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with whom he, in after years, would have more willingly- 
 shared that so carefully sought and so anxiously guarded 
 solitude in Holland. 
 
 From the house of his friend Le Vasseur d'Etioles, where 
 he had at first resided, he again withdrew into the suburb 
 of St. Germain, to spend some time in a more retired way. 
 When he returned into the house of Le Vasseur, and into 
 the larger circle of his friends, the social and scientific inter- 
 course began again; and there was thus formed there a little 
 academy, of which Descartes was the centre. There, in 
 social conversations, he gave the first expression to the 
 philosophical thoughts which had ripened in solitude, and 
 which, through their originality and depth, so surprised his 
 friends, and were at the same time so obviously true, that 
 scholars and booksellers immediately urged him to publish 
 them. But Descartes was resolved to be on his guard 
 against all precipitance and prejudice in the execution of 
 his work, to cultivate the growing crop a while longer, and 
 to wait for the harvest until the time of perfect maturity 
 had come in his own life also. Soon society and visits again 
 wearied him ; the irresistible longing for solitude again 
 returned: and he fled from the house of his friend, and 
 concealed himself on the outskirts of Paris, in a dwelling 
 known only to his most intimate friends (summer of 1628). 
 Le Vasseur sought him in vain. Finally he met his servant 
 on the street, and compelled him to point out the dwelling; 
 and there Le Vasseur found Descartes at eleven o'clock in 
 bed, according to his custom, and watched him for a long time 
 unobserved, as he lay, writing from time to time, absorbed 
 in meditation. 
 
 When Descartes first left France, Louis XIII. had shaken 
 off the influence of his mother, and abandoned himself to 
 the control of his favorite : when he returned to Paris, this 
 rule was over, and at the side of the weak long an able 
 statesman was rising into power, really called to govern. 
 The year before, Richelieu was made cardinal ; two years 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 201 
 
 later, under the again powerful influence of the queen- 
 mother, he became a member of the council of state ; soon 
 he was the first minister, in truth the only ruler, in France. 
 The policy of this man tolerated no power in France that 
 opposed or threatened the royal rule ; and demanded, there- 
 fore, the subjection and disarmament of the Protestants and 
 their fortified cities, of which latter La Rochelle was the 
 most important. He determined to starve out this city, and 
 therefore so to invest it as to make relief and the supply of 
 provisions impossible. The besiegers had the greatest diffi- 
 culties to encounter from the position of the city ; and that 
 they were able to overcome them, made the siege of La 
 Rochelle memorable in the history of military science. A 
 crowd of curious people flocked there to see the military 
 works, Descartes among them ; and he was compensated 
 before Rochelle for the solitude given up in Paris. His 
 friend Desargues had, as engineer, assisted in making the 
 machinery ; and he introduced Descartes to Richelieu. The 
 king himself was present, and it did not suit him for the 
 nobles whom curiosity had drawn there to be mere specta- 
 tors. Descartes was among the attendants of the king when 
 he reconnoitred the English fleet which tried in vain to 
 relieve the city, and afterwards when he entered it after it 
 had voluntarily surrendered. At the beginning of Novem- 
 ber, 1628, Descartes returned to Paris from this his last cam- 
 paign (if we can give it such a name). Exactly nine years 
 had passed since in Neuburg on the Danube he first saw the 
 road whose terminus now lay close at hand. 
 
 Some days after his return, Descartes celebrated a victory 
 which was more memorable to him than his campaigns, — a 
 triumph of his method; a test which it had stood success- 
 fully before a chosen circle of able and influential men. 
 "When new ideas are in the air, many imagine that they have 
 already grasped them; and along with the true and rare dis- 
 coverer we always find a crowd of supposed innovators who 
 deceive themselves and others. Such people usually have all 
 
202 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sorts of knowledge, know precisely as much as they make a 
 display of, and have an impudent assurance in appearing 
 before the public, an amazing readiness and social cleverness 
 in speaking, — all of them qualities calculated to deceive par- 
 ticularly the world of rank and fashion, which often has 
 difficulty in distinguishing gold from fools' gold. A certain 
 Chandoux was an example of this class, a doctor and chemist 
 by profession, who had already attracted attention in Paris. 
 Aristotle and the scholastics were, in his mouth, abandoned 
 and obsolete points of view ; he could declaim against them 
 in as modern a way as Bacon, Hobbes, and Gassendi: his 
 every other word was "the new philosophy," the new and 
 absolutely certain principles which he boasted that he him- 
 self had discovered. This boasting had really deceived the 
 papal ambassador. Marquis de Bagne ; he wished this luminary 
 to let his light shine in his circle, and invited a company of 
 celebrated people to hear him. Besides Cardinal Berulle, 
 Descartes, Mersenne, Villebressieux, and others were invited. 
 Chandoux was prepared, and his fluent and plausible exposi- 
 tion won the sincere approval of this select audience. Des- 
 cartes said nothing. Cardinal Bdrulle, observing his silence, 
 asked his opinion. He answered evasively, as if after the ap- 
 proval of such men nothing further were to be said. Finally, 
 pressed on all sides, he took up the discourse, praised its flu- 
 ency, and the freedom with which Chandoux had declared 
 against scholasticism, in behalf of a completely independent 
 philosophj'' ; but as to the supposed new principles, he was 
 obliged to doubt whether they could stand the test of truth. 
 Descartes saw before him an example of that self-deception 
 which he had himself experienced, and which he had seen a 
 thousand times in others, and the nature of which he thor- 
 oughly understood. An opportunity of setting an example 
 offered itself. We must have a test to distinguish truth from 
 error. He who does not possess it gropes in darkness. He 
 pledged himself so to refute the most evident truth that might 
 
DESCARTES: THE SECOND PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 203 
 
 be proposed to him, and so to prove the most evident error, 
 that his hearers would be forced to admit the validity of his 
 reasonings. The double experiment was immediately made, 
 and Descartes kept his pledge by producing twelve argu- 
 ments of increasing probability. His object was to show 
 that nothing can be proved or disproved by unproved prin- 
 ciples, and that merely apparent principles prove nothing ; 
 that all previous philosophizing, no matter how many mod- 
 ern terms it employed, was based on unreal foundations; 
 and that the new philosophy of Chandoux was in this 
 respect not one whit better than the old and traditional 
 one which he despised. Without the touchstone of truth, 
 there is in human knowledge no protection against false 
 coins. Chandoux seems to have understood this art better 
 in other matters than in philosophy : he practised it on 
 money, and was hanged on the Grdveplatz as a counter- 
 feiter. 
 
 Descartes made no secret of his criterion ; and he declared 
 to his hearers whom his experiment had convinced, and who 
 were, therefore, desirous to know more about it, that all truth 
 can be discovered only by methodical thought, and must be 
 tested by it. Cardinal B^rulle was profoundly impressed. 
 He recognized in Descartes the epoch-making mind called 
 to the reformation of philosophy, capable of becoming for 
 France such a renovator of science as Bacon had been for 
 England. In a confidential conversation, he formally pledged 
 Descartes to write and publish a work on method. The ex- 
 hortations of such a man must have strengthened his already 
 mature resolution to devote himself henceforth to the execu- 
 tion of his work. For the complete collection of his thoughts 
 he needed leisure, and freedom from disturbance, which 
 Paris did not afford him. It appears that he lived for some 
 time in the country in the neighborhood of Paris, and wrote 
 there, perhaps, the first sketch of his doctrine of method 
 " The Rules for the Direction of the Mind " QEegulce ad Direo- 
 
204 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tionem Ingenit), of which only a fragment has been preserved. 
 After carefully considering where it would be best for him 
 to live, with a view to his health and the undisturbed prose- 
 cution of his work, he went to Holland, and remained there 
 for the next twenty years. 
 
DESCAHTES: THE THIRD PEBIOD OF HIS LIFE. 205 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THIED PERIOD (1629-1650). THE PERIOD OP THE WORKS. 
 (o) RESIDENCE IN THE NETHERLANDS. 
 
 I. "THE HERMITAGE m HOLLAND." 
 
 rr^HE Wanderj'ahre were over. Descartes had seen much 
 -*- of the world ; had become acquainted with human life 
 in its most different forms, and observed its unconscious de- 
 ceptions. He had become a great critic of opinions, a master 
 in the detection of error. His mind had been so critically 
 trained, so methodically exercised in distinguishing truth 
 from error, so sharpened by a comprehensive knowledge of 
 men, so undeceived by the false values of the world, that he 
 was then mature enough to undertake the difficult task of 
 self-examination, and to discover the truth in himself. We 
 expect from him no descriptions of his travels, no account of 
 the courts and armies, the countries and cities, which he has 
 seen ; but a profound analysis of human knowledge, unre- 
 strained by fear of doubt. He proposed to take himself as 
 a representative of human consciousness, as an example of a 
 mind filled with experiences of the world and of life, even 
 as Montaigne's had been. On this plane must he stand, if 
 he would overcome the doubts which had remained the last 
 and most mature fruits of Montaigne's experiences. Des- 
 cartes had not travelled in order to recount the adventures 
 of a French cavalier. And we do not understand him if 
 (with a French contemporary writer) we regard the phi- 
 losopher and the man of the world in him as two different 
 persons. The man of the world was the instructor of the 
 
206 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 philosopher. This was their relation in the plan of his life, 
 according to his own statements. His studies in the world 
 are completed now, and he has come to the point where he 
 must begin his study of himself. Now he seeks, as Montaigne 
 had done, " a quiet little place." 
 
 The v/orld attributed to Descartes more than he had ac- 
 tually accomplished. Up to the time when he left Paris, he 
 had been occupied with the sceptical and negative side of his 
 philosophy, not with the positive. That the world expected 
 such a work from him, and even believed that he had already 
 completed it, incited him to take up the matter in earnest, 
 and without delay. He would not permit the men of whose 
 judgment he thought most highly to be mistaken in their 
 opinion of him. At any rate, seven years later, looking 
 back upon his Wanderjahr-e, Descartes stated this as the mo- 
 tive which had finally caused him to retire into the workshop 
 of the philosopher. " These nine years passed away before 1 
 had come to any conclusion concerning the difficulties which 
 occasion the controversies of scholars, or had begun to lay 
 the foundations of a more certain philosophy than the tradi- 
 tional one. The example of so many eminent men who had 
 formed the same purpose before me, and who, as it seemed 
 to me, had failed, made me realize so many difficulties in the 
 work, that I would not have ventured on it so soon, had not 
 the report gone out that I had already completed it. I do 
 not know what were the grounds of this opinion; and if 
 any expressions of mine gave rise to it, this must have hap- 
 pened rather from my having confessed my ignorance more 
 frankly than scholars are in the habit of doing, and expounded 
 the reasons for doubting many things that seemed certain to 
 many, than from having boasted of a system of iDhilosophy. 
 But, too honorable to be willing to be more highly esteemed 
 than I deserved, I thought I ought to bend all my energies 
 to the task of making myself worthy of my reputation. I 
 therefore resolved, exactly eight years ago, to avoid every 
 place where it was possible for me to meet acquaintances. 
 
DESCAETES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 207 
 
 and to retire to a land where the long duration of war has 
 resulted in such discipline that the armies maintained only 
 enable the inhabitants to enjoy more securely the fruits of 
 peace, and where in the midst of a great and very busy 
 people, more careful of their own affairs than curious about 
 others', I have been able to live, without dispensing with the 
 advantages of the most populous cities, as solitary and re- 
 tired as in the midst of the most distant desert." ^ 
 
 Two conditions were necessary to enable Descartes to 
 devote himself to his work with complete freedom, — a favor- 
 able climate, and undisturbed solitude. France and Paris 
 offered neither : he found both in Holland, whither he went 
 in the beginning of the spring of 1629, exactly ten years after 
 he left Breda. He took the utmost precautions against every 
 interruption. He bade farewell to his family by letter, and 
 took leave in Paris of only his most intimate friends. The 
 Abb6 Picot had charge of his business matters, Mersenne of 
 his literary affairs : in particular, the greater part of the letters 
 that Descartes wrote to France, and received from thence, 
 passed through Mersenne's hands. Importunate curiosity 
 should not discover where he lived. He concealed his place 
 of residence even by false dates, frequently changed it, and 
 preferred those that were most out of the way, — suburbs, 
 villages, remote country-houses. For his correspondence in 
 Holland, also, he had friendly agents in different places, — 
 Beeckman in Dort, Bloemaert in Haarlem, Reynier in Am- 
 sterdam, Hooghland in Leyden. He lived in his retirement 
 like a nomad, "like the Jews in the deserts of Arabia." Dur- 
 ing his twenty years in Holland (1629-49), he changed his 
 residence twenty-four times, and lived in thirteen different 
 places. I mention Amsterdam, Franeker, Deventer, Utrecht,, 
 Amersfort, Leeuwarden, the abbey of Egmond in Alkmaar, 
 Egmond van Hoef, Harderwijk on the Zuyder Zee, Leyden, 
 and the palace of Endegeest near Leyden. He was there 
 entirely master of his time, and his mode of life : he could 
 1 (Euvres, t. i., Discours de la M^thode, part iii. pp. 155, 156. 
 
208 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 live in populous cities, finding abundant diversion in society, 
 and in intercourse with his friends, and as soon as he desired 
 to return to his work, he could retire to the most out-of-the- 
 way places, where no bore troubled him. There he was 
 safer than in the suburb of St. Germain. In such solitude 
 originated and matured the works which made him the 
 founder of modern philosophy, and an object of admiration 
 to the world. Franeker and Leeuwarden in Friesland, Harde- 
 wijk in Guelders, Endegeest near Leyden, and Egmond in 
 North Holland, were the places where his most iiuportant 
 works originated. The palace of Endegeest is still conse- 
 crated by the memory of Descartes. In Franeker, whither 
 he had gone from Amsterdam, soon after he left France (he 
 wrote his name, '■'■ lienatus Descartes Gallus philosophus" iu 
 the register of the University of Amsterdam), he dwelt in a 
 lonely palace which was separated from the city by a moat, 
 and wrote there the first sketch of his " Meditations," which 
 were finished ten years later in Harderwijk (1639-40). In 
 Leeuwarden his " Essays " originated, during the winter of 
 1635-36, which were introduced by the "Discours de la 
 M^thode," his first published work. In Endegeest he planned 
 the " Principles," his most important philosophical work 
 (1641-43), and finished it in Egmond. This was one of the 
 most beautiful villages in North Holland, and Descartes 
 liked best to stay there, and, indeed, did stay there longer 
 than anywhere else. His first stay there was during the 
 winter of 1637-38, immediately after the publication of his 
 " Essays : " his last was during the years 1643-49, — the last 
 period of his solitude in Holland, which was interrupted by 
 three journeys to France, made in 1644, 1647, and 1648. 
 
 Descartes' life in Holland can accordingly be divided into 
 three periods, the first of which precedes the publication 
 of his important works (1629-36) ; the second includes it 
 (1637-44); the third succeeds it (1644-49). During the 
 first, Descartes lived for the most part in Amsterdam, 
 Deventer, Utrecht, and Leeuwarden, after he left Franeker ; 
 
DESCARTES; THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 209 
 
 he lived during the second, first in Egmond, then in Harder- 
 wijk, Amersfort, Amsterdam, Leyden, and the castle of 
 Endegeest; he spent the third in Egmond. Directly after 
 the sketch of the "Meditations," which were finished in 
 their first form in December, 1629, Descartes began a com- 
 prehensive and important work, in which he intended to 
 explain the world according to liis new principles: it was 
 to be called "Cosmos," and was to be his first published 
 work. It was about finished, when, for reasons hereafter 
 to be stated, he determined not to publish it at all. He 
 was engaged in this work during the years 1630-33. After 
 he had thus abandoned the idea of appearing before the 
 public as instructor of the world in this first essay, he 
 hesitated whether he should not give it up forever. 
 
 Directly after this, occurred an episode not provided for 
 in the method of his life ; but inclination is often more 
 powerful than principle. In the winter of 1684-35, he 
 became acquainted with a lady in Amsterdam, with whom 
 he fell in love, and whom he made his wife without observ- 
 ing the forms of marriage. She bore him a daughter (in 
 Deventer, July 19, 1635), who was named " Francine Des- 
 cartes," and whom he cared for with tender love. But he 
 was not long to experience the happiness of a father: the 
 child died in Amersford, Sept. 7, 1640.1 
 
 Descartes thoroughly enjoyed the independence and leisure 
 which he had always desired, and which he found for the 
 first time in the Netherlands in undivided measure. Some 
 of his letters, particularly those of the first year, reveal a 
 most cheerful and contented state of mind, which communi- 
 cates itself to the reader. He described his idyllic life in 
 Holland, in the happiest mood, to Balzac, the well-known 
 protegS of Richelieu, by whom he was esteemed as a his- 
 toriographer and stylist. Descartes wrote to Balzac from 
 
 1 All further details are unknown. In the records of haptism of the 
 Reformed Church in Deventer, the mother is called " Hilene, fille de Jean." 
 Cf. Millet : Histoire de Descartes, i. pp. 339, 340. 
 
210 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Amsterdam in the spring of 1631, when the latter had 
 returned to Paris from his family estate : " I really had some 
 scruples about disturbing your quiet, and therefore pre- 
 ferred not to write until you were no longer enjoying the 
 solitude of the country. Though I intended to write the 
 first week, I have left you undisturbed for eighteen months, 
 during the whole of your' absence from home, and you have 
 not once thanked me. But now that you are again in Paris, 
 I must beg for my part of the time that is wasted by so 
 many importunate visitors, and say to you, that, in the two 
 years I have spent in foreign land, I have not once been 
 tempted to return to Paris ; and only since I have known 
 that you were there has it been possible for me to be hap- 
 pier elsewhere than here. And were it not that my work 
 restrains me, — the most important, in my poor judgment, in 
 which I can engage, — the wish to enjoy your conversation 
 and to see the birth of all those powerful thoughts which we 
 admire in your writings, would alone be strong enough to 
 drive me from this place. Do not ask me, I beg you, what 
 the work is which seems so important to me ; for I should be 
 ashamed to tell you. I have become so much of a philoso- 
 pher, that I set but little value on much that the world 
 esteems, while I put a high estimate on other things that 
 are usually considered worthless. Yet I know that you do 
 not think with the vulgar: you judge me more favorably 
 than I deserve, and at some convenient time I will talk with 
 you frankly about my labors. To-day, only this : I am not 
 in the humor to write books. I do not despise renown when 
 one is really able, as you are, to earn a great and solid 
 reputation. But to the middling and uncertain fame that I 
 perhaps might hope for, I prefer the peace and quiet of mind 
 which I have here. I sleep here every night ten hours, 
 without being awakened by a single care. I dream only of 
 beautiful things, of woods and gardens and the enchanted 
 palaces of legends ; and when I awake I find myself with still 
 greater delight in the actual world which surrounds me. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 211 
 
 Nothing but your presence is wanting." When Balzac 
 answered that he was iifclined to go to Holland, and live 
 also among the hermits, Descartes replied, " I thought that 
 I was dreaming, and rubbed my eyes, when I read that you 
 thought of coming here. And yet it is not at all strange 
 that a noble spirit like yours should no longer endure the 
 restraints of a court ; and if God has prompted you, as you 
 write, to leave the life of the world, I should sin against the 
 Holy Spirit if I should seek to dissuade you from such a 
 resolve. Rather, I invite you to choose Holland, and to 
 prefer it, not merely to the cloisters of all Capuchins and 
 Carthusians, to which so many honorable people retire, but 
 also to the most beautiful residences of France and Italy, — 
 even to that renowned hermitage where you sojourned last 
 year. A country-house, however well furnished, always 
 lacks many conveniences which one finds in a city, and even 
 the solitude which one hopes for in the country is never 
 perfect there. I admit that you may find there a brook so 
 magical in its beauty that it turns the greatest talkers into 
 dreamers ; a lovely vale, that rejoices and delights you : but 
 there are likewise a multitude of neighbors, who make visits 
 far more inconvenient than those which one receives in 
 Paris. But in this great city I am the only man who is not 
 engaged in business ; and every one else is so entirely occu- 
 pied with his own interests, that I could spend my entire life 
 here without being noticed by any one. I take a daily walk 
 in the midst of a multitude of people, as freely and quietly 
 as you do in your gardens. And I note the men about me as 
 I would the trees in your gardens, or the animals in your 
 meadows. Even the noise of traffic disturbs my reveries as 
 little as would the murmur of a brook. With the same 
 pleasure with which you regard the peasants as they culti- 
 vate your fields, I observe that the labor of all these people 
 contributes to make the place where I live more beautiful 
 and comfortable. And as the sight of rich, ripening fruits is 
 a pleasure to you, so I see with delight ships sailing into our 
 
212 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 harbor, laden with the productions of both Indias and the 
 rarities of Europe. Nowhere in thi world can all the pleas- 
 ures of life be had as easily as here. There is no country 
 in which civil freedom is more complete, security greater, 
 crime rarer, the simplicity of ancient manners more perfect, 
 than here. I do not understand why you prefer Italy, where 
 the heat of the day is unendurable, the coolness of the even- 
 ing unhealthy, the darkness of the night dangerous since it 
 conceals robbers and murderers. You fear the winter of the 
 North ; but what shade, what fans, what springs, can so well 
 protect you from the heat of Rome as you can here be kept 
 from the cold by a stove and a good fire ? Come therefore 
 to Holland : I await you with a little collection of my fan- 
 cies that may not, perhaps, displease you." ^ 
 
 After the publication of his first work, it was reported 
 that Richelieu intended to make the pliilosopher offei*s to 
 induce him to return to Paris. " I do not believe," writes 
 Descartes to Mersenne, "that the cardinal will condescend 
 to think of a man like me. Moreover, between ourselves, 
 there is nothing less suited to my plans than the air of Paris, 
 on account of the numerous distractions which are there 
 unavoidable. And as long as I can live as I choose, I will 
 rather stay in a village in any country you can mention, 
 where the visits of the neighbors are as little troublesome as 
 here in a corner of North Holland. This is my only reason 
 for preferring this country to my own, and I am now so ac- 
 customed to it that I have no wish to change my residence." ^ 
 
 We add to these passages from his letters a sentence from 
 the beginning of the " Meditations," one of the first which 
 Descartes wrote iji that retired castle in the city of Franeker : 
 " The present is favorable ; I am free from care, and enjoy 
 undisturbed leisure ; I am living in solitude, and will now 
 
 1 The first letter was written. In Cousin's opinion, March 29, 1631; the 
 second. May 15 of the same year. Balzac's answer was written between 
 them, April 25, 1631. (CEuvres, t. vi. pp. 197-203.) 
 
 '' This letter was evidently written in Egmond, May 27, 1638. (CEuvres, 
 t. vii. p. 155.) 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 213 
 
 apply myself earnestly and freely to my task, which at first 
 requires the complete overthrow of all my opmions." 
 
 II. INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE NETHERLANDS. 
 
 1. The State of Culture. — Holland, however, would scarcely 
 have been his " beloved hermitage," as he called it, if it had 
 not likewise afforded opportunities for the most active intel- 
 lectual intercourse. The Netherlands were then one of the 
 first centres of every kind of culture. Art and science, the 
 humanitarian and exact sciences, were in full bloom. Prot- 
 estantism had given new life to, and excited new contro- 
 versies in, the Church and theology ; which had quickened 
 its neighbor Catholicism also. In Leyden, the controversy 
 already mentioned between the Arminians and the Gomarists 
 had been kindled; in Lyons, Jansenism arose, which in 
 France came in contact with the doctrine of Descartes, and 
 was in part friendly to it. The universities of the Nether- 
 lands stood in the van of intellectual culture : new ones were 
 being founded. Particular mention must be made of the 
 University of Utrecht (established in 1636), where the first 
 school of the new philosophy was formed, and where it found 
 its most violent opponents. Science, learning, universal 
 culture, were the order of the day, and spread in the circles 
 of society like a fashion, even among women. Out of the 
 wealth of the interests of culture, there was developed in 
 receptive and gifted women a scientific, scholarly, and artistic 
 culture, which, even in its most masculine forms, was com- 
 patible with womanliness ; and, in spite of the astonishment 
 which they excited, they did not make the impression of 
 artificially educated "blue-stockings." 
 
 2. Anna Maria von Schurmann. — Anna Maria Schurmann 
 (1607-78) was then the most remarkable example of this 
 class, " the star of Utrecht, the tenth Muse, the Minerva of 
 Holland," as her admirers called her, a real prodigy of learn- 
 ing and varied culture. She learned the ancient languages 
 even in her childhood; read Seneca, Virgil, and Homer. To 
 
214 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 these she added the modern languages, Italian, Spanish, 
 French, and English. She wrote Latin with the accuracy 
 of a philologist, French with the elegance of a Balzac. To 
 read the Bible in the original texts, she studied the Shemitic 
 languages and dialects ; and not merely understood but 
 wrote Hebrew. She wrote letters, and composed essays and 
 poems, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French. She edited 
 Spanheim in 1648, and seven years before published a Latin 
 work in defence of the scientific and scholarly cultivation of 
 women. She was versed in poetry, rhetoric, dialectics, math- 
 ematics, and philosophy, even in the problems of meta- 
 physics. She was likewise acquainted with the fine arts : she 
 painted with publicly acknowledged talent, and was expert 
 in sculpture and copper-engraving, even in the plastic arts. 
 She set little value on all this culture in comparison with 
 the study of the Bible, the Church Fathers, and scholasti- 
 cism. She knew Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas, but did 
 not care to know any thing of the new philosophy. Her 
 deepest interests > were religious, which, at last, were not 
 satisfied in the orthodox Church of the Netherlands. She 
 desired a Church of Christ, which, like the primitive com- 
 munities of the elect, should live in perfect renunciation of 
 the world and in brotherly intercourse, filled by no other 
 love than the " amor crucifixusr Her instructor and guide 
 in Utrecht had been Voetiiis, the most bitter opponent of 
 Descartes. She finally followed the French preacher Lahadie, 
 who had gone over to Calvinism from the Jesuits, and was 
 then preaching in favor of the community of the elect. 
 He was the Roumanian forerunner, and in certain respects 
 the type, of Spener, who founded German pietism. She was 
 already an old woman when she called this man to the 
 Netherlands (1667), and wandered with the exile into 
 foreign lands. ^ 
 
 1 Gottfr. Arnold's Impartial History of the Church and Heretics, bd. ii. 
 (Schaffhausen, 1741), chap. xxi. pp. 307-319. Dr. P. Tschackert : A. M. von 
 Schurmann, the Star of Utrecht, the disciple of Labadie (Gotha, 1876). 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 215 
 
 Many years before, more, indeed, than a generation, Des- 
 cartes visited the famous woman in Utrecht, and found her 
 engaged in studying the Mosaic account of creation. An im- 
 passable chasm lay between the biblical Genesis, and the clear 
 and distinct knowledge of the origin of the world which Des- 
 cartes required, and sought to give in his " Cosmos." The 
 philosopher remarked that for the explanation of things one 
 could learn nothing from Moses; and was afterwards regarded 
 by the zealous pupil of Voetins as a " profane man," against 
 whom one must be on his guard. A passage relating to that 
 conversation is cited from her writings, in which she thanks 
 God that the "profane man" found no hearing with her. 
 She saw in Descartes an ungodly philosopher ; he in her, 
 great talent for art, which Voetius had spoiled with his 
 theology, — so he said in one of his letters.^ 
 
 m. THE COUNTESS-PALATINE ELIZABETH. 
 
 It appeared that this "Minerva of Holland" sought to 
 rival Descartes in her influence upon one of the ablest and 
 most interesting women of the time, whom a tragic fate 
 had led into the asylum of the Netherlands. The family 
 of Frederick V. of the Palatinate, who had lost the crown of 
 Bohemia in the battle of Prague, and had been deprived 
 of his hereditary states in Germany, lived in The Hague, 
 fugitives and exiles. With the death of Gustavus Adolphus, 
 his last hope departed. He survived him only a few days 
 (November, 1632), leaving eleven of the thirteen children 
 whom his wife, Elizabeth Stuart, had borne him ; among 
 them four daughters, the oldest of whom was the Princess 
 Elizabeth (1618-80). There has been, in modern times, no 
 royal family which has suffered so many strange and tragical 
 experiences of an extraordinary character as this, and which, 
 on the other hand, has received greater and more extraordi- 
 nary gifts from fortune, and is more interesting in its 
 
 1 Foucher de Careil : Descartes et la Princesse-Palatine (Par. 1862), pp. 
 61-63. 
 
216 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 descendants. Frederick V. was deprived of two crowns, 
 and ended his life in misfortune and exile. His widow, in 
 the midst of her numerous family, led, as ex-queen of 
 Bohemia, a kind of court life in exile. The eldest son was 
 drowned in the Zuyder Zee (1629). Rupert, the third son, 
 gained and lost a reputation as a commander of cavalry ia 
 the English civil war. His brother Maurice went to Amer- 
 ica, and no one knew what became of him. Edward, the 
 next brother, went to France secretly, and joined the Catholic 
 Church (1645). The second daughter, Louise HoUandine 
 (1622-1709), followed his example : she became the famous 
 and notorious abbess of Maubuisson. Philip, next to the 
 youngest of the sons, killed, on a public street, a French 
 nobleman. Marquis d'Epinay, who had insidiously attacked 
 him the day before (June, 1646) ; he was banished by his 
 mother forever, — out of revenge, it seems, since she was 
 said to be more devoted to that nobleman than befitted 
 the dignity of the queen, the mother, and the matron. The 
 Countess-palatine Elizabeth, her elder brother Charles Louis 
 (1617-80), and her youngest sister Sophia (1630-1714), 
 through their personal importance, and the importance of 
 their destinies, were undoubtedly the first of the children 
 of the unfortunate elector. The hereditary rights of Charles 
 Louis were restored by the peace of Westphalia, and through 
 the ability of his administration he became the restorer of 
 the Palatinate after the devastations of the Thirty Years' 
 War. His daughter was the excellent Charlotte Elizabeth, 
 the Duchess of Orleans, who knew how to preserve her 
 loyalty to Germany, and maintain the rank of the Palatinate, 
 at the court of Louis XIV. Her son, Philip of Orleans, 
 was regent ; her uncle was the Emperor Francis L, the hus- 
 band of Maria Theresa. Sophia, the youngest daughter of 
 Frederick, was the pride of the family of the Palatinate. 
 She was the first electress of Hanover, "the great electress;" 
 her son George was the first king of Great Britain of the 
 house of Hanover ; her daughter, Sophia Charlotte, was the 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 217 
 
 first queen of Prussia. That these three showed favor to 
 the greatest philosophers of the century, increased their 
 posthumous fame. Charles Louis, a man of the most toler- 
 ant spirit, invited Spinoza to take the chair of philosophy 
 in Heidelberg ; Sophia and her daughter chose Leibnitz for 
 their intimate friend and counsellor ; and the Princess Eliza- 
 beth was the most enthusiastic pupil of Descartes. 
 
 She had spent her childhood, the first years of " the Thirty 
 Years' WajT," with her grandmother Juliana, the daughter of 
 the great Prince of Orange, at Krosse in Mark-Brandenburg, 
 far from her parents. Under the care of this highly cultivated 
 woman, the powers of Elizabeth were awakened at an early 
 age, and her taste for the sciences and the languages was cul- 
 tivated when she was very young. When she went, in the 
 first bloom of her youth, to the court of her mother in The 
 Hague, her charms and talents soon made her celebrated. 
 One of the first objects of her admiration was the "star of 
 Utrecht," in whom the intelligent and aspiring Elizabeth saw 
 a brilliant exemplar. She became acquainted with Schur- 
 mann, and carried on a friendly correspondence with her. 
 Summoned by extraordinary events from the usual career of 
 princesses, Elizabeth was firmly resolved to devote herself en- 
 tirely to intellectual pursuits. When (1638) she rejected the 
 suit of the Polish king, she had just begun to study the doc- 
 trine of Descartes. She was nineteen years old when the phi- 
 losopher published his first work. She read the " Discourse," 
 the " Essays," and the " Meditations," and then wished to see 
 and become acquainted with their author. She felt in sym- 
 pathy with his view of life ; and his doctrine, and mode of 
 instruction, so fascinated her by their depth and clearness, 
 that all that she had learned before seemed worthless in com- 
 parison. She belonged to the rare class who could under- 
 stand and judge the mathematician and the metaphysician 
 with equal success. Then the " star of Utrecht " paled be- 
 fore the constellation of Descartes. She made the acquaint- 
 ance of the philosopher, which she had wished for so ardently. 
 
218 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 He responded to the veneration of the young princess with a 
 full heart, and became her teacher and friend as long as he 
 lived, — the most faithful, perhaps, that she ever had. In 
 order to be near her, Descartes took up his residence in the 
 palace of Endegeest, in the spring of 1641. He dedicated to 
 her his most important work, the " Principles of Philosophy " 
 (1644) ; for her recreation in the days of her bodily and men- 
 tal affliction, he wrote, in the spring of 1645, the letters on 
 human happiness (a subject discussed by Seneca in, his books 
 " De Vita Beata "), which formed a part of his theory of 
 ethics, and resulted in "The Passions of the Soul," the last 
 work which he himself published, and which he composed in 
 the winter of 1646, and immediately sent to his friend the 
 princess. There is no more beautiful memorial of the Prin- 
 cess Elizabeth than the letter with which Descartes dedicated 
 his most important work to her : " The greatest advantage I 
 have derived from my writings is the honor of becoming 
 acquainted with your highness, and of being permitted at 
 times to converse with you, and thus becoming a witness of 
 your rare and estimable qualities ; and I am sure I shall do a 
 service to posterity by proposing them as an example. It 
 would be folly for me to flatter, or write what I am not 
 convinced of, on the first page of a book in which I aim to 
 expound the fundamental principles of knowledge. I know 
 your noble modesty, and am sure that the simple and frank 
 opinion of a man who only writes what he believes, will be 
 more agreeable to you than the ornate praises of those who 
 have studied the art of compliment. I shall say nothing in 
 this letter that I do not know by experience ; and shall write 
 here, as in the rest of the work, with the accuracy that befits 
 a philosopher." With a few strokes Descartes sketches the 
 true dignity of human nature, and draws the distinction be- 
 tween apparent virtues, which are like will-of-the-wisps, and 
 real virtues. Temerity is more conspicuous than true courage, 
 and prodigality than true generosity. Genuine goodness of 
 heart is considered less pious than superstition and hypocrisy. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OP HIS LIFE. 219 
 
 Simplicity is often the source of goodness, and despair of 
 courage, and that which includes all virtues is wisdom. Wis- 
 dom apprehends the good distinctly, and firmly and constantly 
 performs it. It does not shine like the apparent virtues, and 
 is therefore less observed and so less praised ; but its demand 
 is for understanding and character. We cannot all have the 
 same faculties of knowledge, but we can have the same 
 strength of will. But where we find a union of a clear 
 understanding, and an earnest effort for culture, with strength 
 of will, there we find the flower of virtue. "These three 
 conditions are found in your highness in great perfection. 
 The amusements of a court, and the usual method of educat- 
 ing princesses, are unfavorable to study ; and that these obsta- 
 cles have been unable to prevent you from appropriating the 
 ripest fruits of the sciences, proves how earnestly you desire 
 knowledge, while the shortness of the time in which you 
 have made such attainments witnesses to the greatness of 
 your ability. But I have yet another proof, that relates to 
 me personally : I have met no one who has such a thorough 
 and comprehensive understanding of my writings as yourself. 
 ^ Even among the best and most highly cultivated minds, there 
 are many that find them very obscure ; and it is almost always 
 the case, that those who are familiar with mathematics cannot 
 comprehend metaphysics, while those conversant with meta- 
 physics cannot understand mathematics. The only mind, as 
 far as my experience goes, to whom both alike are easy, is 
 yours ; and I am therefore compelled to regard it as incom- 
 parable. And what increases my admiration is, that it is not 
 an aged man, who has given many years to study, in whom 
 we find such comprehensive and scientific scholarship, but a 
 young princess whose charms rather resemble the Graces, as 
 the poets describe them, than the Muses or the wise Minerva. 
 I see in your highness all those excellences that are requisite 
 to pure and sublime wisdom on the part not merely of the 
 mind, but of the will and character ; magnanimity and gen- 
 tleness are united with a disposition which an unjust fortune 
 
220 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ■with persistent persecutions has not been able to imbitter or 
 discourage. It is this high-minded wisdom which I reverence 
 in you ; and I dedicate to it, not merely this work, because it 
 treats of philosophy, which is the study of wisdom, but my- 
 self and my services." 
 
 In the same year that Elizabeth received this dedication, 
 Schurniann wrote her a letter which unmistakably cast a 
 wicked side-glance at Descartes. She acknowledged her rev- 
 erence for the doctors of the Church, who, with no wish to 
 be innovators, modestly trod the path "which Augustine and 
 Aristotle had pointed out, — those two great luminaries of the 
 science of human and divine things, whose light could not be 
 dimmed by any troubled clouds of error with which one 
 sought to obscure them." ^ 
 
 The personal intercourse between Descartes and the prin- 
 cess was very active during his residence in Endegeest. 
 He had previously lived a year in Leyden (April, 1640-April, 
 1641), and then two years in a palace in the country, only a 
 half-mile away (April, 1641, to end of March, 1643), and went 
 from there through Amsterdam to Egmond, that he might be 
 completely undisturbed while he attended to the publication 
 of his " Principles." I do not know whether he saw the 
 princess after he went to Egmond, since it does not appear 
 from his letters, some of which are unfortunately lost. Their 
 correspondence began directly after their separation, and con- 
 tinued from the commencement of his residence in Egmond 
 (May, 1643), until after his arrival in Stockholm (October, 
 1649). She requested him to solve various problems in 
 philosophy, geometry, and natural philosophy. The first and 
 most important which she proposed to him related to the 
 union of the soul and body, the most important problem of 
 Descartes' system. In a series of letters, he discussed the 
 
 ^ Foucher de Careil: Descartes et la Prinoesse-Palatine, pp. 11, 12. No one 
 has yet undertaken the instructive and valuable labor of writing a monograph 
 of Elizabeth. The above-mentioned work, with its ignorance of German life 
 and history, can scarcely be considered a contribution to it. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 221 
 
 great question of the value and significance of human life 
 (May and June, 1645). Elizabeth sent him Machiavelli's 
 work on "Princes," with her comments, and requested his 
 (autumn of 1646); and it is worthy of remark, that Des- 
 cartes, already past fifty, first became acquainted with this 
 book through his pupil. Everywhere on the journey of life, 
 Descartes accompanied her with the most sympathetic and 
 friendly counsel. Dark days came to Elizabeth, — sickness 
 and misfortunes of every kind, the apostasy of a brother and 
 a sister from the faith of her father, dissensions in the family 
 of her mother, the overthrow of the Stuarts in England. 
 After the conversion of her brother Edward, and the execu- 
 tion of her uncle Charles I., Descartes wrote to console and 
 cheer her. He thought of Elizabeth and her unfortunate 
 family when he commenced corresponding with the Queen 
 of Sweden ; and he accepted the invitation to Stockholm, in 
 the hope of making the two princesses friends, and of caus- 
 ing the powerful influence of Sweden to be exerted in behalf 
 of Elizabeth and her house. Already he rejoiced in the pros- 
 pect of living with her, in the near future, in the court of 
 Heidelberg. 
 
 After the murder of the Marquis d'Epinay, Elizabeth was 
 obliged to leave The Hague, because she was suspected (prob- 
 ably without reason) of being an accessory to the crime. She 
 spent the next j^ears in Berlin, at the court of her cousin the 
 great elector. When her brother's hereditary rights were 
 restored, she returned to her paternal city, and lived at the 
 court of Heidelberg until the quarrels of Charles Louis and 
 his spouse, Charlotte of Hesse, set the brother and sister at 
 variance, and drove Elizabeth from Heidelberg. She became 
 imperial abbess of the Lutheran abbey of Herforden in West- 
 phalia, and died there on the anniversary of Descartes' death, 
 a generation after him (Feb. 11, 1680). She remained what 
 she had always been, — a gifted and profound student, able 
 to reconcile the interests of philosophy with those of religion. 
 She granted to her old friend Schurmann the asylum which 
 
222 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 she asked for in Herforden (1670), when with Labadie and 
 the Church of Christ she was no longer tolerated in Amster- 
 dam ; and resolutely protected the congregation, which had 
 entered the country, from the hostilities of the State Church. 
 The same year she was visited by the English Quaker Wil- 
 liam Penn, who seemed to make a powerful impression upon 
 her. The storms of the world had beaten thickly upon the 
 aged princess, and she needed the peace which comes from 
 the renunciation of the world. But through all the changes 
 of her life, through changing events and moods and circum- 
 stances, she thanked Descartes for her highest intellectual 
 satisfaction ; and this is the recollection of the abbess also 
 which has been preserved. 
 
DESCAETES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 223 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (6) THE DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLICATION OP THE WORKS. 
 I. THE "COSMOS." 
 
 1. Arrangement and Plan. 
 
 ~^rOW that we have followed the important events in the 
 -'-^ life of Descartes during his residence in Holland, we 
 must direct our attention more particularly to his studies, 
 and the origin of the works to which his residence there 
 was devoted. In the foregoing chapter, we have touched 
 upon them in connection with the account of his life in 
 Holland, and shall give in the next book a systematic ex- 
 position of his doctrine : we have here, therefore, merely to 
 give the history of their development and publication, and shall 
 mention their contents only when it is necessary to the 
 understanding of their history. 
 
 The "Meditations " were completed, in their first form, in 
 Franeker, Dec. 28, 1629 ; and the foundation was thus laid 
 for a new explanation of things by the simplest and surest 
 principles discovered by methodical thought. Descartes' 
 first discovery was method ; and this led him to the principles 
 which required a new knowledge of the world, and at the 
 same time furnished the foundation for it. If he proposed 
 to write and publish his works in the order of the develop- 
 ment of his thoughts, the theory of method would come first; 
 the principles of metaphysics, second; and, last, cosmology, 
 the doctrine of nature and of man. From the scanty remains 
 of some writings composed in the years 1619-29, and from 
 
224 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the accounts given by Baillet, it is probable that in a frag- 
 ment "Studium Bonse Mentis," and in the "Rules for the 
 Direction of the Mind," already mentioned, there were out- 
 lines of his theory of method. 
 
 But Descartes thought that it was safer, and for the in- 
 struction of the world better, to take the directly opposite 
 course, and assume his method and principles provisionally, 
 and let them stand their first examination by the world in 
 their application, that is, in the explanation of things. Such 
 a course seemed to him the best introduction to his philos- 
 ophy, and would require the world to judge it according to 
 the declaration, "By their fruits ye shall know them." To 
 understand the reasons for Descartes' plan, we must glance 
 at the fundamental thoughts of his system ; though I shall 
 rather state what they were, than enter into their proof. 
 
 For years he had been entirely occupied with this question : 
 What criterion infallibly distinguishes truth from error, true 
 conceptions from false ones, reality from imagination ? That 
 he had such a criterion, even in the last days of his residence 
 in Paris, was evident from his remarkable criticism of Chan- 
 doux. He had discovered that there is no such criterion in 
 our presentations ; that the so-called actual phenomena may 
 just as well be mere phantoms, and can in no way be distin- 
 guished from them. There remained, therefore, but one 
 certainty : not that our presentations denote actual things, or 
 that the objects which appear to us really exist, but that we 
 have fiuch presentations, that such objects appear to ms. 
 Certain only is it, that our act of presentation, that our 
 thought, is ; and, since each is certain only of his own thought, 
 the first incontestable fact is : I am thinking. / think : there- 
 fore I am. This perception is entirely clear and distinct : 
 what we know with the same clearness and distinctness has, 
 therefore, the same certainty. And now we find the criterion 
 we have been searching for: clear and distinct perception 
 decides concerning being and not-being; the clearness and 
 distinctness of a conception proves the reality of its object. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 226 
 
 From the conception of a perfect Being, his existence is 
 clearly and distinctly evident ; from the nature of this Being, 
 follows his veracity ; and from this, the existence of the ma- 
 terial world. For, if there were no material world, its appar- 
 ent reality would be a deception, which would be inconsistent 
 with the truthfulness, and, therefore, with the perfection and 
 existence, of God. But if there really is a material world, it 
 must be capable of being clearly and distinctly known ; i.e., 
 it must be a world arranged in harmony with laws, a scien- 
 tific object, a cosmos which we can comprehend. The clear 
 and distinct law of all happening is causality, the connection 
 of cause and effect, the necessity on account of which noth- 
 ing happens without a cause, and every thing alwaj's comes 
 from some other. If,* therefore, the world, the totality of 
 material things or nature, is explained by the law of caus- 
 ality, it is clearly and distinctly known ; and its reality is 
 thus proved, and the doubt that it may be a mere phantom 
 world is forever laid. These considerations open two paths 
 to the philosopher : he can go from universal doubt to the 
 single certainty of his own thinking being, and, from the 
 vantage-ground here won of the criterion of truth, discover 
 the existence of God in the conception of him, and, by means 
 of this, his veracity, and hence the reality of the material 
 world, and its knowableness ; and thus vindicate the problem 
 of the natural sciences. Or, he can begin with the solution 
 of this problem, prove the existence of the world by our 
 clear and distinct conception of it, and thus reach the goal 
 already arrived at in his metaphysical investigations. The 
 first path is metaphysical, the second physical : that is deduc- 
 tive, this inductive, in relation to the entire system and its 
 grounding. In the second, what metaphysics requires is 
 proved by things, as- it were, ad oculos. Physics forms the 
 basis on which rests the validity of our philosophical princi- 
 ples : it tests their correctness. If there is a possible science 
 of the world, there is a world in harmony with law, its ex- 
 istence is beyond doubt, and the existence of bodies is as 
 
226 HISTOKY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 certain as the existence of God and the soul. If nature 
 obeys law, it can be known distinctly, and is therefore not 
 merely imagined but real. 
 
 Descartes takes this path. He intends to give a clear and 
 distinct picture of the world, if only in a comprehensive out- 
 line, that he may thus assure the victory in advance to his 
 most fundamental thoughts. He could not have proceeded 
 more pedagogically. He, therefore, discontinues his meta- 
 physical inquiries, and enters upon a series of physical re- 
 searches, which he intends to compress in a single work, 
 explaining the world in its broad outlines from the heavenly 
 bodies down to those of human beings. He calls it "Le 
 Monde," according to his subject. This cosmology was the 
 first of his works intended for the world. He sought to 
 derive the world from the laws of matter, to cause it to arise, 
 as it were, before our eyes, and leave the reader to discover 
 that this world, so explained, and presented to him merely 
 •as an hypothesis, is identical with the world we live in. 
 
 First the origin of light out of chaos, then the formation 
 of the heavens and the heavenly bodies, luminous stars, fixed 
 stars and suns, of the opaque heavenly bodies, planets, comets, 
 and the earth, are pointed out ; then the history of the earth, 
 'the formation of its atmosphere, surface, and productions, are 
 stated ; the origin of the elements, of the ebb and flow of 
 'tides, of the currents of water and air (winds), of seas and 
 mountains, of springs and streams, of metals and plants, of 
 the bodies of animals and men, down to the union of body 
 and soul, which constitutes the entire man, and forms the 
 point of departure of mental and moral life. Here arise 
 the questions concerning the essential difference between soul 
 and body, the union of the two in man, the freeing of the 
 mental and spiritual life from the fetters of the body. The 
 first is metaphysical ; the second, psychological ; the third, 
 ethical. The doctrine of principles forms the foundation of 
 cosmology, and the doctrine of the soul its boundary. The 
 doctrine of morals is the most importaiit, as well as the final, 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 227 
 
 chapter of his practical philosophy, which has first to explain 
 the motion of physical bodies by means of machinery, and 
 then the proper method of treating, nursing, and healing the 
 human body. The theory of motion in its relations to prac- 
 tice is mechanics ; anthropology, from the same point of view, 
 is the science of medicine ; and the theory of the spiritual na- 
 ture of man, considered in the same relation, is ethics. These 
 are the fruit-bearing branches of the tree of knowledge, 
 whose root is metaphysics, and whose trunk is the philosophy 
 of nature. This trunk Descartes wished to expound in his 
 " Cosmos." " I wished to embrace in it all that I had learned 
 of the nature of material things before I took it up. But as 
 a painter on a plane surface cannot represent all the different 
 sides of a real object, and, therefore, selects one of the most 
 important, puts that in the light, but leaves the rest in 
 shadow, and represents them perspectively, so I feared that 
 it would be impossible for me to comprise all my thoughts in 
 my work : I therefore decided to give a minute exposition of 
 my theory of light, and, along with this, to treat of the sun 
 and the fixed stars, because these objects are almost the only 
 sources of light ; also, of the medium between the heavenly 
 bodies, because light passes through it ; of planets, comets, 
 and the earth, because they reflect it ; and, particularly, of all 
 terrestrial objects, because they are either colored, transpar- 
 ent, or luminous ; and, finally, of man, because he considers 
 all these objects. But that I might discuss all these things 
 with greater security, and express my opinions with more 
 freedom, without being obliged to accept or refute the the- 
 ories heretofore accepted, I resolved to leave this entire 
 world here below to the disputes of lecturers, and to inquire 
 what would happen in a new one if God should cause the 
 material for it to arise somewhere in imaginary space, to 
 move in the condition of chaos, and to act according to fixed 
 and unchangeable laws. Every thing in this world of mine 
 was to happen in the most natural and intelligible manner. 
 I showed how the greatest part of matter would have to 
 
228 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 order itself in obedience to those laws, and assume a form 
 similar to that of our heavens, how some parts would become 
 an earth, others planets and comets, others suns and fixed 
 stars. Then I gave a detailed account of the origin, prog- 
 ress, and reflection of light ; and left it to the reader to 
 observe, that, in the heavenly bodies of the actual world, noth- 
 ing is to be found that must hot or can not resemble the 
 world which I described. At this point I began to speak 
 more particularly of the earth, and I showed how without 
 the assumption of gravity all its parts continually gravitate 
 towards the centre ; how, under the influence of the heavenly 
 bodies, particularly the moon, an ebb and flow arises on its 
 surface (which is covered with air and water) first of our 
 seas, and then a motion of the water and air from east 
 to west like that noticed in our tropics ; how mountains and 
 seas, springs and streams, are naturally formed, metals come 
 in mines, plants grow in fields, and how in general compound 
 bodies are produced. And since fire is the only cause of light 
 in the world, excepting the heavenly bodies, I endeavored to 
 give an exact explanation of its origin, preservation, and 
 mode of action." ^ 
 
 Descartes had already engaged in studies in optics, with a 
 view to his investigation of light; and he continued them 
 uninterruptedly. For the explanation of the complex bodies 
 on the surface of the earth, particularly of animal and human 
 bodies, he needed a knowledge bf chemistry, anatomy, and 
 medicine ; and he sought to gain it in a practical way. In 
 Amsterdam, where he resided after he left Franeker, he was 
 engaged during the winter of 1630, especially, with studies in 
 anatomy, which he pursued with the greatest zeal. He him- 
 self bought from a butcher parts of the bodies of animals, 
 and dissected them : he wished to be able to explain the 
 minutest part of the body of an animal as precisely as the 
 formation of a crystal of salt or a flake of snow. While he 
 
 1 CEuvres, 1., Dis. de la Mdth., part. v. pp. 168-172 (I have given tbe most 
 Important passage, with some abbreviations). 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 229 
 
 was engaged in these studies, he was meditating on the plan 
 of the " Cosmos," but he wrote almost nothing. 
 
 2. Composition, and Prevention of Publication. — At last he 
 began to write, and told his friend Mersenne in April, 1630, 
 that he had made a beginning, and hoped to be able to send 
 him the completed work not far from the beginning of 1633. 
 Soon he was under full headway. "I am just now busy 
 bringing order out of chaos, and deducing light from it, — 
 one of the greatest and most difficult labors in which I can 
 ever engage, since it contains almost the whole of cosmology.^ 
 Two years after the first report (April, 1632), he thought he 
 could find the key to the deepest human knowledge of mate- 
 rial things, the explanation of the order that prevails in the 
 world of the fixed stars, and determines their position. For 
 some months he did nothing to the work, but he still hoped 
 to reach the conclusion before the time indicated : later the 
 date of the conclusion was fixed at Easter. Shortly before 
 this time (March, 1638), he proceeded from his account 
 of the heavenly bodies and the earth, to the explanation of 
 terrestrial bodies and their different properties, and con- 
 sidered whether he should also investigate the origin of ani- 
 mals in this work. He decided to exclude this matter, to 
 avoid increasing the size of his book. It had already grown 
 under his hands, and could no longer serve, as he originally 
 intended, for a convenient "afternoon's reading." "■* Only 
 something concerning human nature still remained to be 
 added. So far he had gone, at the beginning of June, 1633, 
 during his residence in Deventer. " I shall treat of man to 
 a greater extent than I proposed : I intend to explain the 
 principal functions of his body, and have already given an 
 account of some of them, as digestion, beating of the pulse, 
 distribution of nutritious matter, the action of the 'five senses, 
 etc. I have dissected the heads of various animals, in order 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. vi. p. 181. (It is uncertain wliether this letter was written 
 June, 1630, or Jan. 10, 1631.) 
 ' CEuvres, t. vi. p. 101. 
 
230 HISTORY OF MODEEN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to ascertain in what memory, imagination, etc., consist." In 
 the midst of his labor he received and read Harvey's famous 
 work " On the Motion of the Heart " (" De Motu Cordis "), 
 which had been published five years before. Mersenne had 
 repeatedly called his attention to it. "I find my opinions 
 but little different from his, although I had written my own 
 explanation of the matter before I read his book." ^ 
 
 Suddenly the work stopped, and its conclusion seemed to 
 be indefinitely postponed. " My essay," he wrote July 22, 
 1633, "is almost finished; I have only to make some correc- 
 tions, and copy it : but I have such an aversion towards it, 
 that, if I had not promised three years ago to send it to you 
 before the end of this year, it might be a long time before I 
 should be able to finish it. Nevertheless, I will try to keep 
 my promise." ^ 
 
 What had happened ? In this work, which lacked only a 
 final revision, he had explained the universe on mathematical- 
 mechanical principles, in accordance with the law of causal- 
 ity, setting forth the motion of the earth as a necessary link 
 in the mechanical order of the heavenly bodies. Now, the 
 Copernican system had been defended by Galileo, and just 
 then in a new work under the form of an hypothesis. His 
 famous dialogue on the two most important astronomical sys- 
 tems appeared in 1632, and was condemned exactly four 
 weeks before Descartes wrote the above letter.^ Descartes 
 had not then heard of the sentence, though he had been 
 informed of the trial. But that was enough to make his 
 work disagreeable to him. The decision against Galileo 
 was published in Li6ge, Sept. 20, 1633 ; and Descartes then 
 learned that the doctrine of the motion of the earth was not 
 tolerated, even as an hypothesis, since the sentence of con- 
 demnation contains these words : " quamvis hypothetice a se 
 illam proponi simularet." Almost a year passed by before he 
 read the work itself (August, 1684); and then hastily, since 
 it was lent to him secretly, only for a number of hours. He 
 
 3 CEuvres, t. vi. p. 235. 2 lb., pp. 237, 238. » See lutroduotion, pp. 135, 136. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 231 
 
 suddenly saw himself threatened by one of those conflicts 
 which he wished to avoid on principle. He saw, that, if he 
 published his work as it was, he would provoke a contest 
 with the Church, and that he would be regarded as one of 
 those dangerous innovators whom he himself disliked. 
 Unless he were willing to mutilate his work, and so make it 
 absurd, there was nothing left for him but to keep it secret, 
 and decline every proposal to publish his thoughts. " I am 
 like wicked debtors," he wrote to Mersenne, Nov. 28, 1633, 
 " who are always asking their creditors for more time, as soon 
 as they see the day for payment drawing near. I had really 
 intended to send you my ' Cosmos ' as a New-Year's present ; 
 and about two weeks ago I was entirely resolved to send at 
 least a part of it to you, if the whole should not be then 
 copied. But I have just been inquiring in Leyden and Am- 
 sterdam whether Galileo's system of the universe can there 
 be found, since I thought I had heard that it had been pub- 
 lished in Italy the previous year. I am now informed that it 
 was certainly printed, but that every copy of it was imme- 
 diately burnt in Eome, and that Galileo himself was sen- 
 tenced to do penance. This has so strongly affected me, that 
 I have almost resolved to burn all my manuscript, or at least 
 to show it to no one. And I am the more inclined to this 
 resolution, because it at once occurs to me, that Galileo, who 
 is an Italian, and, as I am informed, has been in favor with 
 the Pope, is charged with no other crime than his doctrine of 
 the motion of the earth, which, as I know, some cardinals had 
 before pronounced heretical. But in spite of it, if my in- 
 formation is correct, it has continued to be propagated even 
 in Rome ; and I confess, that, if it is false, all the principles of 
 my philosophy are erroneous, since they mutually support each 
 other ; and it is so closely connected with all the parts of my 
 work, that I cannot leave it out without fatally injuring the 
 rest. But on no account will I publish any thing that con- 
 tains a single word that might displease the Church, and I 
 will rather suppress it altogether than allow it to appear in a 
 
232 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mutilated condition. I never was inclined to book-making ; 
 and if I had not promised the work to you and some other 
 friends, that the desire to keep my promise might stimulate 
 me to more vigorous application, I should never have gone 
 so far. But, after all, I am sure that you will not send an 
 officer to force me to pay my debts, and perhaps you will be 
 glad to be spared the pains of reading worthless stuff. How- 
 ever, I cannot in a sudden humor break so many promises 
 repeated so often during so many years. I will therefore lay 
 my work before you as soon as possible, and beg only for a 
 year's delay that I may have an opportunity to revise it. You 
 yourself quoted to me that sentence from Horace, Nonumque 
 prematur in annum ; and but three years have passed since I 
 began the work I intend to send you. "Write me, I beg you, 
 what you hear of Galileo's matter." In the next letter, 
 which was lost on the way, he recalled this tardy promise. 
 " You will find my reasons excellent," he wrote Jan. 10, 1634, 
 " and you will not have the least disposition to blame me for 
 withholding my work : rather, you would be the first to sug- 
 gest it. I am sure you know that Galileo was condemned by 
 the Inquisition a short time ago, and his doctrine of the 
 motion of the earth pronounced herfetical. Now, the various 
 conclusions of my essay form a chain, and this view of the 
 motion of the earth is one of its links ; and, if any one of my 
 positions is false, all my arguments are invalid. And, how- 
 ever certain and evident they might seem to me, I would 
 on no account maintain them in opposition to the authority 
 of the Church. I am well aware that the decision of a Roman 
 inquisition is not a dogma, that the vote of a council is ne- 
 cessary to that ; but I am by no means so enamoured of my 
 thoughts as to wish to invoke such extraordinary means for 
 their protection. I desire quiet ; I have guided my life so 
 far according to the motto. Bene vixit bene qui latuit, and I 
 intend to continue to do so. I am now rid of the fear of 
 having sinned against a desirable moderation of judgment in 
 my work, and this pleasant consciousness more than counter- 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 233 
 
 balances the vexation at the time and labor lost." In a sub- 
 sequent letter, Mersenne, who ardently desired to become 
 acquainted with the work, jokingly said that somebody would 
 murder Descartes yet in order to be able to read it sooner. 
 " I had to laugh," answered Descartes^ " when I read that 
 passage. My writings are so thoroughly concealed that a 
 murderer would hunt for them in vain, and I shall have been 
 dead a hundred years before the world comes in possession 
 of them." ^ Nevertheless, at another time he did not posi- 
 tively declare that the work would not appear, either in his 
 lifetime or after his death. He wrote to one of his best 
 friends, de Beaune (June, 1639), who earnestly requested him 
 not to keep his work secret longer, since it might easily be 
 lost : " We let fruit hang on the tree as long as it improves, 
 although we know very well that storms, hail, and other 
 disasters may destroy it at any moment. Now, my work is 
 such a fruit, and we can never pluck it late enough." ^ It 
 happened as de Beaune feared. Only a short sketch, reduced 
 to the limits originally intended, which was afterwards written 
 or revised by Descartes, was found in his unpublished writ- 
 ings after his death, under the title " The World, or an Essay 
 on Light" (1664). 
 
 An unforeseen catastrophe had caused the philosopher to 
 retrace the first step he had taken towards a literary career ; 
 and it was necessary to become accurately acquainted with 
 his feelings and reasons, as stated in his own letters, in 
 order to understand it. It is true that he feared the fate of 
 Galileo: he saw here a collision between a doctrine which 
 he believed, and an authority which, in accordance with 
 the practical principles of his life, he held worthy of honor. 
 The case had arisen in which, according to his principles, 
 theory should retire p favor of the absolute value of politi- 
 cal' and ecclesiastical interests. He felt this conflict in all 
 
 1 CEuvres, pp. 242, 243, 13T, 138. The letter was written in the summer of 
 1637, after the publication of the Discoura de la Me'thode. 
 a CEuvres, t. viii. p. 127. 
 
234 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 its seriousness, and yet without a trace of the courage of 
 the reformer which dares, and even desires, opposition. 
 And he made no secret, either to himself or to others, of his 
 timidity. Nevertheless, we should not correctly understand, 
 and could not therefore correctly judge, Descartes' conduct 
 if we regarded this motive as the only one. He might 
 have avoided the conflict, left his work unpublished, and 
 yet have felt the necessity for such a course as painful in 
 the extreme. But this was by no means the case. On the 
 contrary, the fate of Galileo was to him a most welcome 
 reason for freeing himself from an oppressive obligation. 
 His promises to write and publish the work imposed upon 
 him a necessity more painful than the alternative demanded 
 by the Inquisition. Now he could say, " I need not keep 
 my promise: I can keep my thoughts to myself; I am no 
 longer in debt to the public, for it will not have my work." 
 Evidently relieved and in excellent humor, he wrote, in this 
 mood, to his friends. And he afterwards declared himself 
 to the world in the same strain, in his first published work. 
 After he had stated his reasons for entering upon a literary 
 career, he spoke quite openly of the hinderance which had 
 occurred, and he declared frankly : " Although my resolu- 
 tion had been fixed, nevertheless my deep aversion to book- 
 making permitted me to find other reasons sufficient to 
 excuse me." ^ The condemnation of Galileo served as a 
 convenient and welcome reason for declining to publish his 
 works. 
 
 It would have been right if Descartes had adhered to the 
 resolution, formed for such reasons, to withhold his doctrine 
 of the motion of the earth. That he disguised it in a cer- 
 tain manner, that it might be accepted without hesitation, 
 is a graver fault. Here his truthfulness came in conflict 
 with his policy, and the truth had to suffer. He offered to 
 help secretly an ecclesiastic in Paris who wished to defend 
 the doctrine of Galileo, but withdrew his offer when he 
 
 I Discours de la Methode, Part VI. CEuvres, t, i. p. 191. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 235 
 
 learned that the theory was not tolerated, even as an hypoth- 
 esis; He read the condemned work, and thought he could 
 find an expedient for rescuing the doctrine of the immobility 
 of the earth, in appearance, in view of the difference be- 
 tween his theory of motion and Galileo's. "You see," he 
 says in one of his letters, " that in words I deny the mo- 
 tion of the earth, while in reality I defend the system of 
 Copernicus." Can it serve to justify Descartes, that we are 
 obliged to admit that Galileo in like manner retracted his 
 doctrine ? 
 
 Towards the end of the year 1633, Descartes had firmly 
 resolved to keep his works secret. How did it happen, 
 nevertheless, that he afterwards published his doctrine? 
 To this question his last biographer has found an answer 
 more touching than true, and he has also neglected to 
 make his idyllic explanation intelligible. The anticipation 
 of the joys of a father is claimed to have brought the phi- 
 losopher to the resolution to publish books. " New feelings 
 awakened in his mind ; and what Mersenne, de Beaune, and 
 his best friends could not accomplish, the smile of a child 
 beaming into his face in the bright future was already able 
 to do." After the birth of his child, he remained for some 
 months in Deventer, and then went with the mother and 
 daughter to Leeuworden to write the " Discours de la 
 M^thode."^ The reader can now guess what connection 
 there is between the birth of his child, and the publication 
 of his works, the most important of which were written 
 after her death ! 
 
 n. THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 
 
 1. The Motive for their Publication. — The reasons that led 
 Descartes to avoid and then to undertake a literary career, 
 then abandon it, and finally enter upon it, and publish a 
 series of works, must be learned from himself and from the 
 problem of his life ; and so much the more, as Descartes 
 
 1 J. Millet : Histoire de Descartes avant 1637, p. 340. 
 
236 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 declared them in detail, in concluding his first important 
 work. His opponents are very ready with the decision that 
 fear was the motive of secrecy, while ambition incited him to 
 literary activity. The first opinion is very superficial, and 
 the second fundamentally false. Whatever external influ- 
 ences might have contributed to hinder or promote his 
 literary activity, the inner reason, in harmony with his 
 character, Avhich first restrained him from publication, and 
 then led him to it step by step, was the desire for self- 
 instruction, the guiding principle of his life. This is the 
 key to all those contradictions and vacillations. When he 
 entered upon his course of self-instruction, he avoided pub- 
 lishing his thoughts, as a loss of time and a disturbance ; 
 when he had made some progress in it, the publication of 
 his thoughts and the interchange of ideas became a part 
 of it. At first Descartes was engaged exclusively in self- 
 instruction on principle, and was absorbed in his thoughts, 
 which he did not write, or, if he did, only briefly and hastily. 
 Then came a time when the maturity and clearness of his 
 developed thoughts could not be better tested than by 
 stating them in detail in writing. He who is his own 
 teacher must also be his own examiner. The record of his 
 own thoughts was such an examination, and Descartes was 
 much too methodical and thorough to be willing to dispense 
 with it. Carefully written works, ready for the press, thus 
 arose, intended to serve for the examination of his own 
 thoughts and the instruction of the world ; but the world 
 which they were to instruct was posterity, — not for the 
 sake of posthumous fame, but because of the great service 
 they could render. The more uninterruptedly and con- 
 stantly he could pursue his discoveries, the richer the results, 
 and the greater the benefits accruing to the world from his 
 labors. He wa,s therefore resolved not to publish his works 
 during his own lifetime. He dreaded the loss of time which 
 the publication of his works would certainly involve. It 
 would oblige him to parry attacks, correct misunderstand- 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OP HIS LIFE. 237 
 
 ings, engage in controversies with opponents and discussions 
 with disciples. Even the reputation they might bring him 
 would be unfavorable to his leisure. Sharing the territory- 
 he had won, would make it impossible for him to acquire 
 more. "I am willing to have it known, that the little 
 knowledge I have gained is almost nothing in comparison 
 with that of which I am ignorant, and to the knowledge of 
 which I hope to be able to attain. For it is with students 
 of science as with those who are growing rich, who make great 
 gains with less difficulty than they experienced when poor 
 in making much smaller ones. Or, they may be compared 
 with generals whose forces usually increase with victories, and 
 who must use greater skill in keeping the field after a defeat 
 than in taking cities and provinces after a victory. For he 
 who seeks to surmount the obstacles and remove the errors 
 that beset us in our march to the knowledge of truth must 
 indeed fight a battle, and he loses it who adopts a false 
 opinion concerning a matter of some comprehensiveness and 
 importance ; and to regain his former position, requires 
 greater ability than to make great progress when once in 
 possession of certain principles. And as for myself, if I 
 have succeeded in discovering any truths in the sciences, 
 I am certain that they are only the results of five or six diffi- 
 culties which I have overcome, and my struggles with which 
 I regard as so many battles in which fortune was on my 
 side ; and I declare without hesitation, that I only need to 
 gain two or three such victories to reach the goal of all my 
 designs, and I am not yet so advanced in years but that I 
 may hope to accomplish this before I die. But my obligation 
 to husband the time that remains increases with the hope 
 of being able to use it well; and the publication of the 
 principles of my physics would undoubtedly occasion a great 
 loss of time. For, however evidently and absolutely they 
 might be proved, it would be impossible for them to accord 
 with the opinions of all the world ; and I foresee that they 
 ■ would be the occasion of various controversies and disturb- 
 
238 HISTORY or modern philosophy. 
 
 ances." These are the reasons why every publication of his 
 works seemed as absurd to our philosopher, as for a con- 
 queror to write books, and engage in controversies concern- 
 ing the art of war, while advancing from victory to victory. 
 It was represented to Descartes, that the publication of his 
 doctrine might be useful to him and also to his doctrine. 
 Some would call his attention to certain defects ; others 
 would turn it to practical account by means of useful deduc- 
 tions from it : and thus, by the assistance of others, his 
 system would be improved and extended. But these con- 
 siderations had no weight with him. For no one was in a 
 better position to criticise his doctrine than himself, since no 
 one else was so well acquainted with it; and, as to the applica- 
 tion of his thoughts, they were not yet mature enough to have 
 practical results, and, if they were, no one could realize them 
 as well as he himself, since the discoverer is always the best 
 judge, the only master. And Descartes not only dreaded an- 
 tagonists, but the school which might attach itself to him and 
 deform his work. He knew what the schools of every time 
 have made of their masters, and he was on his guard before- 
 hand against the " Cartesians." He expressly requested pos- 
 terity not to attribute any opinion to him which he had not 
 himself declared. Precisely those disciples are most inju- 
 rious who not merely repeat the words of the master, but 
 seek to interpret and complete his doctrine, and pretend to 
 know more than he himself. " They are like the ivy, which 
 never strives to rise higher than' the tree to which it clings, 
 and often even returns downward after it has reached the 
 top. For these also appear to me to sink, that is, to become 
 more ignorant than when they began to study, who, not 
 contented with the teachings of the master, credit him with 
 the solution of many problems of which he says nothing, and 
 of which, perhaps, he never thought. These people live in 
 obscure conceptions which are very convenient to such phi- 
 losophers ; for they can thus talk with the utmost boldness, 
 and engage in endless controversies. They are like a blind 
 
DESCARTES; THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 239 
 
 man who wishes to fight with one who can see, without dis- 
 advantage, and therefore leads him into a very dark cellar ; 
 and they ought to be glad that I refrain from publishing 
 my 'Principles of Philosophy,' for they are so simple and 
 evident that they would throw open the window, and let 
 the light into the cellar into which the combatants have 
 descended." ^ 
 
 But this sincere reason was more than counterbalanced by 
 other considerations. The first, which stood by the cradle of 
 his works, and did not cease to influence him, was the feeling 
 that he ought to maintain his credit and keep his word. The 
 reputation which would come with the diffusion of his writ- 
 ings was an enemy of his repose, but the feeling of unfulfilled 
 promises was also. Earnestly to seek a reputation, was as 
 disturbing as anxiously to avoid it. Descartes did neither. 
 He allowed himself to gain the reputation of being a great 
 thinker ; and did not wish to be considered a charlatan, who 
 had a reputation to which he had no right, and excited hopes 
 which he did not fulfil, because, as one was at last obliged 
 to believe, he could not. " Although T am not immoderately 
 fond of fame, — am, indeed, averse to it, if I may venture to 
 say so, in so far as I regard it as an enemy of repose, which I 
 prefer to every thing else, — I have never been careful to con- 
 ceal my actions as if they were crimes, nor made any effort 
 to remain unknown : for I should regard such a course as a 
 wrong to myself ; and, besides, it would have been unfavor- 
 able to the perfect tranquillity which I value so highly. And, 
 since I have not been able to avoid acquiring some kind of 
 reputation, while thus alike indifferent to becoming known 
 and remaining unknown, I thought I ought to do my best to 
 avoid one that was bad." But the most important reason that 
 determined him to publish his writings was, as we have al- 
 ready said, his desire for self-instruction. Descartes leaves 
 no doubt on that point. " I see more and more clearly every 
 day," says Descartes, " how my plan of self-instruction suffers 
 
 1 Discours de la M^thode, Part VI., (Euvres, i. pp. 196-203. 
 
240 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 by means of this delay ; for I need a great number of experi- 
 ments, which I cannot perform without the assistance of 
 others ; and, although I do not flatter myself with the hope 
 that the public will be greatly interested in my endeavors, 
 yet I will not do myself such an injury as to give ground to 
 those who shall survive me, to make the reproach against me 
 that they might, in many respects, have been much better 
 instructed if I had not too much neglected to give the infor- 
 mation by means of which they might have promoted my 
 plans." 1 The philosopher expressly declares that this con- 
 sideration was his second motive in writing the "Discourse." 
 It is, therefore, one and the same reason, — his desirci of self- 
 instruction, — that determined Descartes first to avoid writ- 
 ing his thoughts, and then inclines him to it, then causes him 
 to refuse to publish his works, and finally to undertake it. 
 
 2. Writings on Method. — He goes carefully to work. His 
 first publication is not his system, but tests or essays (essais), 
 relating only to method and its application. He does not 
 yet publish his theory of method, but only a preliminary 
 statement of his general position ; no traitS, but only a dis- 
 cours, de la methode, intended only as a preface or announce- 
 ment of the doctrine, and rather vindicating the practical 
 importance than explaining the theory of method. "I do 
 not here intend to unfold the nature of my method, but only 
 to talk about it."^ The practicableness of his method was to 
 be proved by its actual application in mathematics and phy- 
 sics. Descartes therefore published three essays along with 
 the more important one, which were so chosen that the first 
 belongs to mathematical physics, the second to physics, the 
 third to pure mathematics. The subject of the first is " Diop- 
 trics," that of the second " Meteors," that of the last " Geo- 
 metry." The " Dioptrics " treats of the refraction of light, 
 of sight, and of optical glasses. In "Meteors," Descartes 
 
 '' Discours de la Mdthode. 
 
 2 CEuvrcs, vi. p. 138 (letter to Mersenne, written in the summer of 1637). 
 Cf. p, 305 (a letter to a friend of Mersenne, April, 1637). 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 241 
 
 seeks to unfold the nature of salt, the causes of winds and 
 thunder-storms, the configuration of snow, the colors of the 
 rainbow and the properties of single colors, the halos about 
 the sun and moon, and particularly parhelions, four of which 
 had been seen in Rome some years before (March 20, 1629), 
 and had been described to him in detail. The " Geometry " 
 proves the new method of analysis which he had discovered, 
 by the solution of entirely new problems. In " Dioptrics " 
 and " Meteors," he merely sought to illustrate the value and 
 usefulness of his method, while in " Geometry " his aim was 
 to give an incontestable proof of it. These essays were to 
 have appeared under the following title : " Sketch of a Uni- 
 versal Science, by means of which our Nature can be raised 
 to the Highest Degree of Perfection ; in addition, Dioptrics, 
 Meteors, and Geometry, in which the Author has chosen the 
 Best Cases for testing that Science, and so explained them 
 that Every Reader can understand the Subject without any 
 Instruction in Learned Matters." ^ It was well that Descartes 
 preferred to this high-sounding title the simple name ^'■^ssais," 
 and called the more important essay " A Discourse on the 
 Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth 
 in the Sciences." He wrote for thoughtful, independent 
 readers, unperverted by book-learning, and, therefore, in 
 French ; stating the following reason at the conclusion of 
 his " Discourse : " " And if I write in French, the language of 
 my country, rather than in Latin, the language of my instruct- 
 ors, it is because I hope that the natural and healthy reason 
 will estimate my opinions more correctly than the learning 
 which puts its faith only in the books of the ancients. Peo- 
 ple of sound understanding, who have been properly in- 
 structed, are the only judges I desire ; and I am sure that 
 they will not be so partial to Latin that they will refuse to 
 listen to my reasonings because I expound them in their 
 native tongue." " 
 
 I CEuvres, vi. pp. 276, 277 (letter to Mersenne, March, 1636). 
 " Discours de la M^thode, Part VI., CEuvres, 1. pp. 210, 211. 
 
242 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 With the exception of the "Geometry," the work was 
 ready for the press in the spring of 1636. Since the firm 
 of Elzevir in Amsterdam was not so ready to make advances 
 as Descartes had expected, he had it published by Jean le 
 Maire in Leyden. The privilege of sale was granted by the 
 States of Holland, Dec. 22, 1636; and by France not till May 
 4, 1637. Mersenne had attended to the matter in France, 
 and delayed it. It was his fault, and likewise his service, 
 that the French license was a eulogy of Descartes, though 
 the latter had expressly wished to remain unmentioned, both 
 in his work and in the documents relating to it. The 
 " Essays " could not be sent until June, 1637. 
 
 3. The Metaphysical Works. — The path upon which he 
 entered led farther. It was impossible for him to stop with 
 these essays : he had said so much of his system, that it was 
 necessary to say more. In the fourth part of his "Discourse," 
 the fundamental principles of the new doctrines had already 
 appeared. He had discussed the necessity of universal 
 doubt, the principle of certainty, the criterion of knowledge, 
 the existence of God and the soul, — in a word, the prin- 
 ciples of his philosophy. But naturally, in view of the plan 
 of that work, these doctrines were rather stated than clearly 
 established, and thus guarded against every misconception. 
 And this danger was least avoided exactly where he was 
 most exposed to it, — in the passages discussing the exist- 
 ence of God, — and Descartes himself recognized this as the 
 weakest and obscurest part of his work, which, therefore, 
 required a thorough and immediate elucidation. But to 
 elucidate the concept of God, was to explain the fundamental 
 conceptions of his metaphysics. The work was already done. 
 It was his first- work in the Netherlands, the sketch of the 
 "Meditations" written in Franeker. The book had been 
 written ten years when Descartes resolved upon its pub- 
 lication; and during his winter residence in Harderwijk 
 (1639-40), he gave it the final revision. 
 
 The investigation is described as it has arisen in his own 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 243 
 
 mind, advancing from problem to problem, from solution to 
 solution. It makes upon the reader the impression of deeply 
 experienced thoughts which have been subject to ever- 
 repeated examinations, the constant companions of the phi- 
 losopher for years, the friends of his solitude, which have 
 attained to maturity with him. They have the character of 
 the most lively soliloquy, a monological drama which the 
 reader cannot help following with the most active sympathy. 
 The question is concerning the existence or non-existence 
 of truth. The problem of knowledge appears as the great 
 question, upon the answer to which depends the destiny of 
 the human spirit, and is by Descartes so experienced. There 
 is no truth if doubt is not completely overcome, and there is 
 no such victory if doubt has not defended itself and fought 
 knowledge with every weapon which it possesses. We are 
 not only made to understand the grounds of doubt, but also 
 to feel the unrest of spirit which agitates the- doubter^ who 
 strives after truth, and, in spite of the certainty of the vic- 
 tory which has already been won, describes the contests he 
 has endured as if he were even now in the heat of the 
 conflict. This union of contemplative repose with the most 
 vivid representation of a mind aroused and stormed by an 
 army of doubts, which the spirit of contemplation already 
 marshals and masters, gives to the "Meditations" of Des- 
 cartes an irresistible charm, and the character, in their kind, 
 of an incomparable philosophical work of art. 
 
 For the first time Descartes appeared before the world 
 undisguised, as the thinker which he was. He had finally 
 spoken the fundamental thoughts, which he had been matur- 
 ing for the last twenty years, for the instruction of the world. 
 He did not disguise his opinions, but he attended to their 
 publication with the greatest caution. The work was imme- 
 diately intended only for scholars, and was, therefore, written 
 in Latin. But this was not sufficient to protect it from 
 suspicions and misconceptions. He was apprehensive of 
 opposition to his physical principles from the Aristotelians ; 
 
244 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to his theology, from the Church. The fundamental princi- 
 ples of his philosophy of nature were contained in the 
 " Meditations ; " but the inferences from them were not 
 drawn, and if he did not expressly say to the scholastic phi- 
 losophers that the question was concerning a purely mechan- 
 ical physics, they would not observe it, and the victory 
 would be won before they knew that a battle had been 
 fought. Descartes therefore wished that nothing be said of 
 his physics at first. '■'■II ne faut pas le dire" was his instruc- 
 tion to his friend Mersenne on this particular. 
 
 But Descartes had made his theological principles so con- 
 spicuous that it was impossible to conceal them. He there- 
 fore sought to prevent every ecclesiastical suspicion by the 
 title and dedication. He says that the principal content 
 of the " Meditations " is proofs of the existence of God and 
 the immortality of the soul ; and he dedicated his work to 
 the doctors of Sorbonne, the theological authority of Paris, 
 whose university had been regarded as the highest theo- 
 logical authority of the Church since the time of the Middle 
 Ages. Convinced that rational proofs of the existence of 
 God and the immortality of the soul could convert unbe- 
 lievers, and that they would not lead believers astray; 
 that they were, therefore, in harmony with the interests of 
 the Church, the claims of the Bible, and the decisions of the 
 last Lateran Council, — he submitted his work to the cen- 
 sorship and protection of the theologians of Paris. They 
 had no objections to make. Father Gibieuf, whom he par- 
 ticularly asked to examine it, gave him his entire approval. 
 Nevertheless, the Church opposed it eventually : twenty- 
 two years later, this work of Descartes, which laid the foun- 
 dations of his philosophy, stood on the list of forbidden books 
 at Rome, with the remark, " donee corrigatur." 
 
 Descartes foresaw that the novelty of his thoughts would 
 make a stir among scholars, and provoke all sorts of objec- 
 tions. He therefore wished to learn the objections of the 
 most famous men beforehand, and to have them printed with 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 245 
 
 his replies as an appendix to the work. It was a shrewd 
 measure : when the work first appeared, it was already 
 attacked and defended. Criticism, which usually follows 
 a work, and thus directs and often perverts public judg- 
 ment, was here obtained beforehand, and published with the 
 book itself, so that the author had the last word. Some 
 copies were therefore made, and given to friends, who circu- 
 lated them among capable men, and obtained their opinions, 
 and in part reported them to Descartes, in part sent them 
 committed to writing by their authors. Bloemaert and 
 Bannius in Harlem, the only Catholic priests in Holland 
 with whom Descartes was at all intimate, were his principal 
 agents in this matter in the Netherlands; Mersenne, of 
 course, attended to it in France. Bloemaert and Bannius 
 gave the manuscript to a Catholic scholar of reputation, 
 Caterus of Antwerp, a doctor of the theological faculty of 
 Lyons, who was a missionary in Holland, and dwelt in Alk- 
 maar. His opinion was the first which Descartes received 
 and sent with his reply to Mersenne (November, 1640). 
 Mersenne circulated the work among Parisian scholars, 
 obtain dtt the opinions of theologians and mathematicians, 
 and sent two collections of them to Descartes. Three of 
 them were made by men of ability and historical fame, two 
 of whom were philosophers, one English and one French, 
 contemporaries and antagonists of Descartes, both of whom 
 read the " Meditations," and committed their opinions of it 
 to writing at Mersenne's suggestion. The English philoso- 
 pher was Thomas Hobhes ; the Frenchman, Pierre G-assendi. 
 At the end of the year 1640, Hobbes had come to Paris to 
 reside again, to avoid the English civil war; and he spent 
 there a number of years, the most important literary period 
 in his life, since he wrote during that time his best-known 
 important works. Mersenne requested him to read and criti- 
 cise the "Meditations," soon after his arrival. Descartes 
 received the first part of his objections Jan. 20, 1641, during 
 his residence in Leyden, and replied to them the next day ; 
 
246 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the second part was sent in the first week of February. 
 At this time, Gassendi, who was still engaged in his impor- 
 tant work on Epicurus and his doctrine, went to Paris, and 
 became acquainted, through Mersenne, with Descartes' new 
 work, and was requested to state his opinion in writing. 
 Gassendi had an inordinate desire to be praised and quoted. 
 He was amiable in conversation, and extravagant in liis 
 praises, except when the Aristotelians were concerned ; but 
 he was too vain to be an impartial critic. He was out of 
 humor with Descartes because the latter had not cited his 
 explanation of parhelions in his essay on " Meteors," which 
 neglect he regarded as proeter decorum. In an ill humor, 
 and without a thorough understanding of Descartes' doc- 
 trine, he wrote his objections (" Disquisitio Metaphysica seu 
 Dubitationes "), which Mersenne received at the end of 
 May, 1641. Of course the usual praises were not wanting 
 at the conclusion. He wrote a rejoinder (instantice) to Des- 
 cartes' reply, which his scholar, Sorbiere, published with 
 the announcement that a perfect triumph had been achieved 
 (1643). The third of the above-mentioned authors was 
 Antoine Arnauld, then a young theologian, and sooft after 
 admitted among the doctors of Sorbonne, who was subse- 
 quently to earn the name of the "great Arnauld," and to 
 be one of the most famous of the Jansenists. Descartes 
 regarded his objections as the most important, on account 
 of their style, insight, and mathematical acuteness. Arnauld 
 may be regarded as the man through whose agency the 
 union was afterwards effected between the Cartesian phi- 
 losophy and the Jansenists of Port Royal. Descartes had 
 wished Mersenne to give the manuscript also to Father 
 Gibieuf of the Oratory of Jesus, and to the mathematician 
 Desargues, whom he valued more highly than three theo- 
 logians. Another opponent appeared, — Father Bourdin of 
 the Society of Jesus, professor of mathematics in the College 
 of Clermont, who in his lectures had already invidiously 
 attacked Descartes' "Dioptrics" and "Meteors," and now 
 
DESCARTES; THE THIRD PERIOD OP HIS LIFE. 247 
 
 was just as hostile to his " Meditations." His attacks were 
 very annoying to Descartes. He knew with what unanimity 
 the Jesuits acted. He saw himself involved in a contro- 
 versy with an order with which he wished to maintain the 
 old friendly relations on grounds both of regard and policy. 
 That a member of the Society of Jesus should be so hostile 
 to him, must have been doubly painful to him at a time when 
 he was receiving the worst treatment from the Calvinists in 
 the Netherlands. The order, however, had nothing to do 
 with Bourdin's polemic. The provincial Dinet was favor- 
 able to Descartes, and composed the difference. Bourdin 
 himself ceased to be his enemy after he became acquainted 
 with him. 
 
 We have here to deal merely with the history of these 
 ohjectiones and responsiones, not with their contents. (They 
 constitute a second and larger part, as it were, of the 
 " Meditations.") There were seven, arranged in chrono- 
 logical order. First came those of Doctor Caterus; the 
 reports of objections collected by Mersenne occupied the 
 second and sixth places; those of Hobbes were third, 
 Arnauld's fourth, Gassendi's fifth, and Bourdin's seventh, 
 though it was not possible to publish the latter in the first 
 edition. 
 
 The work first appeared in Paris under the title, " Medita- 
 tiones de prima philosophia, ubi de Dei existentia et animse 
 immortalitate " (1641). The philosopher now sought to 
 overcome his dislike of the name "Cartesius," since the 
 name Descartes was to him "mw peu trap rude en latin." 
 The second edition was published by Elzevir in Amsterdam, 
 under the changed title, " Meditationes de prima philosophia 
 in quibus Dei existentia et animse human se a corpore dis- 
 tinctio demonstrantur." The reason for this change is 
 evident enough. The existence of God is a metaphysical 
 principle ; but the immortality of the soul is not, while the 
 difference of essence between the soul and body is. This 
 difference forms the foundation of the entire Cartesian sys- 
 
248 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tem, and, strictly speaking, is the theme of the '■'■prima 
 pMlosophia." The second expression is, therefore, a correc- 
 tion of the first, which was chosen for theological and reli- 
 gious reasons, as the dedication declares. Descartes' theory 
 of the immortality of the soul is based on the difference of 
 essence between soul and body ; and metaphysics deals with 
 principles, not with deductions from them. The explanation 
 given by Descartes' last biographer again sacrifices truth to 
 emotion. While Descartes was engaged in publishing the 
 " Meditations," his father died, and almost at the same time 
 his daughter and eldest sister. Now, it was full of consola- 
 tion to the philosopher, to read on the title-page of his work 
 " de animce immortalitate." It was not really the title of his 
 work, but an epitaph ! If such feelings demanded any ex- 
 pression in such a place, the words " animce Jiumance a corpore 
 distinctio " would have been just as comforting.^ 
 
 The " Meditations " developed the course of thought by 
 which the fundamental principles of the new philosophy 
 were discovered and established. His next work was the 
 systematic exposition of his entire system. Descartes began 
 it immediately after the publication of the " Meditations," 
 and completed it within the course of the year. "The 
 Principles of Philosophy," in four books, was published by 
 Elzevir in Amsterdam in 1644, and was his second compre- 
 hensive and important work. The first book treats of the 
 principles of human knowledge ; the second, of the principles 
 of bodies ; the third, of the visible world ; the fourth, of the 
 earth. The first two form the doctrine of principles, strictly 
 speaking, metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. In the 
 progress of his works, the " Meditations " were, in time as 
 in fact, the middle term between the methodological essays 
 and the system of metaphysics. Descartes called them his 
 "metaphysical essays," and thus aptly indicated that they 
 combined the characteristics of " philosophical essays " and 
 the " Principles of Philosophy." He wrote this work in the 
 
 1 J. Millet: Descartes, son Histoire depuis 1637, pp. 23-25, 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 249 
 
 happiest period of his life. The success of his previous pub- 
 lications had raised him above the fear of public literary 
 activity. He was perfect master of the matter to which he 
 had to give form and order, and nothing could give greater 
 pleasure to his methodical mind than such activity as this. 
 He exercised the skill of the architect, which he gladly used 
 as an example, in order to show the imperfections of patch- 
 work in comparison with a systematic work produced by one 
 mind. He erected this temple of his thoughts while he was 
 living in the free and idyllic leisure which the country 
 palace of Endegeest permitted him to enjoy ; always in the 
 neighborhood of, and often in conversation with, the gifted 
 princess, who understood him perfectly, and knew how to 
 appreciate him. The Countess-palatine Elizabeth was then 
 the world for whom he wrote ; and he dedicated to her his 
 work, unconcerned about the doctors of Sorbonne. But 
 already a storm was gathering about the new doctrine and 
 the philosopher. 
 
250 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BEGINNINGS OP A SCHOOL. DISCIPLES AND OPPONENTS. 
 I. CONTROVERBIES IN UTRECHT. 
 
 1. Reneri and Regius. 
 
 AS little as Descartes sought the difPusion of his doctrine, 
 - he could not prevent it from gaining friends and dis- 
 ciples, who soon formed the nucleus of a school ; for whose 
 public activity in teaching, his works offered a definite basis, 
 and the universities of the Netherlands the first field of 
 labor. With friends came antagonists. Even in its origin, 
 the school was violently attacked. In attacking disciples, 
 the master was attacked ; every means of suppressing the 
 new doctrine was tried ; even the person of its author was 
 threatened. The University of Utrecht was the place, where 
 the school began to form, and where it was first opposed. 
 It was not so much a definite theory which provoked its 
 antagonists, as Descartes' mental importance in general ; it 
 was the novelty and power of his thoughts, which excited 
 the hostility of those who would gladly have made them- 
 selves the subject of the first command, "Thou shalt have 
 no other gods before me." 
 
 In order to understand the course and character of the 
 controversies of Utrecht, we must go back a little. In 
 the first part of his stay in the Netherlands, Descartes had 
 become acquainted with Henry Reneri (Renier) in Amster- 
 dam, who studied in LiSge and Lyons, was converted from 
 Catholicism to the Reformed Church, and, therefore, dis- 
 inherited by his father. An exile from his native country, 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 251 
 
 he had sought an asylum in Holland, and started in Amster- 
 dam a private school. He had become acquainted with Des- 
 cartes through Beeckman. Through his intercourse with 
 Descartes, Reneri became deeply interested in philosophy; 
 and by diligent study he made such attainments that he was 
 called to the University of Leyden after the death of the 
 Aristotelian there, from thence to Deventer, and in the year 
 1634 to Utrecht. Descartes' iirst disciple was the first pro- 
 fessor called to the newly founded university, with whose 
 history that of the Cartesian system was interwoven- during 
 its first years. Reneri's career as professor in Utrecht was 
 short but brilliant. For five years he was an ornament of 
 the university. After his early death (March, 1639), by 
 order of the city and university the highest honors were 
 paid to his memory. The funeral oration, delivered by Anton 
 jEmilius, professor of history and rhetoric, himself a disciple 
 of the new philosophy, was likewise a eulogy of Descartes. 
 The government wished that the philosopher and his system 
 should be mentioned with commendations, and that the 
 oration should be published. On its titlepage Reneri was 
 called the friend and disciple of Descartes, " the Atlas and 
 Archimedes of our century." Envy and hatred followed 
 close upon this public and somewhat extravagant praise : 
 they sought first to strike the philosopher through his 
 disciples. 
 
 Among Reneri's pupils in Utrecht was an exceedingly 
 talented young medical student by the name of Regius 
 (Henry le Roi), who had mastered the new doctrine with 
 enthusiastic zeal, and so expounded it in his private lectures 
 on physiology that he soon won a crowd of enthusiastic 
 students. There was only one chair of medicine in the 
 university, and this was filled by Straaten. He wished to 
 teach nothing but anatomy and practical medicine, and, 
 therefore, urged that another chair should be established for 
 botany and theoretical medicine. Regius was chosen for the 
 new position, and was appointed professor in ordinary in 
 
252 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1638. After Reneri's death he was the leader of the new 
 philosophy in Utrecht, and, therefore, the first target of its 
 enemies. 
 
 2. Crishertus Voetius. — The leader of his opponents was 
 one of the most highly respected and influential men in 
 Utrecht, — Gisbertus Voetius, the first professor of theology 
 in the University of Utrecht, and the first clergyman of the 
 city. He had been one of the most violent Gomarists in 
 the synod at Dort, and, since the victory of his party, one 
 of the most overbearing. He strode along with a pompous 
 air, his person carefully attended to, with an expression of 
 perfect self-satisfaction. For a long time he had regarded 
 his talents, merits, and worth as incomparable, and despised 
 every thing in which he was deficient ; and he was deficient 
 in much. His scholarship was narrow and superficial ; his 
 reading limited, embracing little beyond the loci communes, 
 some commentaries and abridgments. He made the grossest 
 blunders in his writings, because he quoted authorities with- 
 out having read and understood them. His judgment was 
 without acuteness, his thoughts lacked connection and 
 order; in philosophy, his ability and knowledge were lim- 
 ited by the ordinary scholasticism. It is difficult to believe 
 that a person of such mediocrity could be so respected and 
 feared, and become the dangerous antagonist of so great a 
 thinker. His inclination, however, led him to a kind of 
 activity for which he had most talent. He chose polemics, 
 a field where much can be accomplished with a large audi- 
 ence, without learning and real culture. He was not a 
 controversialist of abUity, but a mere fighting-cock, fitted to 
 please a mob. He lacked both the fairness and judgment 
 necessary to a just and impartial estimate of an opponent. 
 He hated Catholics and philosophers worst of all ; and pas- 
 sion so blinded him that he was scarcely able to distinguish 
 them, and in his malignity he regarded the same man as a 
 Jesuit and an atheist. Yet he was shrewd enough to decry 
 an opponent as an atheist when addressing Jesuits, and as a 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 253 
 
 Jesuit when addressing Protestants. He was disputatious, 
 because he would not brook opposition, and because he 
 wished to rule. His thirst for power made him eager for 
 office, and affable. He wished to please the people, and 
 excite their admiration, now by an air of devotion, now 
 by his bold and impudent sermons and writings. With 
 people in general, he took the rdle of the prelate, while with 
 scholars it pleased him to appear as a pedant; but his 
 strongest desire was to appear to all as a man whom every 
 one had cause to fear. For this reason there was no other 
 discourse he liked so well to deliver as castigatory sermons 
 in the manner of a Capuchin, — which make a strong impres- 
 sion on people, — and, to avoid being considered a coward, 
 he persecuted regardlessly persons of power and influence, 
 for unimportant matters. He was a master of the arts of 
 pleasing the people, and, therefore, won their esteem without 
 seeming to make it an object. And so it came to pass, that 
 he was really beloved and highly respected by the masses, an 
 object of fear to many, and was called " the glory and orna- 
 ment of the churches of the Netherlands (ecclesiarum helgi- 
 carum decus et ornamentum) ; " and this was the height of 
 his ambition, as well as the expression of his own modest 
 opinion. 
 
 By the side of this man, there arose in Utrecht an influen- 
 tial intellectual power in the doctrine and school of Des- 
 cartes, which acknowledged no allegiance to him. Since it 
 was praised on the titlepage of that funeral oration, Voetius 
 had been its enemy. He had exerted his influence a year 
 before in behalf of Regius's appointment, after the latter 
 had flattered him and allowed him to examine his creed. 
 But now the zeal of Regius for Cartesianism, and still more 
 his popularity as a lecturer, displeased Voetius; and he 
 plotted the ruin of Regius and Descartes. If he could only 
 prove that the new doctrine was dangerous to Protestantism 
 and, therefore, to the Netherlands ! And, if he could show 
 that the Cartesian philosophy was atheistic, it could be very 
 
254 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 easily done, since Regius was a Cartesian. To this end he 
 read through the "Discourse," Descartes' first publication, 
 and collected all the passages relating to theology; and, 
 fortunately for his purpose, he found doubt so openly 
 acknowledged, and vindicated with such disregard of con- 
 sequences, that the atheistic tendencies of the work were to 
 him self-evident. 
 
 3. The Condemnation of the New Philosophy. — At first the 
 name of Descartes was not mentioned. Voetius contented 
 himself with selecting certain features of Descartes' doctrine, 
 and attacking them as atheistic, in some academic theses in 
 June, 1639. In this way he began his campaign, which, if 
 he were successful, would end with the expulsion of Des- 
 cartes from the Netherlands. For a long time the contro- 
 versy was carried on in the form of academic theses and 
 disputations. Voetius made every exertion, and used his 
 influence with the professors and magistrates, and his power 
 as rector, to destroy Regius. On many an occasion, Regius, 
 in his young and somewhat immature way, had shown the 
 superiority of the new philosophy to the old, and had 
 offended his colleagues by making the old ridiculous, and 
 thus exposed himself to severe attacks. In June, 1640, 
 when he defended the new doctrine of the circulation of the 
 blood, discovered by Harvey and defended by Descartes, he 
 was instructed not to depart so far from the traditional theo- 
 ries, and to defend the new doctrines only " exercitii causa.''^ 
 The next year Voefius was made rector. The controversy 
 became more animated, though it was still carried on only 
 by academic theses and disputations. Regius defended the 
 thesis that the union of soul and body consists only in the 
 composition of the two ' substances, and is not, therefore, an 
 actual unity, — not a '■'■unum per se" but only "joer acci- 
 dens." Now, it is exactly in this point that the most pro- 
 nounced contradiction exists between the Cartesian system 
 and the Aristotelian scholastic theory of the entelechy and 
 substantiality of forms ; and in his counter-theses Voetius 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 255 
 
 declared the new doctrine heretical. The theory of the 
 substantiality of the body, and the composition of man out 
 of two substances (" unum per accidens "), is contrary to rea- 
 son ; the theory of the motion of the earth, which Kepler (!) 
 introduced, contradicts the teachings of the Scriptures, as 
 well as all the philosophy that has been hitherto accepted ; 
 and the denial of substantial forms leads to the same contra- 
 dictions, promotes scepticism, endangers faith in immortality, 
 the Trinity, incarnation, original sin, prophecy, miracle, 
 grace, regeneration, etc. These theses denote the man, and 
 the nature of his mind. 
 
 At this point the controversy, hitherto academic and 
 carried on by means of disputations and theses, began to 
 be conducted in writing. Contrary to the advice of Des- 
 cartes and his friends in Utrecht, Regius published his 
 defence against the theses of Voetius. Indeed, Descartes 
 was in general but little pleased with the polemical tone of 
 Regius. The manner in which he inveighed against the 
 scholastic philosophy could not but displease Descartes, from 
 his whole mode of thought. He reminded Regius that the 
 past ought not to be attacked for sport, and, indeed, he saw 
 neither use nor plan in the controversy which the latter had 
 in view. Should Regius publish his reply to Voetius, — and 
 Descartes counselled against it, — it ought to be moderate 
 in its tone, and freed from all offensive expressions. Regius 
 followed the last advice ; but, however carefully he chose his 
 words, however flattering they were to Voetius, the latter 
 could not pardon him for daring to reply to him at all. In 
 addition to this, the reply was printed without license, the 
 printer was a Catholic, and the publisher a Remonstrant. 
 Voetius discovered a whole nest of heresies that must be 
 broken up. By command of the magistrates, the book was 
 confiscated; but this only made it read the more, and its 
 diffusion made the anger of Voetius still hotter; and the 
 result was, that at his urgent suggestion Regius was for- 
 bidden to lecture on philosophical subjects. He now turned 
 
256 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to attack the new philosophy as such, and defend the old. 
 His son wrote theses in reply to Regius ; while one of 
 his creatures, a student by the name of Waterlaet, wrote a 
 vindication of the already seriously threatened orthodox 
 philosophy. But Voetius struck the home thrust through 
 the university of which he was master. The academic senate 
 decreed a formal disapprobation of the publication of Regius 
 and his doctrine, and likewise a formal condemnation of the 
 new philosophy. The decree was pronounced March 16, 
 1642, and contained the following declaration : " We, pro- 
 fessors of the University of Utrecht, reject and condemn the 
 new philosophy, because, in the first place, it contradicts 
 the old, and subverts its principles ; second, because it makes 
 students averse to the study of the old philosophy, and thus 
 hinders their cultivation, since they cannot understand the 
 terminology of the schools when they have once become 
 acquainted with the principles of this pretended philosophy ; 
 and, finally, because not only do so many false and irra- 
 tional views follow from it, but also immature youths can 
 easily draw inferences from it inconsistent with other sci- 
 ences, particularly the true theology." Eight out of ten 
 professors subscribed to this division : the other two were 
 Cyprianus and JEmilius, the admirer of the philosopher. 
 
 4. The Controversy between Descartes and Voetius. — The 
 condemnation was aimed at Descartes, although his name 
 was not mentioned ; and he therefore now appeared on the 
 field of battle. Engaged in preparing the second edition 
 of the "Meditations," and in replying to Bourdin's objec- 
 tions, he found an excellent opportunity for describing the 
 intrigues of his enemy in Utrecht, in a letter written at the 
 same time to Dinet, in which he also examined the attacks 
 of his opponent among the Jesuits. He made no mention of 
 university, disciples, or opponents ; but with a few strokes 
 he sketched a picture of the latter ad vivum.: "There is 
 a man who is regarded by the world as a theologian, a 
 preacher, and a defender of the faith, who, through his con- 
 
DESCARTES; THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 257 
 
 troversial sermons, in which he libellously attacks now the 
 Catholic Church, now others of a different faith from his 
 own, now the powers of the time, has won a high place in 
 the respect and regard of the people. He makes a show of 
 an ardent and ingenuous zeal for religion ; interlarding his 
 discourses, at the same time, with jests which please the 
 ear of the common people. He is constantly publishing pam- 
 phlets which are not worth reading, citing therein various 
 authors who testify against rather than for him, and whose 
 works he probably knows only from their tables of contents. 
 He speaks of every possible science in a bold and confident 
 manner, as if he were entirely at home in them, and there- 
 fore passes for a scholar among the ignorant. But people 
 of some judgment, who know how forward he is to begin 
 quarrels with all the world, how often he substitutes insults 
 for arguments, and, after he has been beaten, how insult- 
 ingly he retires, openly ridicule and despise him if they are 
 not of his faith. Indeed, he has been handled so roughly 
 before all the world, that scarcely any thing for disputation 
 now remains. Intelligent people of his own faith excuse and 
 tolerate him as well as they can, but in their hearts they 
 regard him with equal contempt. " ^ 
 
 Voetius recognized his portrait, and breathed vengeance. 
 He ought now to have openly taken the field against 
 Descartes, and led the fight directly against him ; but he 
 remained in ambush, and sought to find people to go into 
 the fire for him. He wanted to find some one to attack the 
 theories of the philosopher, another to write a libel against 
 him, or to put his name to a pamphlet written by Voetius 
 himself. At the same time, before the public he took the 
 rdle of the injured man. He was innocence itself, Descartes 
 was a malicious slanderer. He failed in his first attempt to 
 secure an ally to attack the theories of Descartes, nor could 
 he have made it more unskilfully, or in a way that showed 
 a greater lack of character. Voetius, the sworn enemy of 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. ix. pp. 34, 35. 
 
258 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Catholicism, wrote, to this end, to a Catholic theologian, who 
 was also Descartes' old and true friend, — Mersenne. And 
 how did he write ? The letter was written in the beginning 
 of the controversies, before the university pronounced its 
 judgment of condemnation ; and in it we find these words : 
 " You have doubtless read the philosophical essays which 
 Descartes has published in French. He appears to wish to 
 be the founder of a new sect, unheard of till now ; and there 
 are those who admire and pray to him as though he were 
 a god fallen down from heaven. These tvpr)fi.aTa should be 
 subjected to your judgment and censorship. No physicist 
 or philosopher could overthrow him more successfully than 
 you, who are eminent in geometry and physics, — precisely 
 those departments in which Descartes imagines he is strong ; 
 and to do so would be a labor worthy of your learning and 
 your ability. You have defended truth, and, in the recon- 
 ciliation of theology and physics, vindicated metaphysics 
 and mathematics. Truth, therefore, summons you to avenge 
 her." Disgusted by this letter, Mersenne treated Voetius 
 as he deserved. He did not answer him for a long time ; 
 and when he did, he declined his proposal as emphatically 
 as he could, confounding its author so far as it lay in his 
 power. At the same time he sent the letter, with his answer, 
 to Descartes. 
 
 Voetius succeeded in finding an ally to be responsible for 
 the libel. He found a man ready to give his name and pen 
 to a pamphlet sketched, and in part written, by himself, — 
 Martin Schoock, professor in Groningen, formerly his pupil 
 and now his tool. The pamphlet was published a year after 
 that academic condemnation (March, 1643), under the title, 
 " Philosophia Cartesiana, sive admiranda methodus novse phi- 
 losophise Renati Descartes," in style and character a malicious 
 libel. The preface attacked the letter to Dinet, in which 
 Descartes had insulted Reformed religion, and the Evangeli- 
 cal Church of the Netherlands, particularly one of its most 
 eminent members. The rest of the pamphlet is an attack 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 259 
 
 on the new philosophy; charges it with having dangerous 
 consequences, infidelity, atheism, and immorality. Descartes 
 is a second Vanini, an atheist, and a hypocrite, like the latter 
 who was justly condemned for his atheism and burned in 
 Toulouse. This comparison, which smells of the stake, and 
 is developed with great care and in great detail, is the 
 unmistakable work of Voetius. 
 
 The pamphlet was published in Utrecht. During the 
 printing, Descartes received the sheets one by one ; and as 
 soon as he read the first, he began his reply, " Epistola ad 
 celeberrimum virum D. Gisbertum Voetium," the masterpiece 
 of his polemics. He had a threefold purpose : first, to vin- 
 dicate the picture of his antagonist, sketched in the letter to 
 Dinet ; second, to invalidate the pamphlet signed by Schoock ; 
 and, third, to criticise another of Voetius' bungling works, 
 wliich appeared while Descartes was writing. Thus the 
 polemic grew under his hands, and the letter became a book 
 of nine parts. Even before he received the last sheets of 
 the "Philosophia Cartesiana," Voetius published a libel enti- 
 tled " On the Fraternity of Mary." The two publications, 
 unlike as they are in their subjects, resemble each other 
 so closely in their mode of thought, style, and polemical 
 methods, that their kinship is easily recognized. Descartes 
 now turns aside to take up this new subject, devotes to it 
 the sixth part of his letter, and, after he .has received the 
 last sheets of the pamphlet, returns to his original subject. 
 This interruption is unfavorable to the composition of his 
 polemic. It makes a sudden leap into a new field, and 
 absorbs foreign matter which increases its strength in 
 appearance only, while in fact it scatters it and disturbs the 
 impression of the whole. However, his procedure is ex- 
 plained both by his irritation, and particularly by the fact 
 that it is an acknowledged production of Voetius of which 
 he is in possession, while he is compelled to write against a 
 concealed author. If he can prove that the author of the 
 Philosophia Cartesiana," and that of the » Confraternitas 
 
260 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Mariana," is one and the same man, he has scored an impor- 
 tant point, and convicted Voetius of the double meanness of 
 reviling and lying. 
 
 The subject of the second publication has nothing in com- 
 mon with the first. There existed in Catholic times, in 
 Bois-le-Duc, a Society of the Holy Virgin, in possession of 
 certain rights and revenues, of which the most distinguished 
 men in the city were members. After the downfall of the 
 Spanish power, and the victory of the Reformation, this 
 society had been acknowledged by the new government 
 (1629). Its rights and revenues were preserved ; though 
 exactly for this reason it lost its ecclesiastical character, of 
 which nothing remained but its name, and now existed 
 merely as a civil society. But to prevent it from being a 
 secret centre of Catholicism, and thus forming numerous 
 intrigues dangerous to the state, the authorities required the 
 admission of reformed members ; and so the burgomaster of 
 Bois-le-Duc, with thirteen of the most influential Protestants 
 of the city, became members of the society. This event 
 kindled the anger of Voetius into a flame. He immediately 
 hurled a thesis, always his first thunderbolt, against this 
 " idolatry " in Bois-le-Duc. The authorities of the city, 
 through one of their ecclesiastics, replied in a moderate and 
 conciliatory tone to the charges of idolatry, religious indif- 
 ference; and ungodly tolerance ; but Voetius or his compan- 
 ions made a counter-reply with an anonymous libel, and 
 since this was forbidden in Bois-le-Duc he wrote the book, 
 "De Confraternitate Mariana." 
 
 The two antagonists were now pressing hard upon each 
 other. Four years had passed since Voetius began the 
 attack ; and he had continued it in theses, disputations, lec- 
 tures, sermons, and private letters. Through his influence 
 the judgment of condemnation was pronounced by the Uni- 
 versity of Utrecht, and he boasted of it in a letter which fell 
 into Descartes' hands ; and finally he had concealed himself 
 behind Schoock in order to insult the philosopher in a libel, 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 261 
 
 and make him and his system an object of suspicion. After 
 the lapse of years, Descartes himself entered the controversy, 
 and wrote two articles, the letters to Dinet and Voetius, both 
 of which were handed in his name, by influential men, to the 
 first burgomaster of the city of Utrecht. 
 
 A lawsuit now resulted from the controversy. Voetius 
 played the rdle of a martyr who had suffered for his faith. 
 Descartes was a Jesuit, who had come into the Netherlands 
 as the emissary and spy of the Jesuits, to excite dissensions 
 and controversies ; and this was why Voetius, " the glory and 
 ornament of the Church of the Netherlands," had been the 
 first object of his attacks, the first victim of his slanders. 
 He had never injured Descartes : the pamphlet against him 
 was written by Schoock, not by himself. Thus he excited 
 public sentiment in Utrecht, particularly that of the authori- 
 ties, and arrayed it on his side, seeking from the magis- 
 trates protection, as a persecuted man, against the slanders 
 of the foreign philosopher. The 13th of June, 1643, the 
 authorities issued a summons to Descartes, to appear in per- 
 son, and prove his accusations against Voetius, especially to 
 prove that Voetius and iiot Schoock was the author of the 
 pamphlet against him. If his accusations were true, they 
 would result in the greatest injury to the university and the 
 city. The summons was issued with all the forms of pub- 
 licity ; it was proclaimed before the people with the ringing 
 of a bell ; it was printed, posted, sent abroad. All this 
 emanated from hostility to Descartes; for it was entirely 
 unnecessary, as every one knew where to find him. He 
 received the summons in Egmond, where he had lived for a 
 short time, and answered it in writing in the language of 
 the country. He thanked the authorities for the purpose 
 of the investigation, and offered to prove his assertions ; but, 
 as a Frenchman, he disputed their right to institute judicial 
 proceedings against him. Since a libel had been published 
 against him in Utrecht, he had a right to expect that the 
 investigation would first of all discover its author, and hold 
 
262 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 him to account. However, he felt that he was no longer 
 safe: he was apprehensive of a warrant, which could be 
 immediately executed in Egmond. He went, therefore, to 
 The Hague, and committed himself to the protection of the 
 French ambassador, de la Thuill^rie, who took up the mat- 
 ter ; and through his influence the Prince of Orange put a 
 stop to further persecution. That Descartes was unmolested, 
 was due to the stadtholder. Sentence was certainly pro- 
 nounced against him ; his letters were condemned as libels, 
 and he was found guilty of slandering Voetius (Sept. 23, 
 1643) : but the decision was published almost secretly, and 
 when it was proclaimed publicity was avoided with as much 
 care as it had been sought some months before when the sum- 
 mons was issued. The authorities were in an embarrassing 
 position, and wished to get the matter out of the way by 
 pronouncing a sentence of condemnation in such a way as 
 to make it of no effect. Voetius had thus a,ttained the small- 
 est part of his purpose. If he had succeeded, Descartes 
 would have been driven from the Netherlands, and his con- 
 demned publications would have been burnt. It was said 
 that he had already urged the exeCutioner to make a huge 
 pile, in order that the flames might be seen at a great 
 distance. 
 
 5. Conclusion of the Utrecht- Groningen Controversy. — But 
 the matter was not yet ended. Descartes learned the decis- 
 ion without being officially informed of its purport and its 
 reasons. What he heard necessarily increased his apprehen- 
 sions for his safety, even for his reputation, since he seemed 
 to have been proved guilty of having falsely accused Voetius 
 of having written the libel. Schooek had spent the summer 
 in Utrecht, and had there declared most positively that he 
 alone was the author of the " Philosophia Cartesiana," that 
 he had written it without assistance or suggestion from Voe- 
 tius, and that he intended to state this in a new publication. 
 This made Descartes' position worse. He received anony- 
 mous letters from those who were kindly disposed to him 
 
DESCAKTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 263 
 
 in Utrecht and The Hague, warning him that he was in 
 imminent danger. He had reason to fear imprisonment, and 
 the seizure of his papers, in Egmond Van Hoef, where he 
 was then staying ; and, therefore, intended to go back to 
 The Hague in November, 1643.^ For the second time he 
 appealed for protection to the French ambassador, describing 
 to him in detail the situation in Utrecht. (Tlie letter has 
 been in part preserved, and has been lately published by 
 Foucher de Careil.^) 
 
 But, since Schoock had declared that he alone was the 
 author of the pamphlet, Descartes was compelled to bring 
 an action against him before the senate of the University of 
 Groningen. And there the matter terminated quite other- 
 wise than in Utrecht. It happened that the accused was 
 just then rector of the university. To spare their rector, 
 and, at the same time, do justice to the philosopher, the 
 senate avoided pronouncing a formal decision, and made a 
 declaration satisfactory to Descartes, lamenting that Schoock 
 had engaged in the controversy against the latter, and 
 had brought utterly groundless charges against his system. 
 Schoock himself declared, under oath, that Voetius had 
 urged him to write the pamphlet, the most of which was 
 written in Utrecht; that he had furnished the material for 
 it, and, during the printing, had added the strongest invec- 
 tives, and had put Schoock's name, against his will, on the 
 titlepage and to the preface. Schoock further swore tha;t he 
 could not acknowledge the pamphlet in its present form as 
 his own, and that he must declare that it was unworthy 
 of a respectable man and a scholar. He said he repented of 
 nothing more bitterly, than that he had had any thing to do 
 with it ; that he had broken with Voetius, and had refused 
 
 1 CEuvres in^dites, vol. ii. pp. 22, 23. (Letter to the counsellor of state, 
 "William, in The Hague, Nov. 7, 1043.) 
 
 2 lb., ii. pp. 43-63. (Letter to M. de la ThuilWrie.) From the first words of 
 the letter, it is evident that Descartes had, for the first time, appealed to his 
 protection shortly before; which, it seems to me, his latest biographer over- 
 looks, J. Millet: Histoire do Descartes, ii. pp. 127-129. 
 
264 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his request to sign a false testimony. Now Descartes' accu- 
 sation against Voetius was completely proved, and the decis- 
 ion of the court in Utrecht was shown to be entirely 
 groundless. He sent the document stating the action of the 
 senate in Groningen, and the information laid before it, to 
 the authorities in Utrecht, with the reasonable expectation 
 that they would look into the matter, and make right the 
 wrong they had done him, by some public act. But nothing 
 was done, except to issue a prohibition to the printer and 
 publisher in Utrecht, forbidding them to sell or circulate any 
 publications for or against Descartes. Half of this prohibi- 
 tion was aimed at the philosopher ; and the other half was 
 without effect, since both Voetiuses, father and son, continued 
 to publish abuses of Descartes. The younger Voetius wrote 
 a defence of his father, and a pamphlet against the Univer- 
 sity of Groningen, in which Descartes and his system were 
 again slandered, and the contents of the first pamphlet were 
 re-affirmed, although the authorship of the elder Voetius was 
 denied. The elder Voetius brought an action against his 
 colleague Schoock, but let the prosecution drop. The two 
 worthies found it useful to compose their differences in good 
 time, since they had been partners in too many intrigues, and 
 each had reason to fear the revelations of the other. 
 
 Descartes finally concluded the controversy (the last week 
 of June, 1645), which, from its first occasion to the point of 
 time just stated, occupied a period of six years, with " An 
 Apologetic Letter to the Magistrates of Utrecht, against the 
 Two Voetiuses, Father and Son." The entire course of the 
 controversy was narrated in detail ; and from the letters of 
 Voetius to Schoock, it was proved that Voetius projected and 
 urged the defamatory pamphlet ; that he made the compari- 
 son with Vanini ; that he himself wrote the preface, the most 
 outrageous part of the pamphlet, and put it in Schoock's 
 hands. He said further, that the magistrates had for four 
 years treated him unfairly and unjustly, in favor of the two 
 Voetiuses : first, in summoning him like a vagabond ; second, 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 265 
 
 in condemning him as a slanderer, and in not retracting this 
 decision even after the declaration of the senate of Groning- 
 en ; third, in endeavoring to dispose of the matter without 
 a word of restitution, by an apparently neutral but really 
 partisan prohibition. He expected that the magistrates would 
 at last give him the satisfaction which was his due.' 
 
 The magistrates of Utrecht remained deaf to all argu- 
 ments. Their partiality appears the more odious when we 
 consider the circumspect conduct, the peaceable character, 
 and the retired life of Descartes. In a free country, where 
 he sought nothing except leisure and solitude, he had, for no 
 just reason, come pretty near being deprived of its hospi- 
 tality, and his residence there had been made intensely dis- 
 agreeable. His dislike of appearing before the world as an 
 author had been . justified : he must do penance for the 
 attempt which he had made so hesitatingly and cautiously, 
 with a long series of interruptions and disappointments. 
 
 n. ATTACKS IN LKTDEN. 
 
 When the affair at Utrecht was ended, the new philosophy 
 had already struck roots in the University of Leyden, and 
 had begun to be a subject of academic theses and disputa- 
 tions. Hooghland, a Catholic nobleman, the mathematicians 
 Golius and Schooten, were friends and disciples of Des- 
 cartes. Particular mention should be made of Adrian 
 Heereboord, who circumspectly and successfully defended 
 his theories in the university. As in Utrecht, disciples 
 aroused opponents. Here, also, they came from the theolo- 
 gians, who emulated Voetius, and were probably set on by 
 him. Scarcely two years had passed since the conclusion of 
 the Utrecht controversy, when the attacks of the theologians 
 in Leyden became so violent that Descartes, at the sugges- 
 tion of his friends, appealed from Egmond to the magistrates 
 
 1 Lettre Apologe'tique de M. Descartes, aux magistrats de la Tille d'Utrecht, 
 contre MM. Voetius pere et fils (CEuvres, t. ix. pp. 250-322). Kegius received 
 this "fasciculum epistolarum," as he called it, June 22, 1645. 
 
266 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 for protection. And he had the same experience with these 
 magistrates as with those in Utrecht. 
 
 In the first months of the year 1647, Revius, a theological 
 tutor, had caused some theses to be defended against the 
 " Meditations," in which the philosopher was charged with 
 pure atheism and other heresies. The man was so insignifi- 
 cant, and his attacks so coarse, that they had no effect. 
 Soon after, Triglandius defended theses, accusing Descartes, 
 not merely of atheism, but blasphemy and Pelagianism. 
 Descartes had called God a deceiver, and had explained the 
 faculty of the human will as greater than the idea of God. 
 As a matter of fact, Descartes had supposed the possibility 
 that the world is a mere phantom, the work of a deceptive 
 demon, in order to prove the contrary ; and he had declared 
 that the human will is more comprehensive than the under- 
 standing. These attacks had so little the appearance of 
 mere misconceptions, that the friends of the philosopher per- 
 ceived in them dangerous intentions, and advised him to take 
 measures against them. On May 4, 1647, Descartes wrote to 
 the curators of the university and the magistrates of the city 
 of Leyden, requesting redress for the wrong inflicted upon 
 him by false accusations. He was answered May 22, that the 
 rector of the university, as well as the professors of the theo- 
 logical and philosophical faculties, had been called together, 
 and strictly forbidden to make any mention of Descartes' 
 theories, whether to attack or defend them, and it was ex- 
 pected that he would engage in no further discussion of the 
 theories which had been attacked.^ The redress, therefore, 
 consisted in this, — that the theories which had been attacked 
 should be considered Cartesian, and that his entire system 
 was laid under a kind of interdict in the University of Ley- 
 den ; and, indeed, the philosopher himself required to submit 
 to this regulation. Aroused by the injustice and unreason- 
 ableness of this procedure, Descartes replied to the magis- 
 trates, saying that he had probably not understood them ; it 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. pp. 26, 27. 
 
DESCARTES: THE THIRD PERIOD OF HIS LIFE. 267 
 
 was to him perfectly indifferent whether his name was men- 
 tioned in the University of Leyden, or not ; but for the sake 
 of his reputation, he must demand the declaration that the 
 theories which had been attacked were not his.' " Am I a 
 Herostratus, that people are forbidden to mention me ? " he 
 wrote at that time to one of his friends in Holland. " I have 
 never striven to have my name spread abroad, or desired that 
 any pedant in the world should know any thing of me. But 
 the matter has now gone so far, that they must either give 
 me redress, or openly acknowledge that your theologians 
 have a right to lie and slander, and that a man like me cannot 
 expect the least justice against them in this land." ^ A little 
 before this, he described his new grievances to the Princess 
 Elizabeth. "I have written a long letter to the curators 
 of the University of Leyden, to demand redress for the 
 slanders of two theologians. I have not yet received their 
 answer ; but I do not expect much, since I know the disposi- 
 tion of the people in this country, and that they do not 
 defend honesty and virtue, since they fear the frowns, of theo- 
 logians. The wrong will be plastered over, not healed." "If, 
 as I foresee, I do not obtain justice, I intend to leave this 
 country immediately." " I have just received letters from the 
 Hague and Leyden, informing me that the meeting of the 
 curators is postponed, and that the theologians propose to be 
 the judges. In this case, I shall be subject to an inquisition 
 worse than the Spanish ever was, and shall be branded as an 
 enemy of their faith. I am, therefore, advised to appeal to 
 the French ambassador, and the Prince of Orange, not to 
 obtain justice, but to prevent, by their interference, the 
 extremest measures of my antagonists. I do not think, how- 
 ever, that I shall follow this advice. I want justice ; and if I 
 cannot get it, I think it best to prepare to return as quietly 
 as possible." ° 
 
 Descartes was entirely correct, when, in his letter to the 
 
 1 CEnvres, t. x. pp. 29-34. " ib., pp. 3(i-40. 
 
 8 lb., pp. 40-44. (The letter is dated May 12, 1647.) 
 
268 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Princess Elizabeth, he said that the Leyden attacks were a 
 consequence of those of Utrecht, and spoke of a " theological 
 league " that opposed him, determined to suppress his doc- 
 trine. The orthodox Calvinists of the Netherlands were 
 agreed upon the condemnation of the new philosophy, and 
 had no intention whatever to engage in discussions concern- 
 ing its nature and grounds. They wished to make short 
 work of it, and to forbid to theologians by synodal decrees 
 any use of Descartes' doctrine in their discourses and writ- 
 ings. Ten years later they accomplished their purpose. It 
 was the first conflict between modern philosophy and the 
 Reformed Church. 
 
 With this, the idyllic life of the philosopher in the Nether- 
 lands was over. The Utrecht-Leyden difficulties had more 
 and more embittered his feelings against the country and its 
 inhabitants. He had every reason to feel insecure, and to 
 think of a new and quiet residence. 
 
LAST YEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND. 269 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LAST YEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND. 
 I. NEW PLANS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 1. Journeys to France. 
 
 rr^HERE were reasons enougli to induce the philosopher, 
 -L after so long an absence, and after he had so success- 
 fully finished the most important part of his work, to return 
 to his own country. Although he had found many and able 
 friends and disciples, particularly in the Hague, among the 
 personal friends of the Prince of Orange and his counsellors, 
 men like Constantine Huyghens van Zuytlichen (father of 
 the famous Christian Huyghens), Wilhelm, PoUot, and others, 
 he had been obliged to learn that the ruling party in the 
 Church was hostile to him, had threatened to drive him 
 from the country, and suspected him as a Catholic French- 
 man. His opponents in the Netherlands wished to get rid 
 of him, while his countrymen had long desired his return. 
 It seemed unworthy of France, that a man who had in- 
 creased the fame of the French name to such an extraor- 
 dinary extent, should live in a foreign land. Even at the 
 court, Descartes had found admirers. Sept. 6, 1646, a royal 
 pension was bestowed upon him, unsought. With the pros- 
 pect of a new one, the patent of which he received a year 
 and a half later (March, 1648), he was invited to live in 
 France, in a position suitable to his rank, and favorable to 
 his leisure. Even before this, he had felt a desire to see old 
 friends, and become acquainted with new ones ; and, besides, 
 after the death of his father, the duty of attending to the 
 
270 HISTORY OF MOBERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 business affairs of his family occasioned him to break in 
 upon liis leisure in Egmond, and make a visit to France. 
 
 The two first journeys were made in the years 1644 and 
 1647, principally to attend to the business of his inheritance 
 and his family. We learn from his letters that he left 
 Egmond van Hoef, May 1, 1644; went by the Hague, Ley- 
 den, and Amsterdam to France ; that he left Paris, July 10, 
 for Brittany, to stay there two months.' At the commence- 
 ment of October, he was again in Paris with his friend 
 Picot; and in the middle of November, he returned to 
 Egmond. The condemnation in Utrecht had already been 
 pronounced, and action had been brought in Groningen, 
 against Schoock, when he set out upon the journey. Two 
 years later we find him in the first week in June, in the 
 Hague, about to start on another journey to France. He 
 left Paris, July 15, to go again to Brittany and Poitou, to 
 look after business matters. In the middle of autumn he 
 was again in Egmond. Just before this, those unpleasant 
 attacks in Leyden were made, and he quietly resolved to 
 return. The thought of setting his feet on French soil was 
 ever with him ; and, therefore, he accepted that favorable 
 invitation which was the only reason of his third and last 
 visit to Paris. 
 
 He became acquainted with two of the critics of his " Med- 
 itations " in Paris, and, with them, forgot their disputes ; 
 viz., the Jesuit Bourdin on his first visit, and Gassendi on the 
 last. In the summer of 1647 he made the acquaintance of 
 the younger Pascal, whom he often met, and sought to con- 
 vince that there is no " vacuum " in nature, and no " horror 
 vacuii." He insisted that we must not explain certain phe- 
 nomena of the motion of fluid bodies — for example, the 
 ascent of water in the tube of a pump — by such fictions, but 
 by the pressure of the air. 
 
 2. Clerselier and Chanut. — Among the new friends and 
 
 1 CEuvres inddites, ii. p. 31. (Letter to 'Wilhelra in the Hague, July 9, 1644. 
 Descartes inquires in tliis letter concerning the Groningen matter.) 
 
LAST YEAES AND ■WORK IN HOLLAND. 271 
 
 enthusiastic admirers whom Descartes found in France, the 
 most important were two men with whom he became 
 acquainted in Paris, in the summer of 1644, and whose 
 names are interwoven with the destiny of the philosopher 
 and his works : they were the young advocate of parliament, 
 Claude Clerselier, and his brother-in-law, Pierre Chanut, then 
 president of the board of revenue, and next year French 
 ambassador to the court of the queen of Sweden. When he 
 went through Amsterdam on his way to Sweden (October, 
 1645), Descartes came from Egmond to see Chanut, for 
 whom he had formed a very warm friendship. Chanut was 
 particularly interested in questions relating to theoretical 
 ethics ; and Descartes had so high an opinion of his judgment, 
 that he wished him to read and criticise his works. " Most 
 men have so little capacity for criticism, that I do not find it 
 useful to waste time with their opinions; but I shall regard 
 yours as the utterances of an oracle." In the same letter, 
 he wrote to his distant friend, " I often think regretfully, 
 that the world is much too large for the few excellent people 
 in it. I would that they all lived in a single city ; and I 
 would gladly quit my hermitage, to live there too, if they 
 would permit me. Although I shun the crowd, on account 
 of the multitude of intrusive boors one meets at every step, 
 I yet value intercourse with those whom one esteems, as the 
 greatest happiness of life. If i/ou were in Paris, I should 
 have a strong motive to go there too." " I have been yours 
 from the first hour of our acquaintance, and I esteem you as 
 warmly as if I had spent my whole life with you." ^ 
 
 Chanut took the liveliest interest in the writings and 
 studies of Descartes, and spread his fame abroad whenever he 
 had the opportunity. He studied the "Principles" agaia, 
 and requested Clerselier to send him the French edition of 
 the " Meditations," that he might give it to the queen. He 
 rejoiced that Descartes had sketched a short essay on "-The 
 
 1 (Euvres, t. ix. pp. 409, 410. (March, 1646,) p. 417. (Letter dated' Nov. 1, 
 1646.) 
 
272 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Nature of the Human Passions ; " and he urged his friend to 
 complete this work, which was connected with the questions 
 relating to the theory of morals. This interest plainly ani- 
 mated the lonely philosopher, who was somewhat depressed 
 by his recent experiences. "I would now gladly write of 
 yet another undertaking," Descartes had said in the letter in 
 which he mentioned that essay on the passions, "but I see 
 how few men there are who think it worth while to read my 
 writings; and this pleases me so little, that it makes me 
 negligent." • 
 
 That the young queen of Sweden was to receive his " Med- 
 itations " from the hands of a friend, and read them at his 
 suggestion, afforded to him a pleasant prospect, and plainly 
 brightened his depressed mood, disgusted as he was with the 
 conduct of a hostile or stupid multitude. Involuntarily his 
 imagination placed the Northern queen by the side of the 
 Princess Elizabeth, and found a resemblance between them. 
 Vague wishes and hopes were excited, which reflected them- 
 selves in his next letter to Chanut. This letter deserves an 
 important place among the self-revelations of the philosopher. 
 Among the griefs and disappointments of the last years, he 
 had often repented of his unfaithfulness to his motto, " £e7ie 
 qui latent, bene vixit." He wished now to see the world only 
 in his friends. Perhaps Stockholm seemed to him that city 
 of congenial minds to live in which he held the highest good. 
 " Had I not an entirely exceptional opinion of j'our penetra- 
 tion, and the greatest wish to learn of you, I should not have 
 begged you so importunately to examine my writings ; for I 
 am not in the habit of burdening people with such requests. 
 I have let my works go into the world unadorned, destitute 
 of the finery that attracts the eyes of thoSe who judge merely 
 \>j appearances, since I cared onlj'' for the attention of men 
 of ability, who would take the pains to examine them for 
 my instruction. This service you have not yet rendered me, 
 though you have put me under great obligations in other 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. ix. p. 413. (Letter dated June 15, 1646.) 
 
LAST YEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND. 273 
 
 respects, and I know that you speak -well of me ; and.Clerse- 
 lier informs me that you wish to give my ' Meditations ' to 
 the queen. I have never been ambitious to be known by 
 persons in such high station ; and if I had had the discretion 
 which savages attribute to apes, no one would know that I 
 write books. For it is said that savages believe that mon- 
 keys could talk if they would, but they refrain from doing so 
 that they may not be forced to work. I have not been dis- 
 creet enough to avoid writing, and therefore I am no longer 
 in possession of the quiet and leisure that I might have 
 enjoyed. However, the mischief is done. I am known by a 
 multitude of the adherents of the schools, who look askance 
 at my writings, and seek in all ways to injure me. I have, 
 therefore, reason to wish to be known also by better people, 
 who have both the poAver and the will to protect me. And 
 I have heard such excellent things of this queen, that I am 
 sincerely grateful to you for thinking of me in connection 
 with her, though I have been in the habit of complaining 
 when any one wished to make me acquainted with a person 
 in eminent station. I would not have believed half that De 
 la Thuillerie told me about the queen on his return from 
 Sweden, if I had not myself experienced in the princess, to 
 whom I dedicated my 'Principles,' that persons of great 
 rank, of whichever sex, do not need to be old to excel others 
 by far in scientific and moral culture. I only fear that the 
 queen will not thank you for recommending my writings. 
 Perhaps they would seem more worthy of being read if they 
 treated of ethical subjects, but this is a theme upon which I 
 dare not enter. The professors have fallen into a passion 
 even on account of my harmless principles of phj^sics, and 
 they would give me no rest if I should write on ethics. A 
 father (Bourdin) has accused me of scepticism, because I 
 have refuted the sceptics; and a clergyman (Voetius) has 
 decried me as an atheist, because I have attempted to prove 
 the existence of God. "What would they say if I should 
 inquire into the true value of all things which we desire or 
 
274 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 shun, and into the state of the soul after death, and should 
 seek to ascertain to what degree we have a right to love life, 
 and what should be our state that we may not fear death ? 
 And however perfectly my views might accord with those of 
 religion, and however useful they might be to the State, 
 exactly opposite opinions would be attributed to me in both 
 particulars. I hold it best, therefore, to write no more books 
 at all, and to say with Seneca, 'Heavy is the burden of 
 death on him who dies, known to all the world, but unknown 
 to himself.' I will labor only for my own instruction, and 
 impart my thoughts only in private conversations. How 
 happy I should be could I have such intercourse with you ! 
 but I do not believe I can ever go where you now live, or 
 that you can retire here. My only hope is, that, after some 
 years, you will make me happy by spending some days in my 
 hermitage on your return to France; and I can then talk 
 with you with an open heart." ' 
 
 His " beloved hermitage," however, lost its attraction for 
 him soon after, through the attacks of the Leyden theolo- 
 gians ; and the interruptions that followed, strengthened his 
 wish to change his place of residence. His next plans were 
 directed to France. 
 
 3. Last Residence in Paris. — But the affairs of that coun- 
 try, particularly those of the court, had grown more and 
 more unfavorable to him ; and the prospects which had been 
 held out to him had vanished when he went to Paris for 
 the last time, at the end of May, 1648. He had found the 
 theatre of political events very much changed, even on his 
 first journey (1644), after an absence of fifteen years. Louis 
 Xni. had died a year before (May 14, 1643), a few months 
 after Richelieu (Dec. 4, 1642), leaving the kingdom to a boy 
 five years old, under the regency of his mother, Queen Anne 
 of Austria, and the commanding influence of Mazarin, who 
 had succeeded Richelieu. The new edicts of taxation, in the 
 year 1644, had called forth remonstrances from the parlia- 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. pp. 413-417. (The letter is dated Nov. 1, 1646.) 
 
LAST YEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND. 275 
 
 ment in Paris, and created disturbances among the people ; 
 and a keen observer could even then have seen the sisms of 
 a gathering storm. Now measures of violence on the part 
 of the court, and opposition from the parliament, the division 
 of parties, and the intrigues of party leaders, had gone so far 
 that there was every indication of an outbreak of a civil war 
 (May, 1648). The imprisonment of two members of parlia- 
 ment in August of this year had caused an insurrection ; and 
 when Descartes left Paris towards the end of the month, he 
 saw the barricades erected with which the war of Fronde 
 began. But the absolutism of the French monarchy was on 
 the point of completion ; and the last remaining shadow of 
 a law-making power, independent of the crown, vanished 
 after a series of battles. 
 
 Under such circumstances, no one could think of the posi- 
 tion which had been promised Descartes, or even of the 
 pension which had been assured him. The only advantage 
 of his journey was a philosophical correspondence with 
 Arnauld (June, 1648), and a last visit to his friend Mer- 
 senne, whom he left very sick, and of whose death he was 
 informed soon after his return to Egmond. He had to aban- 
 don for a time his plan of living in France. "I should have 
 done well," he wrote to the Princess Elizabeth soon after his 
 arrival in Paris, "to remain in a country where there is peace 
 already ; and if these storms are not soon over, I shall return 
 to Egmond in six or eight weeks, and wait there until the 
 sky of France is clear. However, I find myself very happily 
 situated, since I am perfectly free, with one foot in France, 
 and the other in Holland." ^ But the storms increased, and 
 Descartes felt still happier when he had both feet in Egmond. 
 "Thank God," wrote he from this place, "the journey to 
 France, to which I had formally pledged myself, is behind 
 me : I am not sorry that I went, but I am yet gladder that 
 I am back. I have found no one to envy, and those who 
 live in the greatest splendor deserve the deepest sympathy. 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. p. 136. 
 
276 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 To learn how happy a quiet and retired life is, and how rich 
 is the man of moderate means, I could have chosen no better 
 time to make a visit to France." He has seen a queen under 
 barricades, and considers Elizabeth happy when he compares 
 her lot with that of the queens and princesses of Europe : 
 she is in a harbor, they are out on a stormy sea. " We ought 
 to be contented if we are in a harbor, even though we owe 
 our security to a shipwreck." ^ 
 
 Some months later he apologized to Chanut for not having 
 written of his return, declaring that he would rather say 
 nothing about it, since an account of his experience might 
 easily appear to be a criticism of those well-meaning people 
 who invited him to France. "I have considered them as 
 friends who invited me to dine ; and when I accepted their 
 invitation, I found their kitchen in disorder, and their pots 
 upset. I have therefore returned without saying a word, 
 that I might not increase their chagrin. But I have learned 
 a lesson, and will never again undertake a journey on account 
 of promises, even when they are written on parchment." ^ 
 
 But Descartes did not always bear this deception with 
 such equanimity. In the very next letter to Chanut, he 
 gave a more detailed account of the matter, and he was 
 evidently somewhat annoyed. "I have never reckoned on 
 the favor of fortune, and have always sought to so order my 
 life that it might not be exposed to her influence : she there- 
 fore seems to be jealous, since she neglects no opportunity 
 to treat me badly. I have experienced this to my satisfac- 
 tion in all three of the journeys I have made from this place 
 to France, particularly the last, which was enjoined upon me, 
 as it were, in the name of the king. To induce me to under- 
 take it, letters had been sent to me written on parchment, 
 with the seals of the state, containing extravagant praises of 
 my merit, and the assurance of an excellent pension; and 
 
 1 ffinvres, t. X. pp. 165, 166. (Letter to Elizabeth, Oct. 1, 1648, according to 
 Cousin's conjecture.) 
 
 2 lb., p. 310. (The letter was written Feb. 26, 1649.) 
 
LAST YEARS AND WORK IN HOLLAND. 277 
 
 these royal documents were accompanied by private letters, 
 promising still more after my arrival. But when I went, 
 the matter resulted quite otherwise, in consequence of the 
 sudden political disturbances. None of the promises were 
 kept : the despatch of the patents had even been paid for by 
 one of my relatives, to whom, of course, I had to return 
 the money. It seemed that I had only travelled to Paris to 
 buy the dearest and most useless parchment that ever came 
 into my hands. So far I was entirely indifferent to the 
 matter, and I should only have charged it to the account of 
 the political disturbances, if the people who invited me had 
 made any use of my presence whatever. And this annoyed 
 me most, that no one desired any thing of me, except to see 
 my face ; and I am really obliged to believe that I was invited 
 to go to France, not for any serious purpose, but for the sake 
 of the rarity, as though I were an elephant or panther. I 
 know very well that I have no reason to expect the like in 
 Stockholm ; but after the miserable results of all the journeys 
 I have undertaken in the last twenty years, I cannot help 
 fearing, that, if I should start upon a new one, I should have 
 nothing else to expect than to be plundered by robbers on 
 the way, or suffer a shipwreck that would cost me my life." ^ 
 
 The invitation to Sweden had been given, and unpleasant 
 forebodings filled the mind of the philosopher. There was a 
 third enemy more certainly to be foreseen than robbers or 
 shipwreck, — the unfavorable climate, of which he himself 
 had warned Chanut in earlier letters, and which was to pre- 
 pare for him a premature death. 
 
 Paris and Descartes were not made for each other. Every 
 time he lived there, the longing for solitude and quiet over- 
 came him, and drove him repeatedly into suburbs, and finally 
 out of France. In the same mood in which he left Paris 
 twenty years before, he now returns to his village in Hol- 
 land, and felt there as though he were in a harbor. It is 
 one of the most noteworthy facts of Descartes' experience, 
 
 1 aSuvres, t. x. pp. 325, 326. (The letter was dated March 31, 1649.) 
 
278 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 without a knowledge of which we cannot understand his 
 character and disposition, tliat this greatest thinker of 
 France was perhaps the only Frenchman who could not live 
 in Paris, and had an antipathy to the metropolis of the world. 
 " If I venture in my vanity to hope for the approval of the 
 queen," wrote he to Chanut soon after his last arrival in 
 Paris, " you must attribute it, not so much to my disposition, 
 as to the air of Paris. I think I have told you before, that 
 it disposes me to chimerical fancies rather than to philosophi- 
 cal thoughts. I see so many here who deceive themselves in 
 their opinions and calculations, that illusion seems to me an 
 epidemic in Paris. The harmless solitude from which I have 
 come pleased me far better; and I think I shall not resist 
 my home-sickness, and shall soon return thither." 
 
 II. A NEW OPPONENT. — LAST LABORS. 
 
 1. Regiv£ Apostasy. — Descartes had reason, when he 
 crossed the threshold of his literary career, to fear disciples 
 who would not only follow him, but interpret his theories, 
 and seek to improve them. He was to experience this to the 
 fullest extent in the case of Regius, " The first martyr of the 
 Cartesian philosophy." In the controversy which Regius had 
 carried on with Voetius by means of theses, Descartes was 
 unable to entirely approve of the mode in which his disciple 
 conceived of the relation between soul and body; and he par- 
 ticularly disapproved of his polemical methods when the 
 controversy began soon after to be conducted in writing. 
 When, four years later, Regius laid the manuscript of his 
 text-book on physics (^fundamenta physicce) before Descartes, 
 he found so many unproved assertions, so many false hypoth- 
 eses, and in his theory of man such deviations from his own 
 " Principles," that he strongly advised him not to publish it : 
 he should limit himself to medicine, Descartes told him, 
 since he had no talent for metaphysics, and the University of 
 Utrecht had acted in his interest when it forbade him to lec- 
 ture on philosophical subjects; not only was his mode of 
 
LAST YEAKS AND "WORK IN HOLLAND. 279 
 
 exposition injurious to the theories of the philosopher, but 
 he distorted them to such an extent, that Descartes would be 
 obliged to publicly disclaim all responsibility for it if Regius 
 published the work. Nevertheless, the book was published 
 (September, 1646). Descartes wrote to the Princess Eliza- 
 beth that the book was not worth her reading : where it 
 deviated from him, it was false; and where it seemed to 
 accord with his doctrine, it was a wretched and ignorant 
 plagiarism.^ 
 
 Toward the end of the year 1647, two works appeared, 
 attacking the Cartesian theories ; one bearing the title " Con- 
 sideratio Reviana," and displaying its hostility, both in the 
 name of its author and in the abuses which it contained. 
 Descartes paid no attention to it. The second was an 
 anonymous placard, discussing in twenty-one theses the 
 theory of the human mind, and, without mentioning Des- 
 cartes, so corresponding with the theories contained in 
 Regius' work, that there could be no doubt of its authorship. 
 In this placard, Descartes recognized an enemy in fact, if 
 not in intention. It so distorted and caricatured his theories 
 by pernicious and false conceptions, that, to obviate all mis- 
 conceptions, he wrote a detailed criticism, of which, however, 
 it seems that only a few copies were printed.^ Who would 
 have thought that the last antagonist with whom he would 
 have to contend in the Netherlands, would be the same man 
 whom he had once called his best and most trusted disciple ? 
 
 We remark briefly, that the defection of Regius, which 
 Descartes had noticed with such displeasure in the text-book 
 on physics, consisted in an attempt to transform Descartes' 
 fundamental doctrine, the dualism of soul and body, into 
 materialism, and already indicated the direction which the 
 French philosophy of the eighteenth century was to take in 
 the hands of Condillac and La Mettrie. Thought and exten- 
 
 1 CEnvres, t. ix. pp. 323-330. (Three letters to Kegius in July, 1645, t. x. pp. 
 23-26.) (Letter to ElizaTjeth, March 15, 1647.) 
 
 2 See following chapter. 
 
280 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sion are not to be conceived as opposite attributes of dif- 
 ferent substances, — according to Regius, — but as different 
 attributes of one substance ; namely, body. The soul is a 
 mode of body completely dependent upon its states and 
 changes. The mind, therefore, neither has nor needs innate 
 ideas, but gains all its ideas through the senses. The sub- 
 stantiality of the human mind, and its difference of essence 
 from the body, are established by religion and revelation. 
 So ran the text-book. The tendency is unmistakable : dual- 
 ism prevails in religion, and materialism in philosophy. The 
 theses of the placard aimed at the destruction of the Carte- 
 sian metaphysics. If any one wishes to know what Descartes 
 would have said to Condillac and La Mettrie, let him read 
 what he said to Eegius. He saw before him a nest of 
 fallacies.^ 
 
 2. The Last Works. — After Descartes had laid the foun- 
 dations of his system in the " Principles of Philosophy," and 
 had developed it as far as the theory of organic nature, the 
 most important subject that remained was man, the problem 
 of anthropology, which comprehends three important sub- 
 jects, — physiologjs psychology, ethics. The first relates to 
 the organs and functions of the human body ; the second, 
 to the union of the soul with the body ; the third, to the prob- 
 lems and purposes of life. Physiology is closely connected 
 with zoology. The human body in its developed form can 
 only be understood through a knowledge of its origin, 
 through the history of the development of the embryo, and 
 this, in turn, through the history of the formation of animal 
 bodies, the knowledge of which last the philosopher continu- 
 ally and industriously sought to acquire by studies in com- 
 parative anatomy. Here, nature was his immediate object of 
 study. When any one visited him in Egmond, and inquired 
 for his library, he pointed to a dissected animal. That Des- 
 cartes sought to discover the secrets of life by studies in 
 comparative anatomy and embryology, is a wonderful proof 
 
 I CEuvres, t. x. pp. 70-111. (Written in Egmond at the end of December ) 
 
LAST YEARS AKD WORK IN HOLLAND. 281 
 
 of the methodical thinker, and must be valued more highly 
 in the estimation of his biological labors than the worth or 
 worthlessness of his results. Even in his " Cosmos " he was 
 engaged in an inquiry concerning the origin of animals ; and 
 he had even then written an essay on the human bodj', 
 intended to be included in that work. It was his " Traits 
 de THomme " which treated of digestion, of the circulation 
 of the blood, of respiration, of the motion of the muscles, of 
 the organs of the senses and sensations, of the motions and 
 functions of the brain. He now determined to remodel it ; 
 and the result was a new work, embracing animals and man, 
 — "A Description of the Functions of the Human Body and 
 an Explanation of the Formation of Animals ; " or, as it is 
 usually called, " Traits de la Formation du Foetus." This 
 work occupied him during 1647 and 1648. In a letter dated 
 Dec. 23, 1647, the Princess Elizabeth expressed the wish that 
 he would write an essay on education. Descartes answered 
 that three reasons prevented him from undertaking it : 
 " The third is, that I am just now engaged in another work, 
 which I hope you will like better, — a description of animal 
 and human functions ; since what I hastily sketched on that 
 subject twelve or thirteen years ago, and showed you, has 
 repeatedly fallen into unskilful hands, and I now feel the 
 necessity of remodelling it, and have even ventured to 
 develop the history of the animal from the commencement 
 of its origin (I began it eight or ten days ago). I say of 
 animals in general, since I would not undertake an investi- 
 gation of what relates to man in particular, because I have 
 not the necessary knowledge. The remaining months of the 
 winter will be perhaps the most quiet period of the remain- 
 der of my life; and I would rather use them, therefore, in 
 this work, than in one which requires less concentration." ^ 
 
 His presentiment was true. It was the last quiet period 
 of his life. The journey to France with its disappointments 
 
 1 CEim-es, x. pp. 121, 122. (The letter could not have been written before 
 Feb. 1, 1648.) 
 
282 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was at hand. Then came yet more distracting days, and 
 then the end. 
 
 Descartes had already solved the chief problem of psychol- 
 ogy, in his "Passions of the Soul." It was the last work 
 which he himself published — sketched in the winter of 
 1645-46, finished afterwards, and published the year he died. 
 He would not write on morals and education, because he 
 was unwilling to fan the flames of controversy which his 
 other works had kindled.; and he foresaw that such would 
 be the result of engaging in discussions of questions of such 
 practical importance. He had expressed his thoughts on 
 the worth and object of human life, in his letters to the 
 Princess Elizabeth and the Queen of Sweden. 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 283 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CLOSE OP DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 
 I. THE INVITATION OF THE QUEEN. 
 
 1. Christina of Sweden. 
 
 "VTTHEN Chanut went to Stockholm in the latter part of 
 ' ' the autumn of 1645, the daughter of Gustavus Adol- 
 phus had sat for a j'ear on the throne of Sweden. She was 
 nineteen years old, in the zenith of her fortune and power, 
 heiress of a powerful kingdom, and daughter of a man who 
 united the fame of a hero with the glory of a martyr. The 
 love and hopes of her people were fixed upon her, and the 
 first measures of her reign seemed to realize the latter in a 
 high degree. She was still young and unspoiled : her will 
 was as yet master of those bizarre impulses, that capricious 
 and fickle nature, that false and theatrical thirst for great- 
 ness, to which she lightly and blindly sacrificed her great 
 destiny. The first princess of the North, both through her 
 political and personal importance, and able to maintain this 
 position, she became of her own accord a vagrant and adven- 
 turous woman, and did every thing in her power to make 
 herself unworthy of her father. Her mental powers were in 
 full bloom when Chanut sought to interest her in Descartes ; 
 and that which seemed peculiar and unbridled in her nature 
 could be attributed to an excess of youthful vigor, and to 
 that too masculine education which she had received accord- 
 ing to the wish of her father. She was passionately fond of 
 hunting, and gratified her taste for it with the best hunters. 
 She was a bold and skilful rider, easily remaining in the 
 
284 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 saddle ten hours without dismounting from her horse. She 
 preferred the dress of a man, and despised every adornment. 
 She had hardened her body by fatigue, and strengthened it 
 by a simple and hardy mode of life. She was not only queen 
 in name, but knew how to command ; and she was so famil- 
 iar with the business of the state, so independent in her 
 decisions, so obstinate in their execution, that she made the 
 members of her council feel her superiority. Her literary 
 tastes and her intellectual interests were of a masculine 
 character. She was fond of serious books and conversation, 
 read daily some pages of Tacitus, spoke Latin, and studied 
 Greek. Her exterior betrayed her restless and excitable 
 spirit : the expression of her face and the tone of her voice 
 changed quickly as she spoke. Hers was not a religious 
 nature, although she was interested in religious questions, 
 aiid ready to consider objections from any quarter. She was, 
 therefore, particularly interested in the theoretical aspects of 
 religion and morals, and often took or gave the opportunity 
 for discussing such subjects in conversation. Thus it hap- 
 pened that one day, during a conversation with Chanut, who 
 was full of admiration for the queen, she proposed the fol- 
 lowing questions : In what does the nature of love consist ? 
 Can love to God result from our natural knowledge ? Which 
 is worse, excess in love or in hate ? The content as well as 
 the aphoristic style of the questions is very characteristic of 
 the philosophical tastes of the queen. Chanut thought that 
 no one could solve these problems better than Descartes, 
 and wrote to him accordingly. 
 
 2, Philosophical Letters. — Descartes answered from Eg- 
 mond, Feb. 1, 1647, in a cheerful mood. This "Letter on 
 Love " was the first conversation, as it were, in which Des- 
 cartes indirectly, and from a distance, engaged -with the 
 queen of Sweden; for that she should read it was Chanut's 
 intention in asking for the opinion of the philosopher. The 
 letter is a little masterpiece, a real cabinet picture ; and any 
 connoisseur of the philosopher, knowing nothing of its author- 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 285 
 
 ship, or the occasion of its writing, but familiar only with its 
 ideas, the course of its investigations, and the choice of its 
 expressions, would immediately exclaim, "A genuine Des- 
 cartes ! " He wrote no other work so limited in extent (it 
 does not exceed the limits of an ordina'ry letter), in which he 
 can be better understood, on the supposition that one knows 
 how to read between the lines of a philosopher. 
 
 He distinguished intellectual love from that of passion, 
 and then determined the nature of love in general, by an 
 analytical inquiry : it consists in this, that we imagine an 
 object whose presence or possession gives us pleasure, whose 
 absence or loss gives us pain. We, therefore, desire this 
 object with all the strength of our wills: we wish to be 
 united, or form one whole with it, ourselves to be but a part 
 of this whole. Love is necessarily united with pleasure, pain, 
 and desire. These four directions of the will depend upon 
 the nature of the soul proper, without union with the body. 
 They are contained in the need for knowledge, which belongs 
 to a thinking being. As thinking beings, we love the knowl- 
 edge of things, feel pleasure when we have it, and pain when 
 we are deprived of it, and, therefore, strive to possess it. 
 Nothing is obscure here. Only the desire for knowledge 
 moves our soul. We know what we love and desire, what 
 rejoices us, and what afflicts us. The joys and sorrows of 
 intellectual love, therefore, are not passions, but clear ideas. 
 The love which is of the nature of passion or of sense, first 
 arises when those clear ideas become obscured by the union 
 of the soul with the body* There are bodily states or changes 
 with which certain desires in our soul are coincident, al- 
 though there is no resemblance or connection between them. 
 In this way arise the obscure desires of sense and passion, 
 which seek certain objects, and shun others ; the possession 
 of those gives pleasure, the presence of these, pain ; those 
 are loved, these are hated. Pleasure and pain, love and hate, 
 are the four fundamental forms of the desires of sense, the 
 elementary passions out of which, by composition and modi- 
 
286 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fication, all the rest arise. They are the only passions to 
 which we are subject before birth, since they are active even 
 in the nourishment of the embryonic life. Intellectual love 
 coincides with the need for knowledge of our thinking 
 nature ; that of passion has its roots in the needs for nour- 
 ishment of our organic nature. There is a conception of 
 desirable objects (intellectual love) without bodily excita- 
 tion, and without passion ; and in like manner passion can 
 exist without knowledge. There is love without passion, 
 and passion without love. In the usual acceptation of the 
 term, both are united in human love. Soul and body are 
 united in such a manner that particular activities of thought 
 and will accompany particular organic states, and mutually 
 summon each other, like thoughts and words. Thus, the con- 
 ception of desirable objects or love finds its involuntary 
 bodily expression in the increased activity of the heart, and 
 the more rapid circulation of the blood. This love which is 
 both of soul and body, this union of intellection and passion, 
 constitutes the feeling concerning whose nature the queen 
 inquired. 
 
 From this it seems to follow that God, too exalted to be 
 accessible, and too spiritual to be brought before our minds 
 by means of the senses, can never be an object of love in 
 the light of natural knowledge, since the representation of the 
 Godhead to the senses is either the mystery of incarnation, 
 as in Christianity, or the error of idolatry, as in the religions 
 of paganism, where one, like Ixion, embraces a cloud instead 
 of a goddess. Yet by deep reflection, the idea of God can 
 become love, and, indeed, the most powerful of all passions, 
 if we recognize in God the origin, and, therefore, the goal, of 
 our mental life. But we must not regard this goal as a kind 
 of becoming-divine, otherwise we fall into a dangerous error, 
 which is not loving God, but desiring his divinity. Rather, 
 we recognize in God the origin, not merely of our souls, 
 but of the whole universe, which does not need to be a 
 sphere in order to find its ground and stability in God alone. 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 287 
 
 This knowledge of the omnipotent will is so sublime that it 
 fills us with joy, and with the effort to humbly follow the 
 will of God. Therein consists the true love of God, illumi- 
 nated by natural knowledge ; and it is so powerful that it 
 takes possession, even of the heart and nerves. The feel- 
 ing of reverence does no harm to the feeling of love, but 
 unites with it the wish to sacrifice one's self for the beloved 
 object. Even friendship is capable of sacrifice ; much more, 
 patriotism. The more exalted the object of our love, the 
 more joyous and willing is the subordination of ourselves ; 
 and there is, therefore, no obstacle to the union of the deepest 
 love and reverence in the same feeling. Chanut himself, said 
 Descartes, could best testify to the truth of this, since he ex- 
 perienced it. "If I asked you on your conscience, whether 
 you love that noble queen near whom you now live, you 
 might persist in saying that you feel for her only admiration, 
 homage, reverence ; but, in spite of it, I should maintain that 
 your feeling is an ardent affection, since, as often as you 
 speak of her, there flows from your mouth such a torrent of 
 admiring words, that, as much as I believe you (I know your 
 love of truth, and have heard of it from others), I am con- 
 vinced you could not describe her with such animation if 
 she had not excited your affections, and warmed your heart. 
 Indeed, it is impossible to be so near such a luminary without 
 being warmed by it." 
 
 Which is worse, an excess of love, or an excess of hate? 
 The more our benevolence suffers through a passion, and our 
 contentment decreases, and the more our pernicious excesses 
 increase, the worse is the passion. There is no doubt that 
 hate nourishes wickedness, while it poisons even kind na- 
 tures ; that it is a miserable and tormenting feeling, destitute 
 of any real satisfaction, for the pleasure of hate is demoniacal, 
 belonging to evil spirits in the place of torment. But as to 
 pernicious excesses, the greater excess is also the worse. 
 We must, therefore, inquire which of the two passions is in 
 •general more inclined to excess ? And Descartes' answer is, 
 
288 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 love ! It is more passionate, and therefore more powerful and 
 more heroic than hate. Natures like Hercules, Roland, etc., 
 have indulged in more excesses in love than in hate. Love 
 unites, hate separates ; and when love unites us to a worth- 
 less object, it injures us more than hate when it separates us 
 from one that is worthy. And, finally, the more passionate 
 the love, the more recklessly it seeks to remove every obsta- 
 cle to its satisfaction. It thus excites hate in more than one 
 direction, and with it an army of evils : love sowed the seed 
 from which sprang the harvest that resulted in the burning of 
 Troy.i 
 
 When the queen read the letter, she said to Chanut, " So 
 far as I know Descartes, from this letter and your account of 
 him, I count him the most fortunate of men ; and his life 
 seems to me enviable. Say to him that I have a high opinion 
 of him." Descartes gave some more particular explanations, 
 which the queen had requested, in a letter to Chanut, June 
 6, 1647. Soon she eagerly made another opportunity of ask- 
 ing for the opinion of the philosopher. 
 
 Among the scholars of Sweden, John Freinsheim of Elm, a 
 German philologist, was then famous, because of his discov- 
 ery of the supplements of Livy. A panegyric on Gustavus 
 Adolphus had resulted in his call to Upsala as professor of 
 politics and rhetoric, and five years afterwards he was called 
 to Stockholm as historiographer and librarian of the queen. 
 In his farewell address in Upsala, at which the queen with the 
 French ambassador and some gentlemen of her court were 
 present, he discussed the question of the highest good. The 
 queen herself had suggested the subject. After she had 
 heard the address, which was delivered in Latin, she re- 
 marked to Chanut, " These men can only treat such subjects 
 superficially: we should hear Descartes discuss it." The 
 question was accordingly proposed to him, and answered in 
 a letter to the queen herself (November, 1647). 
 
 Descartes briefly sketched the foundations of his theory of 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. pp. 2-22. 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 289 
 
 morals, and the principles by which his own life was guided. 
 He proposed, not to determine the highest good in an abso- 
 lute sense — this is God — but with reference to man, not 
 humanity, whose highest good consists in the sum of all 
 material and spiritual excellences, but with reference to 
 individual man. So understood, the highest good must be 
 attainable, something that we are able to possess or acquire, 
 something, therefore, that lies in our power. Material goods 
 are not in our power : the highest good must, therefore, be 
 sought within the mind, in the territory of knowledge and 
 will. But even knowledge in its different degrees is condi- 
 tioned by one's capacities and circumstances, which are inde- 
 pendent of us. There remains, therefore, the will as the only 
 field in which the hidden treasure can be found. It is 
 always in our power, it is our own highest faculty, our inner 
 self, the core of our being. The will to seek knowledge lies 
 in our power. We can firmly and continually carry out the 
 resolve to act always according to our best judgment; and if 
 we do so, we realize the ideal, both of the Stoics and Epicu- 
 reans, for we are both virtuous and happy. This will alone 
 is that which is truly worthy of reverence in this world. " I 
 know that the gifts of fortune are usually valued more 
 highly ; but, as I am sure that your Majesty sets a higher 
 value on your virtue than your crown, I declare openly that 
 to me virtue appears as the only commendable thing." All 
 other goods deserve to be valued, — not honored and praised, 
 — provided they are considered as gifts of God, or as opportu- 
 nities of which we are to make a good use by means of our 
 free will. For honor and love are rewards, and only what 
 the will does deserves to be rewarded or punished. The 
 greatest good of man is the state of greatest contentment, 
 and this, whatever its nature, exists within us; for the 
 soul alone is contented, and only when it is in possession of 
 some desired object. Its conception of good is frequently 
 very confused : it conceives many goods as far greater than 
 they really are, but its satisfaction always equals its estimate 
 
290 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the good which it possesses-. Now, no good is greater than 
 the excellent use of our free will. This will, therefore, and 
 it alone, is the highest good.i 
 
 It was very fortunate that these jjhilosophical letters, the 
 occasion of which was a mere accident, treated of themes 
 lying, as it were, at the point of his pen. The question as to 
 the nature of love was closely connected with the sketch on 
 the "Passions," which he had written a year before. The 
 question as to the highest good related to the same subject, 
 which he had discussed shortly before that sketch, in the 
 letters on human happiness, which he had written to the 
 Princess Elizabeth. These letters had resulted in the sketch 
 on the passions. Descartes now sent both writings to Cha- 
 nut, along with the letter to the queen, requesting Chanut 
 to permit no one to read them except the queen, and not 
 even the queen unless she expressly desired to.^ 
 
 More than a year passed by before Christina answered 
 (December, 1648).^ She had been occupied in the mean 
 time with quite other matters than the nature of love and 
 the highest good : the year 1648 was the date of the peace 
 of Westphalia. But she did not lose sight of Descartes ; and 
 after she had communicated with him through letters, she 
 ardently wished to become personally acquainted with him. 
 
 3. Invitation and Journey to Stockholm. — Christina was 
 deeply interested in the work on the passions, and resolved 
 to study Descartes' philosophical works thoroughly. They 
 were her constant companions. She carried the sketch on 
 -the passions with her when she went hunting, and the "Prin- 
 ciples of Philosophy " when she went to her mines. She 
 made it the duty of Freinsheim to study this work, that he 
 might help her understand it; and Chanut was requested to 
 come to his assistance. "Since Friensheim has discovered 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. pp. 59-64. ("Written in Egmond, Nov. 20, 1647.) 
 
 a lb., pp. 65-67. 
 
 8 The answer of the queen ia lost. Descartes spoke of its contents, and the 
 style of its Fjenoh, in complimentary terms, in a letter to Chanut, Feb. 2G, 11/411. 
 lb., pp. 307 and following. 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 291 
 
 that he needs a companion in this work," wrote Chanut 
 good-humoredly to Descartes, " I am requested to read the 
 'Principles' with him. It is my duty to make myself agree- 
 able to the queen, at whose court I serve the king of France ; 
 and so it is now one of the duties of the French ambassador 
 to Sweden, to study Descartes." While Descartes was in 
 Paris, in the midst of the political commotions which de- 
 stroyed his expectations relating to the immediate future, he 
 learned with pleasure that his books were read at the court of 
 Sweden, and that the queen studied philosophy, even on her 
 hunts. He recommended the first book of the "Principles" 
 instead of the "Meditations," because it was more concise, 
 and likewise more easily understood. He further advised the 
 queen not to delay with the theory of motion in the second 
 book, and to give her attention merely to the important 
 point of view, that, in the sensible properties of things, there 
 is nothing objective, except size, form, and motion, and that, 
 by these fundamental properties, even light and warmth are 
 explained, which, like appetite and pain, exist only in our 
 mind.^ 
 
 But Christina soon found that the difliculties of his sys- 
 tem could be better set aside by Descartes himself than by 
 Freinsheim and Chanut, and that she could understand it 
 better from Descartes' own mouth than from his books. She 
 urgently requested Chanut to invite him to Stockholm — to 
 repeat the invitation. The first letter which reached Paris, 
 when Descartes had already left that city, did not reach him 
 until the middle of February, 1649 : he received the second 
 about the end of the following month. He answered (prob- 
 ably March 31, 1649) in two letters to Chanut, one of which 
 was to be shown to the queen, and the other confidential. 
 In the former he accepted the invitation, and promised to 
 
 1 CEuvrea, x. pp. 308, 309. (Descartes replied to the queen at the same time, 
 Feb. 26, 1649: he called his answer " un compliment yort sterile." In conclusion 
 he assured her that his devotion to her could not be greater if he were a Swede 
 or a Finlander.) 
 
292 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 undertake the journey in the middle of the summer, in order 
 to spend the winter in Stockholm: in the latter he wrote 
 quite differently ; many reasons for hesitation had obtruded 
 themselves upon him, many more than he had thought of at 
 first. He had had so many unfortunate experiences with 
 his philosophy and his travels, and had found so few who 
 were really able to appreciate his doctrine. At the first 
 glance, it seemed to many strange and peculiar ; but after 
 they understood it, it seemed so simple and natural, that it 
 no longer excited their attention. For truth is, as it were, 
 the health of the soul ; and, like that of the body, we prize 
 it only when we do not possess it. Besides, there is no place 
 less adapted to the study of such a philosophy than the court 
 of a queen, where there are so many things to distract the 
 mind. Still, if the queen had the necessary leisure and per- 
 severance, he would come. But if her interest was merely 
 a passing curiosity, he hoped Chanut would do all in his 
 power to save him from having to make the journey.^ 
 
 All these considerations seemed to him more weighty in 
 his solitude at Egmond. He feared the long journey, the 
 strange country, the severe climate. " One does not won- 
 der," he wrote some days after to Chanut, " that Ulysses left 
 the enchanted island of Calypso and Circe, where he could 
 enjoy every conceivable pleasure, to live in a stony and 
 barren country, because it was his native land. But a man 
 who was born in the gardens of Touraine, and who now lives 
 in a country, where, if not more honey, probably more milk, 
 flows than in the jjromised land, may very well be slow to 
 leave such a residence to go to a land of bears, in the midst 
 of rocks and ice."^ But not only nature, but the court, 
 made him apprehensive. Envious antagonists, with their 
 slanders and intrigues of all kinds, would be no less abun- 
 dant there than in his solitude in Holland. He feared that 
 
 1 CEuvres, x. pp. 320-32'f. Cf. with the second letter, our account on p. 277. 
 
 2 lb., pp. 330, 331. (The letter was dated April 4, 1B49, according to Cousin's 
 supposition.) 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 293 
 
 the queen -would be an object of suspicion, even in her own 
 country, because she had invited him. Already her prefer- 
 ence for scholars and her studious habits were criticised ; and 
 it was deridingly said, that she was surrounding herself with 
 the pedants of Europe, and that soon Sweden would be 
 ruled by grammarians. He was very much afraid that 
 hostile accounts of his system had been circulated in Sweden 
 by assiduous opponents, who had heard of the purpose of his 
 journey, and that thus his stay near the court of the queen 
 might redound to her harm. He, therefore, wrote to Freiu- 
 sheim with all frankness, and at the same time with the 
 greatest delicacy, and asked for information and advice.^ 
 He received such an answer that he had reason to feel at 
 ease. 
 
 Every step in the direction of limiting his independence 
 and solitude, Descartes felt as a departure from his own 
 proper element into one that was foreign to him. Whenever 
 he was on the point of crossing this boundary, he stopped in 
 hesitation. He thought of his journey to Sweden, as he had 
 done of the publication of his works ; then he would have 
 preferred to be silent ; now he preferred to remain where he 
 was. Chanut had visited the philosopher in Holland in the 
 spring, as he passed through on his way to Paris, where he 
 was to remain until late in the fall, and had silenced many 
 of Descartes' objections. Still, he would gladly have waited 
 the return of his friend, in order to make the journey with 
 him. But the impatience of the queen hastened him. She 
 sent Flemming, one of her admirals, to Amsterdam, to offer 
 to Descartes the services of his ship for the journey to Stock- 
 holm, where she hoped to see him before the end of April. 
 But Descartes had already declared that he could not start 
 before the middle of the summer. After he had prepared 
 his work on the passions for the press, and given it to the 
 
 1 CBuvres, t. x. pp. 335-337. (The letter was dated June 10, lCti9, in Cousin's 
 opinion. At the close of the letter, Descartes asked whether the queen would 
 consent to the publication of his essay on the passions.) 
 
294 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 publisher in Amsterdam, and carefully arranged all his 
 affairs, he left Egmond, Sept. 1, 1649. 
 
 II. DESCARTES IN STOCKHOLM;. 
 
 1. Residence and Position. — Descartes arrived in Stock- 
 holm early in October. Madame Chanut, the wife and sister 
 of his two excellent friends, gave him a most hospitable 
 reception in the absence of her husband, who was still in 
 Paris. The queen received him with the highest marks of 
 honor. Some days after his arrival, he wrote to his friend, 
 the Princess Elizabeth, saying that he had only seen the 
 queen twice, and had been quite as favorably impressed with 
 her ability and attractiveness as he had dared to hope. 
 Thanks to Freinsheim, he was free from the oppressive 
 duties of court ceremony, and had to attend the court only 
 when the queen wished to see him. Under the most favor- 
 able circumstances, he would not remain in Stockholm 
 longer than the beginning of the next summer. Already he 
 looked back with longing at his beloved hermitage in Hol- 
 land. " It is easy for me there to make progress in the 
 investigation of truth, and in this alone consists the chief 
 purpose of my life." ^ 
 
 But the queen had plans with reference to Descartes, that 
 contemplated a much longer stay. Through his residence in 
 Stockholm, she not only wished to broaden her own culture, 
 but to serve the cause of science in her country, and assist 
 the philosopher in the prosecution of his own plans. She 
 desired that he should be her instructor and friend ; that 
 he should found a scientific academy in Stockholm ; and 
 under her protection, and in the enjoyment of perfect leisure, 
 complete the sketches he had brought with him, and finish 
 the works he had begun. In this manner, Christina wished 
 to promote the interests of the new philosophy, as well as 
 be benefited by it. But to this end, it was necessary for- 
 Descartes to remain in Stockholm, not merely for a time, 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. x. pp. 373-375. 
 
THE CLOSE OF DESCARTES' LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 295 
 
 and by way of a visit, but permanently. The queen, there- 
 fore, desired his formal settlement iu Sweden, and intended 
 to have him take a place among the magnates of the land, 
 as the possessor of an hereditary estate. When Chanut 
 returned in November, the queen told him her plans, and 
 requested him to gain the consent of his friend. Descartes 
 was thoroughly averse to the proposal ; pleaded that the cli- 
 mate was too severe for him. It was the only difficulty which 
 the queen would admit, and she easily set that aside. Des- 
 cartes' estate should be in Southern Sweden ; and Chanut 
 and a member of the council of the ^kingdom were commis- 
 sioned to find one for him among the possessions of the arch- 
 bishopric of Bremen and Pomerania, which Sweden had 
 just acquired by the peace of Westphalia, — an estate which 
 should yield him a splendid revenue, and be hereditary in his 
 family. The matter was already in progress, when it was 
 interrupted and postponed by Chanut's sickness, and it was 
 not finished when Descartes died. Thus, the peculiar 
 course of his destiny came very near making the greatest, 
 and, for German philosophy, most important, thinker of 
 France, the owner of an estate in German lands, through the 
 favor of the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. 
 
 The philosophical instruction of the queen began in 
 November, after Descartes had come to feel somewhat at 
 home in his new surroundings. That she might study the 
 difficult subject when her mind was freshest, and be entirely 
 undisturbed by any business of state, Christina chose the 
 first hours of the morning. Descartes was obliged to go to 
 the palace every morning at five o'clock, in the cold of a 
 Northern winter, which, moreover, was unusually severe that 
 year, and await his royal pupil in the library. He had had 
 reason to fear the climate. After a walk with Chanut, Jan. 
 18, 1650, the latter was taken sick with an inflammation of 
 the lungs ; and, for a time, his life was in danger. Descartes 
 nursed his friend with the greatest care ; and, after nights of 
 wakefulness, he was every morning at five o'clock in the 
 
296 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 library of the queen ; besides, he spent a portion of the after- 
 noons conferring with her concerning the proposed academy, 
 the statutes of which he sketched in the latter part of Jan- 
 uary, and submitted to the queen, Feb. 1. It was the last 
 time he saw her. These statutes show how little Descartes 
 was thinking of himself and his own advantage. The very 
 first article excluded foreigners from the presidency, a posi- 
 tion the queen had intended for him. 
 
 2. Sickness and Death. — Exhausted by his labors and the 
 care of his friend, he had less power to resist the attacks of 
 the terrible cold of the winter. He was already sick when 
 he returned from his last conference with the queen, though 
 he forced himself to sit up. The fever raged so much the 
 more violently the next day, and for a week he lay dehrious. 
 Even on the fifth day his case seemed hopeless to the physi- 
 cians. Unfortunately, the first physician of the queen, du 
 Ryer, a countryman and friend of Descartes, was absent. 
 The second, van Weulles, was a Hollander, and a friend, it 
 is said, of Descartes' opponents in Utrecht. The seventh 
 day his delirium ceased, his reason returned, but only to 
 enable him to perceive that death was near, and to bid him 
 direct his thoughts upon eternity. He died Feb. 11, 1650, 
 at four o'clock in the morning, before the end of his fifty- 
 fourth year. 
 
 When the queen was informed of his death by the secre- 
 tary of the French embassy, she burst into tears. She 
 wished to honor the memory of her " great teacher," and to 
 show to posterity that she knew how to appreciate him. 
 She proposed to bury him among the great dignitaries of the 
 crown, at the feet of the kings of Sweden, and to erect a 
 mausoleum of marble over his tomb. Chanut persuaded 
 the queen to give up this plan. He rightly felt that a 
 simple grave in the churchyard of foreigners would be more 
 fitting than a tomb of royal magnificence in the vault of the 
 kings of Sweden. He was buried Feb. 12, 1650. A simple 
 monument marked the place where he lay ; and an inscrip- 
 
THE CLOSK OF DESCAKTES" LIFE IN STOCKHOLM. 297 
 
 tion stated that here Descartes rested, whom the Queen of 
 Sweden had called to her court from his solitude in Egmond, 
 and to whom Chanut dedicated this memorial. In the year 
 of his death a medal was stamped in his honor in Holland, 
 with the symbol of the sun lighting the earth. It was pain- 
 ful to French patriotism, that the remains of the greatest 
 of French philosophers reposed in a distant land. Sixteen 
 years after his death, d'Alibert, one of his friends, assisted by 
 Terlon, who was then the minister of France to Sweden, had 
 his ashes conveyed to France at his own expense. They 
 were put on board of a ship in Stockholm, May 1, 1666, and 
 solemnly interred June 25, 1667, in the Church of Sainte- 
 Genevieve, the French Pantheon of to-day. It was a long 
 time before the authorities of the Church would consent to 
 show such high honors to the ashes of a man whose name 
 had stood for some years on the index. But his friends 
 overcame their opposition by attributing to Descartes "a 
 great service " to the Church. Queen Christina had resigned 
 her crown in June, 1654, and soon after had joined the Cath- 
 olic Church. Now, Descartes had been her instructor for 
 some months ; and these two facts, as disconnected as they 
 were, were joined together, and Descartes was represented 
 as a missionary who succeeded in converting the daughter 
 of Gustavus Adolphus. And since she herself was willing 
 to declare that her conversion was due to the influence of 
 Descartes, it was no longer the philosopher, but the proselyter, 
 whose ashes the priests received in the Church of Sainte- 
 Genevieve. 
 
 The testimony of the queen was false, given from a frivolous 
 readiness to oblige, as she herself declared frankly enough in 
 private. Nothing was more foreign to the character of Des- 
 cartes than the disposition to make proselytes. He remained 
 true to the Church in which he was born, because he was 
 born in it ; but with her proselyting, he had nothing to do. 
 His life, so far as he could direct it in harmony with his 
 genius, was given to philosophy and solitude. 
 
298 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS. 
 I. THE WORKS PUBLISHED BY DESCARTES HIMSELF. 
 
 rr^HE writings which Descartes himself published, and 
 -L whose origin we have become acquainted with in the 
 history of his life, can be arranged in the two following 
 groups, philosophical and polemical, the members of which 
 follow each other in chronological order : — 
 
 1. The Philosophical Works. 
 
 1. " Essais philosophiques." Leyde, Jean le Maire, 1637. 
 JEtienne de Courcelles translated the essays into Latin, with 
 the exception of the geometry ; and the translation was 
 revised by Descartes. Franz van Schooten, professor of 
 mathematics in Leyden, translated the geometry into Latin, 
 including in the translation de Beaune's observations and 
 his own explanations. The title of the first was " R. Cartesii 
 specimina philosophise, sive dissertatio de methodo recte 
 regendse rationis, Dioptrice et meteora ex gallico latine 
 versa (par Etieune de Courcelles) et ab autore emendata." 
 Amst., Lud., Elzevir, 1644. The title of the second was 
 "Geometria a R. Descartes galliee edita, cum notis Florim. 
 de Beaune, latine versa et commentariis illustrata a Fr. a 
 Schooten." Lugd., Bat. J. Maire, 1649. 
 
 2. " Renati Descartes meditationes de prima philosophia, 
 ubi de Dei existentia et animae immortalitate. His adjunctse 
 sunt varise objectiones doctorum virorum in istas de Deo et 
 anima demonstrationes cum responsionibus auctoris." Paris, 
 
A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS. 299 
 
 1641. The second edition with the changed title (see pp. 
 247, 248), containing the objections of Bourdin and the letter 
 to Dinet, was published in Amsterdam by Elzevir, 1642 : the 
 third appeared the year Descartes died. Duke de Luynes 
 translated the " Meditations " into French, and Clerselier the 
 '' Objections " and " Replies." Descartes revised these trans- 
 lations, and changed some passages in the Latin text. It 
 was published in Paris, 1647. 
 
 3. "Renati Descartes principia philosophic." Amst., 
 Elzev., 1644. The second edition appeared the year the phi- 
 losopher died. The French translation was made under the 
 direction of the Abb6 Picot, and approved by Descartes, 
 who accompanied it with a prefatory letter : " Principes de la 
 philosophie, Merits en latin par Ren^ Descartes, et traduits 
 en frangais par un de ses amis " (Paris, 1647). The letter to 
 Picot, translated into Latin, was published in the following 
 edition of the " Principles " as a preface. 
 
 4. " Les passions de rS,me." Amst., Elzevir, 1650. On 
 the origin of the work, which was sketched in the winter of 
 1646, and finished in the summer of 1649, after the manu- 
 script had been sent to the Princess Elizabeth, and after- 
 wards to the Queen of Sweden, compare p. 272. A Latin 
 translation appeared the year Descartes died. 
 
 2. The Polemical Worlcs. 
 
 1. " Epistola Renati Descartes ad celeberrimum virum 
 Gisbertum Voetium, in qua examinantur duo libri nuper pro 
 Voetio Ultrajecti si-mul editi : unus de confraternitate Mari- 
 ana, alter de philosophia Cartesiana." Amstelodami, Elzevir, 
 1643. 
 
 2. "R. Descartes notse in programma quoddam sub finem 
 anni 1647 in Belgio editum cum hoc titulo : explicatio 
 mentis humanse sive animae rationalis, ubi explicatur, quid 
 sit et quid esse possit." Amst., Lud., Elzevir, 1648. These 
 "notes" are Descartes' reply to Regius (see p. 279). It is 
 so rare, that even Pieters, the author of the annals of the 
 
300 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 publishing-house of Elzevir, did not discover it until after 
 the publication of his work. (Some years later it was at- 
 tacked by Tobias Andreas, in a work called " Replicatio pro 
 notis Cartesii." Arast., Elzev., 1653.) 
 
 II. THE REMAINS AND THE OPERA POSTUMA. 
 
 1. Writings not in Descartes^ Possession. 
 Of the writings which Descartes left unpublished at his 
 death, two are first to be mentioned which were written for 
 friends, and were not, therefore, found with the rest of them ; 
 viz., (1) "Compendium musicse," the first of his writings 
 which have been preserved, which was written for Beeck- 
 man in 1618 (see pp. 179, 180), and published in Utrecht in 
 1650; (2) The fragment of an essay on mechanics, which 
 was written for Constantine Huyghens in 1636, explaining 
 certain machines, as the roller and pulley, inclined plane, 
 wheel and axle, screw and lever. A second fragment, on 
 lifting-machines ("Explicatio des engins"), which Daniel 
 Mayor found, translated into Latin, and published in 1672, 
 differs but little from the preceding. Poisson translated 
 this fragment and the " Compendium musicse " into French, 
 publishing them under the following title: "Traits de la 
 m^canique compost par M. Descartes, de plus I'abr^g^ de la 
 musique du m§me auteur, mis en frangais avec les ^claircisse- 
 ments n^cessaires par N. P. P. D. L." (Nic. Poisson, prStre 
 de I'oratoire.) Paris, Angot, 1668. 
 
 2. Lost Writings. 
 
 The rest of his unpublished works were in a box which 
 Descartes took with him to Stockholm ; and an inventory of 
 its contents was there made, after his death, in the presence 
 of Chanut. An essay on fencing was found, — probably his 
 first essay, written even when he was in Rennes ; a diary of 
 the years 1619-21; three works on the theory of method; 
 " Studium bonse mentis," " Rules for the Direction of the 
 Mind," a dialogue on the investigation of truth in the light 
 
A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS. 301 
 
 of reason ; a fragment called " Thaumantis regia " (palace of 
 wonders) ; probably a study preliminary to his work in 
 physics, in which, according to Baillet, the theory that 
 animals are automata already appeared ; fragments on math- 
 ematical, physical, and natural-history subjects ; a part of 
 the " Cosmos ; " the essay on man and the formation of the 
 foetus ; letters ; the fragment of a French comedy, and verses 
 in celebration of the peace of Westphalia. 
 
 Besides, Descartes had left a box in the care of his friend 
 Hooghland, containing, in addition to valuable letters, an 
 essay, " De deo Socratis," and, perhaps, the complete " Cos- 
 mos " in its original form. Millet thinks so ; ^ though it is 
 not possible to say with certainty, since the writings in 
 Hooghland's care are lost, and likewise the catalogue of 
 them. 
 
 Of those left at Stockholm, the essay on fencing, the 
 original copy of the diary of the years 1619-21, the frag- 
 ments on different scientific subjects, the " Thaumantis 
 regia," the " Studium bonse mentis," and the poems, cannot 
 now be found. 
 
 It is no wonder that some of the unpublished writings left 
 in Stockholm were irrecoverably lost. In view of the acci- 
 dent that befell the chest, we must say that it was by chance 
 that so many, and certainly the most important, were pre- 
 served. Chanut sent the whole of them to his brother-in- 
 law, Clerselier, in Paris, who intended to look after their 
 publication. The ship reached the coasts of France without 
 accident, and the boat in which they were put, reached Paris 
 safely ; but when they were being landed near the Louvre, 
 they fell into the water, and lay there three days. They 
 were finally fished out, and dried in sheets and leaves, and in 
 this state reached Clerselier in the greatest confusion. -The 
 result was, that their publication was delayed, and involved 
 insuperable difficulties, especially in the case of the letters. 
 They had become so confused with each other, that it was 
 
 I J. Millet: Descartes avant 1637. Preface, pp. xxiii., xxiv. 
 
302 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 impossible to restore them to perfect order. In some cases, 
 heterogeneous parts could not be separated : in others, parts 
 that belonged together could not be united. 
 
 3. The Works edited hy Clerselier. 
 
 1. The fragment of the often mentioned "Cosmos," " Le 
 monde, on traite de la lumiere." The first and incorrect 
 edition was . published in Paris in 1664, without Clerselier's 
 knowledge, under the title, " Le monde de Descartes, ou le 
 traits de la lumiSre." The edition corrected by Clerselier 
 appeared in 1677. 
 
 2. " Traitd de I'homme." This is closely connected with 
 the " Cosmos," and was intended to form a part of it, "Cha- 
 pitre XVIII." (see above, pp. 229, 230). Clerselier's edition, 
 with remarks by Laforge, was published in Paris in 1664. 
 Shortly before, Florentius Schujd, professor of philosophy in 
 Leyden, had published a Latin translation, " Renatus Des- 
 cartes de homine." (" Lugduni, Batav.," 1662-64.) Clerse- 
 lier found the translation bad, but the preface good ; and he 
 therefore incorporated the latter in French in his edition. 
 
 With this essay, likewise, and always united with it, ap- 
 peared the "De la formation du foetus," which Descartes 
 himself had divided into paragraphs, as he had not done the 
 " Traits de I'homme." Its whole title is, " La description du 
 corps humain et de toutes ses functions, tant de celles qui 
 ne dependent pas I'ame que de celles qui en dependent, et 
 aussi la principale cause de la formation de ses membres." 
 
 3. " Les lettres de Ren^ Descartes," 3 vols., Paris, 1657- 
 
 1667. 
 
 4. Collection of Unpublished Works. 
 
 It is strange that Clerselier did not publish two of the 
 most important of his posthumous works, both of them 
 relating to the theory of method. They were published a 
 half-century after the death of the philosopher, in the first 
 collection of his posthumous works, " Opera postuma Carte- 
 sii" (Amst., 1701), wliich contained in addition the fragment 
 
A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS. 303 
 
 " The World, or an Essay on Light," the tract on mechanics, 
 the compendium of music, " Observations on the Procrea- 
 tions of Animals," and lastly, excerpts. The two important 
 works which were then published for the first time are, — 
 
 1. " Regulse ad directionem ingenii." It was intended to 
 contain three parts, and each of these twelve rules. Only 
 the first half is preserved, containing eighteen rules, with 
 the statement of the three following without explanation. 
 According to Baillet, the original text of this work was also 
 in Latin. (Cf. above, pp. 203, 204.) 
 
 2. "Inquisitio veritatis per lumen naturale," a dialogue 
 between three persons, likewise unfinished, and, according to 
 Baillet, originally written in French. The title of the post- 
 humous work runs, " La recherche de la v^rit^ par les lumi- 
 ^res naturelles qui a elles seules, et sans le secours de la 
 religion et de la philosophie,- d^terminent les opinions que 
 doit avoir un honnete homme sur toutes les choses qui 
 doivent faire I'objet de ses pens^es et qui p^n^trent dans les 
 secrets des sciences les plus abstraites." 
 
 III. EDITION OF COMPLETE WORKS. 
 
 1. Collective Editions. 
 
 Even before this first collection of posthumous works, 
 collective editions, more or less complete, some of the philo- 
 sophical works, others of his complete writings, as they were 
 called, were published in Latin by Elzevir in Amsterdam. 
 According to the annals of the publishing-house of Elzevir, 
 " R. D. opera philosophica " appeared in the years 1644, 1670, 
 1672, and 1674. Besides, an edition of the philosophical 
 works of the year 1656 is mentioned, and called "Editio 
 tertia." The first edition of the "Opera omnia" was pub- 
 lished in eight volumes, 1670-83 ; the second in nine, 1692- 
 1701 and 1713. It was not really a complete edition, but a 
 collection of separate editions, which contained in the last 
 volume the " Opera postuma." 
 
 The first French edition in thirteen volumes appeared in 
 
304 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Paris in 1724-29. A century later (1824-26), Victor Cousin 
 
 published his edition in eleven volumes. This is the edition 
 
 which we cite, " (Euvres de Descartes, publi^es par Victor 
 
 Cousin." 
 
 2. Arrangement of Letters. 
 
 After the publication of the " Opera postuma," a complete 
 edition of the works of Descartes involved not merely the 
 labor of collecting, but also a critical work ; since it was ne- 
 cessary to try to discover lost writings, and to collect those 
 that were scattered, and, also, to determine the order of 
 those extant. The collection and arrangement of the letters 
 was necessarily a work of particular importance. By far the 
 greatest and most important part of the letters were in 
 Mersenne's hands, and fell, after his death, into the posses- 
 sion of the mathematician Roberval, who was an enemy to 
 Descartes, and locked them up. They afterwards fell into 
 the hands of La Hixe, who handed them over to the Acad- 
 emy. Baillet wished to write the life of Descartes ; and the 
 abb^, J. B. Le Grand, at the same time desired to publish 
 the first complete edition of his works; after the death of 
 Clerselier (1684), he inherited the remains of the phi- 
 losopher, and had himself collected a number of scattered 
 letters, and was, with Baillet, permitted by the Academy to 
 use the letters which had been in Mersenne's possession. 
 The edition was not published. The manuscripts which Le 
 Grand possessed fell, after his death (1704), into other 
 hands, and were entirely lost. The contents of a part were 
 preserved by copies, and published in the " Opera postuma " 
 in the year 1701. The copies of the letters of Descartes, 
 made the year 1667, now in the library of the Academy, con- 
 tain critical marginal comments on the dates, addresses, and 
 connection of the letters, based on a comparison with the 
 original manuscript ; and they leave no doubt that a critical 
 edition of them was at one time in preparation. It is not 
 known who made these comments. Cousin, who arranged 
 the letters (vols, vi.-x. of his edition), according to them. 
 
A SURVEY OF HIS WORKS AND WRITINGS. 305 
 
 suspects that Montempuis, rector of the university of Paris, 
 about the middle of the seventeentli century, was the author, 
 since his seal was found in the copies. Millet, on the other 
 hand, regards it as certain that Baillet and Le Grand made 
 those comments, attempting together in the years 1690-92 
 to arrange the correspondence of Descartes. 
 
 3. Supplements. 
 
 In the remains of the philosopher was a diary of the years 
 1619-21, containing youthful writings, sketches, notes of 
 different kinds, and referring to a time of which we have 
 no literary evidence. Every thing, therefore, relating to 
 this time, however unimportant in itself, should have been 
 regarded as valuable and significant by those who were in- 
 trusted with the edition of his works. According to Baillet, 
 the diary was bound in parchment, and contained the follow- 
 ing: some thoughts on the sciences in general, on algebra, 
 " Democritica," " Experimenta," " Preeambula," " Olympica," 
 a sketch of twelve pages, in which that much-spoken-of mar- 
 ginal note was written, denoting Nov. 10, 1619, as the day of 
 a mental epoch. (See above, pp. 195, 196.) 
 
 Fortunately, there was one man in Clerselier's time who 
 would gladly have preserved every line that Descartes wrote: 
 it was no less a man than Leibnitz. During a stay in Paris, 
 he became acquainted with Clerselier, who in the beginning 
 of June, 1676, permitted him to examine Descartes' papers, 
 and make copies of them, imperfectly arranged and inco- 
 herent, as necessarily resulted from the condition of the 
 manuscripts. He considered them the most valuable litei'ary 
 treasures which he possessed, and intended to publish them 
 himself. " A man in Holland has for a long time intended," 
 he wrote to Vernouilli, " to publish some posthumous works 
 of Descartes. I, also, am in possession of some of Descartes' 
 remains. I have the rules for the investigation of truth 
 (which do not appear so extraordinary to me as they do to 
 some), the fragment of a dialogue in French, his first 
 
306 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thoughts on the origin of animals, etc. If the promised pub- 
 lication has not yet appeared, I should like myself to prepare 
 such an one, with the addition of some unpublished writings 
 by Galileo, Valarianus Magnus, and Pascal, along with my 
 observations on the universal part of the 'Principles' of 
 Descartes. I simply want a large number of free copies." 
 Among the copies made by Leibnitz, there were besides notes 
 on the " Principles," physical, physiological, and anatomical 
 observations, mathematical writings, and especially passages 
 from that notable diary which Leibnitz called, " Cartesii 
 cogitationes privatse." 
 
 They were not published. They passed from Leibnitz's 
 library to that of Hannover. None of them were specifically 
 catalogued except those on physiological and anatomical sub- 
 jects, and those under the title " Excerpta ex Cartesii manu- 
 scriptis." The rest remained unknown and concealed, until 
 lately Foucher de Careil discovered a part of them, and pub- 
 lished them under the title, "CEuvres in^dites de Descartes" 
 (Paris, 1859-60). 
 
 A critically arranged, accurate, and comprehensive edition 
 of Descartes' complete works is a work of the future. The 
 translation of a work is not the work itself. The Latin 
 writings should be published in tlieir original text, either 
 alone or along with the French translations. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 DESCARTES' DOCTRINE. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW METHOD OP PHILOSOPHY. - THE PATH TO THE 
 
 SYSTEM. 
 
 I. SOURCES OF THE THEORY OF METHOD. 
 
 1. Subject. 
 
 "TTTE must seek to enter the doctrine of Descartes by 
 ' ' the path of his method ; and this, therefore, must 
 first be carefully studied. Descartes repeatedly and expli- 
 citly declared, that, in scientific investigation, method. is the 
 important matter, and that he himself had found a new and 
 sure one, by the help of which he had made his discoveries. 
 And if he had not made this declaration, and if the proper 
 mode of searching for truth had not been the subject of some 
 of his works, the rest of them would have compelled us to 
 recognize a master of method, that is, of the art of bringing 
 light into thought, by the mode of their composition, and 
 the order and coherence of their ideas. No one can practise 
 this art as Descartes did unless he has studied it. As we 
 have been obliged to speak in the foregoing book of the 
 method of the philosopher, since it was the guide, not only of 
 his thinking, but also of his life, we cannot avoid some repeti- 
 tion here.^ 
 
 Methodical thinking, and thoughts on method, are different 
 things : the former consists in the use and practice, the latter 
 in the theory, of method. All of Descartes' writings are me- 
 thodical : strictly speaking, not one of them is methodologi- 
 
 1 Foregoing book, chap. i. pp. 170-172; chap. ii. pp. 187-194; chap. iii. pp. 202- 
 204; chap. v. 224- vi. 240. 
 
 309 
 
310 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cal, not one of them is an accurate and complete exposition 
 or theory of the scientific mode of thought. Descartes pro- 
 mulgated no new brganon, as Bacon did. Of the writings 
 which he himself published, there is but one which expressly 
 treats of method, the " Discours de la m^thode." There is 
 another which so methodically discovers and expounds the 
 elements of knowledge, that, from the use of method, its real 
 nature is most distinctly evident, — the " Meditations." Of 
 the former, Descartes himself said, " No traite, but a discours ; 
 not an exposition of the theory of method, but only a con- 
 versation about it." If we judge it according to its title, we 
 might conclude that it does not perform what it promises; 
 but in truth it does more. We expect a theory of method, 
 and become acquainted with a man who has given his life 
 to science, and to this end has regulated and ordered it in 
 a completely methodical manner. The path to truth is not 
 merely pointed out with outstretched finger, but entered and 
 lived. Bacon sought to be only the Mercury along the road, 
 who remains standing on his pedestal, and points out to 
 others the road. Descartes lets us see how he himself 
 finds it, and advances along it. But it must be admitted 
 that our first expectation is not realized. There are four 
 brief rules for the investigation of truth in the second part 
 of the " Discours," stated in the most concise form, without 
 discussion or explanation. 
 
 2. Tlie Methodological Posthumous Works. Critical Ques- 
 tions. — In addition to the " Discours," Descartes wrote two 
 fragments relating to the theory of method, " Regulse ad 
 directionem ingenii," and "Recherche de la v^rit^ par les 
 lumiSres naturelles," which were found among his unpub- 
 lished writings after his death.i We are not informed when 
 they were written, and are therefore obliged to rely on 
 conclusions based chiefly on comparisons between them and 
 the " Discours " and " Meditations." The mere fact that 
 the first was written in Latin gives us reason to believe that 
 
 1 See foregoing book, chap. ix. p. 303. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 311 
 
 it belongs to the period in which Descartes wrote his scien- 
 tific essays in that language, and was still entirely occupied 
 with the question of method. It must have been written, 
 therefore, before the philosophical essays. What the "Dis- 
 cours " compresses into four short rules, and only stipples, 
 as it were, " The Rules for the Direction of the Mind " 
 develop in detail, though not completely. This suggests 
 that it was written before the "Discours," and that Des- 
 cartes did not, therefore, wish to expound the regulative part 
 of the latter. And there is finally another piece of internal 
 evidence that decides the question. We know that Des- 
 cartes regarded the method of mathematics as the type of the 
 method of philosophy, and the " Rules " contain the follow- 
 ing passage : " I have, therefore, until to-day, applied myself 
 to this universal mathematical science, accordhig to my 
 ability, so that I can in future devote myself to higher 
 investigations without fearing that my thoughts are not yet 
 sufficiently mature." ^ When the philosopher wrote this sen- 
 tence, he had not written the " Meditations." The " Rules " 
 were therefore written before the "Meditations," and were 
 probably composed in France after that conversation with 
 VeruUe, and before Descartes went to the Netherlands to 
 write that work in Franeker.^ 
 
 The date of the dialogue cannot be determined so cer- 
 tainly. Its contents and line of thought coincide so exactly, 
 often in its very terms, with the "Meditations," that the 
 connection of the two is perfectly manifest. Each leads up 
 to the principle of certainty, "I think, therefore I am," in 
 precisely the same manner ; but the " Recherche " here breaks 
 off in the middle of a sentence. What the "Meditations" 
 express in the form of a monologue, is here developed in a 
 dialogue between three. Eudoxe, the principal speaker, in 
 his solitude in the country, represents the healthy and nat- 
 ural understanding, ignorant of the learning of the schools, 
 and therefore not led astray by it ; while Polyandre repre- 
 
 1 CEuvres, t. xi., rfeg. iv. p. 224. 2 gee foregoing book, chap. iii. p. 20i. 
 
312 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sents the courtier and man of the world, who is interested in 
 philosophy, although he knows nothing about it ; Epistemon 
 is the polymathist, trained in the schools, who believes in 
 the books of the ancients, and despises the natural, untaught 
 understanding. Polyandre rapidly comprehends and with 
 increasing interest what Eudoxe, philosophizing in the spirit 
 of the " Meditations," draws out of him by means of ques- 
 tions in the Socratic manner; while Epistemon stands shaking 
 his head, and interjects his remarks here and there with the 
 air of a scholar. We see in Eudoxe, if not the philosopher 
 himself, the reader with philosophical tastes ; and in Poly- 
 andre the receptive pupil, such as Descartes wished for as 
 judges of his own writings at the conclusion of his "Dis- 
 cours." ^ There was a time when he did not think his 
 philosophy could become common property, and his doubt 
 an example for every simple and natural mind to follow. 
 When he composed the dialogue, he no longer held that 
 opinion. T hold it, therefore, highly probable, that it was 
 written after the " Meditations " and the " Discours," and 
 was related to the last, which hopes for a perfectly impartial 
 reader as the proof to a calculation. It was therefore writ- 
 ten in French, and was designed to contain two books, 
 which were to develop Socratically the whole system of the 
 new philosophy. For this reason I think it was written 
 after the " Principles," since one must be completely master 
 of a subject to treat it in a dialogue. But that this dialogue, 
 as Millet assumes, is or was intended to be that " traitS de 
 VSrudition " which the Princess Elizabeth asked the philoso- 
 pher to write, appears to me doubtful, both because of the 
 subject and because of the reasons that led Descartes to 
 decline to undertake it.^ 
 
 1 See foregoing book, chap. v. p. 241. 
 
 2 Cf. with foregoing book, chap. vii. p. 281, J. Millet: Histolre de 'Des- 
 cartes, vol. ii. p. 326. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 313 
 
 II. FALSE PATHS TO KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 1. Defective Knowledge. — The conviction at which Des- 
 cartes early arrived, and which he energetically cherished, 
 that science within and without the schools was in a 
 wretched condition, had awakened in his mind ideas of the 
 reformation of scientific thought. What displeased him was 
 not the poverty or limited extent of knowledge, but the 
 uncertain manner in which it was proved ; it was not the 
 lack of learning that left him discontented, since the Renais- 
 sance had increased the materials for culture to a very great 
 degree ; but the more thoroughly he examined the matter, 
 the clearer it seemed to him that the lack of real knowledge 
 was the cause of the wretched condition of the sciences. Sci- 
 ence, as he saw it, lacked one thing that in his eyes was not 
 merely the best, but every thing ; viz., true knoivledge. Des- 
 cartes has been well compared with Luther. The objection 
 that he neither was, nor wished to be, a Protestant is silly. 
 We have here to do, not with the Catholic, but the reformer 
 of philosophy, who did indeed sustain the same relation to 
 science that Luther did to the Church. The Church lacked 
 religion : that, in a word, was the conviction of Luther, based 
 oh his need of personal salvation. The sciences lacked true 
 knowledge : that, with equal brevity, was the conviction of 
 Descartes, based on his personal need of knowledge and 
 truth. This incontestable parallelism throws light upon the 
 problem and work of the philosopher. He occupies a posi- 
 tion in philosophy which the Renaissance of philosophy 
 never reached, and which it never could reach under the 
 dominion of antiquity. 
 
 2. Defective Method. — We know that which we see fol- 
 lows from grounds, and these grounds must themselves be 
 deduced from other grounds, and so on till we reach those 
 that are rooted in absolute certainty. In other words, all 
 knowledge consists in the correct arrangement and deduction 
 of inferences. Each of these inferences is a link in a well- 
 
314 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 articulated chain : each of them takes a step forward on the 
 path of truth, and can be gained, therefore, only by pro- 
 gressing thought. But in order to walk, we must exert our 
 own physical powers; and in order to make progress in 
 thought, we must exert the powers of our mind. Method 
 consists in this self-dependent and ordered thought. It is 
 the only path to knowledge : all others lead to error and 
 delusion. If, therefore, Descartes misses knowledge in sci- 
 ence, he finds the reason for its absence in the lack of all 
 methodical thought. Either one's own thought is lacking, 
 as in the schools, where opinions are accepted on authority, 
 or ordered thought, as is the case outside of the schools, 
 where irregular desires of innovation and fantastic projects 
 run wild. 
 
 What we accept on authority is not philosophical, but 
 merely historical, knowledge. "And if we had read every 
 word of Plato and Aristotle, without the certainty of our 
 own judgment, we should not have advanced a step in phi- 
 losophy : we should have increased our historical knowledge, 
 but not our knowledge of truth." * The less of actual knowl- 
 edge the learning of the schools and the ordinary philosophy 
 — the vulgar philosophy, as Descartes calls it — possesses, the 
 more restlessly and greedily it collects opinions which fill 
 the memory, and swell up the mind, without giving it nour- 
 ishment. " I believe that the body of a dropsical patient is 
 scarcely more unhealthy than the mind of a greedy polyma- 
 thist."^ The hunting after, and catching at, all sorts of 
 opinions are fatal to methodical thought, which exercises the 
 utmost care in taking every step, and, therefore, advances 
 slowly without any inclination to unhealthy and unprofitable 
 speed. Polymathists are not thinkers, but collectors. The 
 thinker seeks insight; and the clearer the insight, the higher 
 he prizes it; and, indeed, unless it is perfectly clear, he re- 
 gards it as valueless : the collector, on the other hand, seeks 
 
 1 CEiivres, xi. Eagles pour la direction de I'esprit, iii. p. 211. 
 
 2 Eech. de la v&itd, p. 338. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 315 
 
 all sorts of so-called knowledge, and the rarest is to him the 
 most interesting. The former prizes clearness, the latter 
 rareness. The rarer his stock of knowledge, and the more 
 difficult of acquisition, the more distinguished does the 
 polymathist regard himself. He knows what others do not 
 know : he is learned, they are ignorant. To pretended knowl- 
 edge is thus added false imagination, the conceit- of scholars, 
 which even Montaigne regarded as a bane. In his deep 
 aversion to the learning of the schools and polymathy, Des- 
 cartes reminds us of that saying of Heraclites, TroXvixafflr v6ov 
 oi StSao-Kci. And not less improfitable than the blind search 
 for knowledge, appeared to him the blind hunt for discov- 
 eries, such as uncalled innovators, the adventurers of science, 
 seek to make. They are like those who seek for treasures, 
 and who dig here and there in the hope that luck will enable 
 them to light upon gold. They generally seek in vain ; and 
 if they find a treasure, they find it not '■'■par art," but '■'■par 
 un coup de fortune ." ^ Bacon had a similar conviction when 
 he saw the necessity of making thought a mode of discovery, 
 and the process of discovery methodical, in order to trans- 
 form it from a blind work of chance into an intentional work 
 of art. Better not seek at all than seek in darkness. It is 
 the worst method of making discoveries, but an infallible 
 one for weakening the natural power of vision. The un- 
 learned, healthy mind which has not developed its natural 
 powers, but which, also, has not dulled them, is far more 
 receptive to true knowledge than the mind which has been 
 spoiled by polymathy, and an undiscriminating search for 
 knowledge. Descartes wished to portray the character of 
 the polymathist in his Epistemon. Of the many examples 
 of charlatanry, he had seen one face to face in Chandoux. 
 
 III. THE PATH TO TRUTH. 
 
 1. The Prollem of Knowledge. — How does knowledge re^ 
 suit from thought ? That is the question which the theory 
 
 1 Efeg. X. p. 253. 
 
316 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of method undertakes to answer, — a purely theoretical and 
 absolutely universal one. The objects of knowledge are 
 many and different, but knowledge itself is one ; and there 
 can, therefore, be but one way in which we can certainly 
 and undoubtedly, i.e., really, know. As the sun is related 
 to the objects which it illuminates and reveals, so reason, the 
 light within us, is related to the objects of thought. It is 
 the same for all of them. How this light is produced, how 
 it is made to attain perfect brilliancy, are questions, therefore, 
 which are valid for all objects, for all sciences without ex- 
 ception. The theory of method which seeks to answer these 
 questions has, therefore, the significance of a universal sci- 
 ence ; and since it is valid for all the branches of knowledge, 
 it makes them all fruitful. The faculty of knowledge is the 
 capital which forms the basis of all our intellectual invest- 
 ments ; and to make it perfectly safe, is to increase the riches 
 of knowledge immeasurably. 
 
 Every cognition is sure in the same proportion as the 
 grounds from which it follows. Absolutely certain knowl- 
 edge can be based only on absolutely certain grounds, and 
 it is the mode of attaining such knowledge that the theory 
 of method has to explain. The question is not how we may 
 choose the less of two doubts, or the greater of two proba- 
 bilities. Knowledge is the highest good, and we must not 
 seek it by a method which can be recommended merely as 
 enabling us to choose the less of two evils. Now, the more 
 complex the cognition, the larger the number of its grounds, 
 and the greater, therefore, its liability to error. In the field 
 of complex knowledge we find at first mere probability, 
 which involves doubt and uncertainty. If we wish to have 
 absolutely certain knowledge, we must begin with the sim- 
 plest conceptions, with the easiest problems, with objects 
 that can be most easily known. The simpler the object, the 
 sooner it can be perfectly examined in all its parts. Learn- 
 ing shows itself averse to clearness in its habit of prefer- 
 ring complicated and difficult questions to simple and easy 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 317 
 
 ■ones, because one can thus maintain all sorts of theories and 
 opinions, and engage in controversies on this side and on 
 that. A single clear concept is more valuable and fruitful 
 than many obscure and misty ones. The light in our minds 
 is like real light : it diffuses itself. If it is perfectly clear in 
 one place, clearness penetrates farther. If one conception is 
 perfectly illuminated, others are illuminated along with it, 
 and the day begins to dawn in our world of thought. And 
 it is with fog in the mind as with real fog,: when it begins to 
 arise from the ground, soon the whole sky is obscured. We 
 must take care, therefore, that the fog in our mind does not 
 ascend, but that it falls to the ground ; for if our conceptions 
 are unclear in their foundations, the fog arises, and darkens 
 our whole world of thought. Of what value is all learning 
 if it is wrapped in darkness ? It is not the subject of inves- 
 tigation that makes knowledge, but thought ; and it is not 
 true that difficult subjects, as they are usually treated, are 
 more difficult than the knowledge of the simplest objects. 
 On the contrary, "it is much easier," says Descartes, "to 
 have a multitude of vague ideas on any question whatever 
 than to penetrate to the truth in reference to the simplest of 
 all questions." ^ Even so judged Socrates concerning the 
 worth of true knowledge and the worthlessness of sophistical 
 opinions, and of idle learning that boasted of them. In 
 every great epoch of philosophy, the spirit of Socrates is 
 present ! 
 
 2. The Method of True Deduction. — We already see the 
 starting-point of the road to truth, and the direction which 
 it must take : it begins with the simplest perception, and 
 advances to those which are composed of perfectly sure and 
 clear elements, as a product of its factors. The method of 
 knowledge is therefore synthetic, since it acquires and forms 
 truths by progressive synthesis. Now, all derivative percep-^ 
 tions are only true when they are as sure and certain as 
 those from which they are derived, and they have this cer- 
 
 1 E6g. li. p. 209. 
 
318 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tainty only when they evidently follow from them. That 
 synthesis, therefore, consists in the logical derivation of 
 every truth from the preceding, and of all from the first. 
 This is the principle of the whole of knowledge: every 
 derived perception is the basis of the following one. Proof 
 by principles Aristotle called, in a narrower sense, syllogism : 
 in Latin this syllogistic proof is called deduction; and with 
 this name Descartes denotes his method, which he distin- 
 guished from the deduction of Aristotle as Bacon did his 
 induction from the Aristotelian. 
 
 According to Descartes, there is no other criterion of truth 
 than well-understood deduction. We must find the source 
 of truth, and follow the course of the stream with the great- 
 est care and accuracy step by step. "As to the object of 
 scientific investigation, we dare not be guided by the thoughts 
 of others, or even our own mere conjectures : we must follow 
 what we ourselves clearly and evidently know, or can with 
 certainty derive from what we know." The starting-point 
 is the simplest truth; the goal, the complete knowledge of 
 things. "We must give careful attention to these two 
 points," says Descartes, " make no false assumption, and seek 
 the way to the knowledge of all things." ^ 
 
 It appears that two paths lead to that goal, experience and 
 deduction. The founders of modern philosophy stood at 
 this parting-way, and left it in opposite directions. Bacon 
 regarded experience as the only means of attaining to true 
 knowledge ; Descartes, deduction. Why Descartes rejected 
 the Baconian method is evident. Experience begins with the 
 facts of sense-perception, that is, with complex objects, 
 the knowledge of which is exposed on all sides to deception. 
 Among existing sciences, some are dialectical, others empiri- 
 cal : the only sciences which proceed deductively are math- 
 ematical, which, therefore, are alone free from error and 
 uncertainty, since experience is subject to involuntary decep- 
 tions, but deduction is not. " From this it does not follow 
 
 1 Bfeg. iii. p. 209, iv. p. 216. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 319 
 
 that arithmetic and geometry are the only sciences that we' 
 ought to study, but that he who seeks the path to truth 
 must occupy himself with objects that can be known as cer- 
 tainly as the deductions of arithmetic and geometry." ^ 
 
 Descartes distinguished this deductive method not only 
 from the empirical, but also from the dialectical, mode of 
 thought, which last prevails in the sciences of the schools. 
 Experience is uncertain, dialectics useless, in reference to 
 actual knowledge. This is the point in which Descartes 
 opposed his deduction to that of Aristotle, which consists in 
 the dialectic arts of the schools, the usual doctrine of the 
 syllogism, which only enables us to arrange and state that 
 which we already know in a logically correct form, but does 
 not enable us to discover new truth. It does not produce 
 knowledge, but presupposes it : it does not belong to philoso- 
 phy, but to rhetoric. Touching the unfruitfulness of this 
 kind of deduction or of the ordinary syllogism, Descartes 
 entirely agreed with Bacon. " The dialecticians can form no 
 syllogism whose conclusion expresses a truth that was not 
 known before. The ordinary dialectics is, therefore, comA 
 pletely worthless for the discovery of truth, and is useful 
 only in stating and explaining the results of our investiga- 
 tions : it has, therefore, no place in philosophy, but is strictly 
 a part of rhetoric." ^ 
 
 Science, on the other hand, has to develop the known from 
 the unknown, to find out new truths, to make discoveries, 
 and, indeed, by means of the method which advances from dis- 
 covery to discovery. Every new truth is a problem, which 
 can be thoroughly and certainly solved, only when all the con- 
 ditions are distinctly known from which the solution neces- 
 sarily follows. They must, therefore, form a series, every 
 member of which forms the evident ground of the one that 
 immediately follows it. In such a continuity of progressing 
 and new inferences consists that method of deduction which 
 Descartes demands.' 
 
 1 Kfeg. ii. pp. 204r-209. » K6g. iv. p. 217, x. p. 256. 
 
320 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 3. Universal Mathematics. Analytical Geometry, — We have 
 already mentioned in the history of his youth, how, exactly 
 in this particular, mathematics seemed to him a type, and 
 enabled him to ascertain his position with respect to the 
 other sciences.^ He found in mathematics a kind of scien- 
 tific thought corresponding to his needs, advancing in an 
 orderly manner from problem to problem, from solution to 
 solution, from discovery to discovery. There alone he found 
 a method of solving problems, and discovering the unknown by 
 means of the known. In this method, Descartes saw the 
 true spirit of mathematics, not in the usual school discipline, 
 which first states its proposition, and then proves it. He saw, 
 also, how, through the application, perfection, and generaliza- 
 tion of this method, mathematics had made its greatest prog- 
 ress. Even the ancients understood the art of so solving 
 geometrical problems as to deduce unknown magnitudes from 
 those that are known. As by the analysis of a known fact, 
 the unknown conditions from which it follows can be dis- 
 covered, so from a known problem, or the assumption of its 
 actual solution, the conditions are known which are essential 
 to this fact, that is, to the solution of the problem. The 
 ancients, therefore, called their method analysis, the practice 
 of which consisted only in the comparison of known magni- 
 tudes with those that are unknown. What the analysis of 
 the ancients was in reference to figures, the algebra of the 
 moderns is in reference to numbers. Arithmetic is more 
 comprehensive than geometry, and algebra is a generalization 
 of the analytical method. The next step in the improvement 
 of this method is to make it valid for the whole doctrine of 
 quantities, or, which is the same thing, to apply algebra to 
 geometry, to solve geometrical problems by algebraic calcula- 
 tions or by equations. This long stride consists in analytical 
 geometry, which Descartes discovered. The analysis of geom- 
 etry is made by means of construction : analytical geometry 
 solves its problems by means of equation^, by a logical opera- 
 
 1 Foregoing book, chap. i. pp. 170-173; book il. p. 184. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 321 
 
 tion, therefore, which is independent of the intuition of 
 space, the method of which both generalizes and simplifies 
 mathematical thought. We cannot too carefully remember 
 that Descartes discovered analytical geometry while he was 
 studying method ; for while he was trying to combine the 
 analysis of the ancients and algebra, he perceived their 
 identity. " The human soul has a divine aptitude for knowl- 
 edge, which has borne its natural fruits in spite of the errors 
 which have intrenched themselves in learning. We find the 
 proof of this in arithmetic and geometry, the simplest of all 
 sciences. Even the ancients used a certain analysis in geom- 
 etry for the solution of problems: in arithmetic blossoms 
 algebra, as we see, which aims to apply to numbers the method 
 which the ancients applied to figures. These two kinds of 
 analysis are involuntary fruits of our natural powers of 
 thought: and I am not surprised, that, in application to such 
 simple objects, they have yielded richer results than in other 
 sciences, where greater obstacles stand in the way of their 
 development ; although there, also, if they are carefully culti- 
 vated, they can be brought to perfect maturity." i 
 
 Here Descartes alludes to his own particular problem, for 
 the knowledge and solution of which, the mathematical 
 method in the analysis of the ancients, the algebra of the 
 moderns, and the analytical geometry, which he himself had 
 discovered, formed preliminary stages. After he had made 
 this method universal within the realm of mathematics or 
 the theory of quantities, there only remained to make the 
 knowledge of all things mathematical. He must take the 
 last step in the extension and generalization of mathematical 
 methods ; h^ must apply analysis to the whole of human 
 knowledge, analyzing its problem in order to determine from 
 what conditions truth follows, and from what error ; and, 
 therefore, he must analyze all the voluntary and involuntary 
 delusions of human nature into their elements. The quantity 
 to which the method of analysis is to be applied, is the human 
 
 1 Efeg. iv. pp. 217, 218. 
 
322 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mind; the philosopher himself in his own person.' The most 
 complex of all objects is to be analyzed into its simplest fac- 
 tors. In this labor consisted the Titanic difficulty with which 
 Descartes so long struggled. His path had led him through 
 the territory of mathematics, to a point where he stood, as it 
 were, before the last curtain. To raise this curtain, to com- 
 pletely unfold and universalize the method, as yet bound 
 within and veiled by the theoiy of quantities, is the under- 
 taking in which he engages. The problem is, to apply the 
 methods of mathematics to the knowledge of the universe ; 
 to treat mathematics, not as the theory of quantities, but 
 as the theory of science, as universal mathematics. The 
 method which in Descartes' own words was veiled and 
 covered by the theory of quantities, was to be uncovered in 
 the literal sense of the word. " That is the goal," continued 
 Descartes in the passage above quoted, " which I have before 
 my eyes in this essay. I should not lay so much emphasis 
 on these rules, if they only served for the solution of certain 
 problems with which arithmeticians and geometers pass 
 away the time. I should then be devoting -myself to trifles 
 with perhaps a little more art than others. And if in this 
 essay I often speak of figures and numbers, — because I can 
 obtain such evident and certain examples from no other 
 sciences, — the attentive reader will, nevertheless, easily see 
 that I am in no way concerned with the ordinary mathe- 
 matics, but that I am explaining a method which there 
 appears in disguise rather than in its true nature. This 
 method is intended to contain the elements of human reason, 
 and to enable us to discover in every subject the truths that 
 are concealed in it. And, to tell the truth, I am convinced 
 that it excels every other means of attaining to human 
 knowledge, since it is the origin and source of all truths." 
 " I have therefore given up the special study of arithmetic and 
 geometry, in order to devote myself to a universal mathemati- 
 cal science. I have first asked myself what one really means 
 
 1 See foregoing book, chap. ii. pp, 189, 194, 195. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 323 
 
 by 'mathematics,' and wherefore arithmetic and geometry- 
 are considered parts of it, and not astronomy, music, optics, 
 mechanics and so many other sciences with just as good 
 right. The word ' mathematics ' means science, and the 
 above-mentioned branches have therefore as much right to 
 the name as geometry." " In a careful consideration of these 
 matters, I have learned that all the sciences which have to do 
 with the investigation of order and quantity, belong to math- 
 ematics, whether they inquire after this quantity in numbers, 
 figures, stars, sounds, or in entirely diiierent objects; and 
 that there must, therefore, be a universal science, which, 
 apart from every particular application, grounds every thing 
 relating to order and quantity, and, therefore, deserves the 
 peculiar and time-honored name of mathematics, since the 
 other sciences are its parts." ^ 
 
 4. Enumeration, or Induction. Intuition. — In order to solve 
 a problem methodically, we must know all its presupposi- 
 tions, all the points upon which its solution depends. The 
 complete enumeration of these points, the analysis of the 
 principal question into the conditions necessary to its solu- 
 tion, Descartes calls enumeration, or induction. Through 
 such a survey, we find our position with reference to the 
 solution of the problem, and bring it under our power. Noth- 
 ing prepares us more thoroughly and surely for the solution 
 than the accurate and exhaustive knowledge of the problem. 
 When the questionable points are known, and methodically 
 arranged, from the condition upwards to the conditioned, we 
 can advance with complete certainty from the first condition 
 through all the intermediate terms to the solution of the 
 problem. To take the simplest example, the progressive 
 series of the numbers 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, etc., is based on the 
 equality of the following relations, 3:6 = 6:12 = 12: 24 = 
 24 : 48 ; and the equality of these proportions is based on the 
 fact that the following member is in every case twice as 
 great as the one that immediately precedes it. The progress 
 
 1 E6g. iv. pp. 217-223. 
 
324 HISTORY OP MOBEEN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the series is apprehended by means of the relation of the 
 individual members to each other, and this by means of their 
 multiplication. The first proposition is 3x 2 = 6, 6x2 = 
 12,12 X 2=24,24x2 = 48. The second is, therefore, 3 : 6 = 
 6 : 12 = 12 : 24 = 24 : 48 ; and from this follows the third, that 
 the numbers 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, etc., form a progressive series 
 with the geometrical ratio 2. In this way, continuity and 
 connection come into our world of conceptions, and our 
 ideas appear as members of series. The longer the series 
 of conceptions which deduction methodically arranges, the 
 wider the horizon, and the stronger the power of the mind 
 that grasps and masters it. But the longer the series, the 
 more distant its members are from the first condition upon 
 which they depend, and, therefore, from the source of their 
 light ; and there is danger, that, with increasing distance, the 
 clearness of perception will decrease. We must, therefore, 
 frequently run through the whole series, each time more 
 rapidly, until we are completely master of it, and survey the 
 whole of it at a single glance. In this manner we disaccus- 
 tom ourselves to the natural dulness of the mind, and make 
 its horizon wider. Thought is quickened, and, at the same 
 time, a great relief is given to the memory. For to pre- 
 serve a multitude of conceptions, there is no better means 
 than to unite them deductively in a thoroughly thought out 
 series. Methodical thought is the surest of all systems of 
 mnemonics.^ 
 
 ^ Sow does deduction begin? This question, which brings 
 us to the beginning of the system, and prepares the way for 
 a transition to it, we have purposely raised at the conclusion 
 of our discussion of the theory of method. Every member 
 of the series is based on the one that immediately precedes 
 it, and is, therefore, dependent iipon all of the earlier mem- 
 bers, and is the more dependent the farther it stands frOm 
 the first, which itself depends upon no other. The begin- 
 ning of deduction is, therefore, not an inference, but an 
 
 1 Efeg. vi. pp. 226-233; vii. pp. 234, 235. Cf. xi. pp. 257, 258. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 325 
 
 immediate certainty, a perception or intuition, as Descartes 
 says, perfectly clear in the light of reason. Intuition is the 
 starting-point of the path of knowledge, and it is made from 
 that point on by means of deduction. These two kinds of 
 knowledge are the only means of attaining to certainty, the 
 single conditions which make science possible. " The start- 
 ing-point can be apprehended only through intuition, the 
 inferences from it only through deduction." "The entire 
 method consists in the arrangement and succession of the 
 objects in reference to which the mind is seeking to learn 
 the truth. To follow the guidance of this method, we must 
 follow obscure and complicated conceptions step by step 
 backward into those that are ever simpler and simpler, until, 
 from the intuition of the object of the simplest of all, we 
 start step by step to the knowledge of each following and 
 more complex conception. In this alone consists the perfec- 
 tion of method, and every one who wishes to wander through 
 the labyrinth of science must hold it fast as carefully as 
 Theseus did the thread. I know there are many who, 
 through ignorance or lack of judgment, pay no attention to 
 the theory of method, and often attempt to solve the most 
 difficult problems in a way that suggests a man attempting 
 to reach the top of a high building at a single spring, 
 despising, or else not seeing, the stairs that lead up to it 
 step by step. Thus proceed astrologists, who undertake to 
 determine the effects of the stars without having made 
 careful observations of their nature and motions. Thus 
 proceed many people who, without a knowledge of the 
 underlying principles of mechanics, undertake to make 
 machines. Thus act the greater part of philosophers, who 
 do not trouble themselves about experience, and suppose 
 that truth will issue from their brains like Minerva from the 
 head of Jupiter." ^ 
 
 ^ The methodical solution of every problem requires the 
 orderly enumeration, or induction, of its conditions, and the 
 
 1 Efig. iii. pp. 211, 212, 214; v. p. 225. 
 
326 HISTORY OF MODEEN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 analysis of those into the intuition, from which deduction 
 systematically advances. In this consists the sum of the 
 Cartesian theory of method. Deduction begins with intui- 
 tion. But what is the object of that intuition? It can be 
 no other than the condition of all deduction, which, as such, 
 is not itself deducible. As all visible objects exist under the 
 condition that there is a power of vision, so all knowable 
 objects exist under the condition that there is a power of 
 knowledge or intelligence. The certainty of the last must, 
 therefore, precede the knowledge of things. This is the 
 foundation of deduction, and we are already in sight of the 
 beginning of the system — full of significance. On methodo- 
 logical grounds, Descartes requires the investigation of the 
 faculty of knowledge as the first step ; and the critical spirit 
 of his philosophy appears so' clear and self-conscious in this 
 requirement, that we might here suppose that we are stand- 
 ing at the threshold of the Kantian philosophy. " The most 
 important of all the problems to be solved, is the determina- 
 tion of the nature and limits of human knowledge, — two 
 points which we embrace in one question, which must first 
 of all be methodically investigated. Every one who has the 
 least love for truth, must have examined this question ; since 
 its investigation comprehends the whole of method, and, as 
 it were, the whole organon of knowledge. Nothing seems 
 to me more absurd than to contend, at random, about the 
 mysteries of nature, the influences of the stars, the unknown 
 events of the future, without having once inquired whether 
 the human mind is competent to such inquiries." ^ 
 
 The single object of intuitive knowledge is likewise the 
 first condition of all knowable things, hence, the guiding 
 principle of deduction ; viz., intelligence itself. Every thing 
 else I know through inferences, therefore through middle 
 terms : of one object I am directly and immediately certain, 
 — of myself, my own being, my own thought. "Every one 
 can intuitively know that he thinks, that he exists." ^ Des- 
 
 1 B?!g. viii. pp. 245, 246. 2 iii. p. 212. 
 
THE NEW METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 327 
 
 cartes states these propositions in his theory of method as 
 examples of intuition or immediate certainty : tliey are the 
 foundations of his system. We must now see how these 
 fundamental truths are discovered, and how from this point 
 the further problems are solved. 
 
328 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: METHODICAL DOUBT. 
 I. THE ORIGIN AND EXTENT OF DOUBT. 
 
 1. TJie Teachings of the Schools. 
 
 SINCE the diffusion of the Cartesian philosophy, its first 
 propositions, " I doubt every thing," " I think, therefore 
 I am," have become famous sayings, with which, as usually 
 happens, the ignorant divert themselves. But he who does 
 not clearly understand their origin in the mind of Descartes, 
 knows nothing more of them than the mere words. How 
 came such a cautious and circumspect thinker to entertain 
 such a fundamental and far-reaching doubt ' This concise 
 and summary expression was not the suggestion of a moment, 
 not a bold, quickly formed resolution, but the result of a 
 long and uninterrupted self-examination. Between those 
 first doubts in the scholar at La Fl^che, and that doubt 
 in the philosopher, with which he grounds his system, 
 intervenes a long series of years. His first doubts were 
 excited against the sciences of the schools and the learning 
 of books. He found a multitude of conflicting theories 
 heaped together out of different times and minds, propa- 
 gated without examination, and taught by the authority 
 and under the influence of the schools. His longing for 
 truth would not tolerate the reception of such a disorderly 
 mass of ungrounded theories. It demanded coherence in the 
 theories assented to, and knowledge perceived, to rest on valid 
 -g'Pe^nds, — a knowledge derived from one's own thought and 
 experience, "from myself," as he said, *'and the great book 
 9/F the world," and not from books and the opinions of others. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: METHODICAL DOUBT. 829 
 
 But not even our own thought and experience of the 
 world are a guaranty of truth. Both are liable to deception. 
 To abandon our faith in teachers and books is of little avail, 
 if we rest contented in the illusions of our own thought. 
 Many boast of all sorts of doubts, and are at the same time 
 the victims of the emptiest and most superficial self-decep- 
 tions. Apart from all artificial education, we have a natural 
 propensity to accept things on authority; and we imagine 
 ourselves independent where we are in the most utter de- 
 pendence. To doubt the truth of our own opinions and our 
 own intellectual excellence, goes deeper, and is, at the same 
 time, more important, because it is so much the more difficult 
 than a sceptical attitude towards external authorities. We 
 have now to do with a doubt that shall follow our self-decep- 
 tions into their last hiding-place. 
 
 2. Self-deception. — We find in our minds a multitude of 
 deeply rooted conceptions, based on prescriptive right, as it 
 were, which through habit have become second nature, so 
 that it is very difficult not to believe them. They are based 
 on our first impressions, on the beliefs of childhood ; and we 
 are inclined to rely on them. Nevertheless, experience has 
 taught us that many of these conceptions are false. Why 
 may not the rest be ? There is no guaranty of their truth ; 
 and if we would proceed surely, we must hold them all, if 
 not false, at least uncertain and doubtful.^ 
 
 Thus doubt forces its way into our inner world, attack- 
 ing time-honored conceptions ; and it will not pause until it 
 meets with beliefs that are able to defy it. If the imagina- 
 tions of childhood have been routed, or made to waver, 
 nevertheless our sense-perceptions will stand their ground. 
 But they also are deeply rooted ; they are as old as the 
 beliefs of childhood, and belong to the same general class; 
 and it is improbable that they will prove the only exception 
 to their uncertainty. The senses also have so often deceived 
 us, that it is impossible for us to accept all their representa- 
 
 1 CEuvres, 1. 1. M^dit., i. pp. 23S, 236, t. iii. Princ, sec. 1, pp. 63, 64. 
 
330 HISTORY OF MODEEN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tions as true. If we are in earnest in our attempt to rid 
 ourselves of self-deception, we shall not give perfect trust to 
 their reports, and must, therefore, admit doubt even into 
 this supposed stronghold of certainty. For the inconsider- 
 ate and, therefore, too hasty confidence in the reports of our 
 senses is also a self-deception. 
 
 But it nevertheless seems that some of the perceptions of 
 sense are of indubitable certainty. Our own body and its 
 limbs, its present states and activities, are manifest phenom- 
 ena, whose reality nobody questions. But is this reality to 
 be accepted under all circumstances ? There are very many 
 and well-known cases, in which presentations of sense of 
 apparently the most certain character turn out to be empty 
 imaginations, which delude us with the appearance of reality. 
 As often as we dream, we experience this illusion. We 
 experience what we dream, and dream what we have experi- 
 enced. The same phenomena are now objects of experience, 
 now the visions of a dream. In the first case we regard 
 them as true ; in the second, false. The nature of the presen- 
 tation, therefore, is no guaranty of the reality of its object ; 
 and the objects of sense are not to be taken as real because 
 they are objects of sense, and also not because they are these 
 particular objects of sense, since, as such, they may just as 
 well be imaginary. They exist in reality when they are not 
 dreams. But to apprehend this reality, and guard it against 
 every doubt, there must be a criterion by means of which 
 we can a^trcurately, infallibly, and invariably distinguish the 
 visions of a dream from the experiences of our waking states. 
 Now there is no such criterion. " When I consider the 
 matter carefully, I do not find a single characteristic by 
 means of which I can certainly determine whether I am 
 awake, or whether I dream. The visions of a dream and the 
 experiences of my waking states are so much alike, that I 
 am completely puzzled ; and I do not really know that I am 
 not dreaming at this moment ! " ' 
 
 1 M^d., i. p. 238. Princ, i. sec. i, pp. 64, 65. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: METHODICAL DOUBT. 331 
 
 In the progress of his self-examination, the fact of dreams 
 forms an important moment, which repeatedly turns the 
 scale in favor of doubt. In this case, it destroys our appar- 
 ently strongest certainty, — that in the objects of sense. 
 " How do you know" asks Eudoxe, " that your whole life is 
 not a continual dream ? " ^ That reminds us of a sentence in 
 Calderon's profound poem : — 
 
 " In this wonder-world a dream is 
 Our whole life and all its changes : 
 All we seem to be and do 
 Is a dream and fancy too. 
 Briefly, on this earthen ball, 
 Dreaming what we're living all." 
 
 So much is evident: the same phenomena which in dreams 
 are completely imaginary, cannot be accepted as real in the 
 state of waking, until we are able to distinguish the two 
 states in the surest possible manner. 
 
 But there is yet something in the objects of sense that sets 
 doubt at defiance. If all these objects are but the images of 
 a dream, nevertheless all that is in them cannot be mere 
 imagination : an image in a dream, like every other image, is 
 a compound, which consists of certain elements without 
 which its composition could not take place. However imagi- 
 nary the image, its fundamental constituents are given, and 
 have the surest claim on reality. Without certain elemen- 
 tary ideas, as space, time, extension, form, quantity, number, 
 place, etc., there is no object of sense, no image, and, there- 
 fore, no image of a dream. As a painting presupposes, but 
 does not make, colors, in like manner those elements are 
 related to our world of confused and manifold conceptions. 
 Before this last condition of sensible objects, it seems that 
 doubt must call a halt.^ But we must first inquire b^/ whom 
 those elements are given of which all our presentations and 
 imaginations consist, and whether their reality is guaranteed 
 
 1 CSuvres, t. xi. Eech. de la v4nti, p. 350. ^ Med., i. pp. 238-240. 
 
332 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 by their author. For that which is given and received from 
 without has not as such the stamp of truth, otherwise every- 
 thing that we accept on authority might be accepted as true. 
 But in the beginning of our inquiry, we came in contact with 
 transmitted conceptions, and found them doubtful exactly 
 because they were transmitted. To be sure, their uncer- 
 tainty was based on the fact of their human origin ; wlule 
 those which we are now considering seem to be innate, and 
 not to belong to the things which men have transmitted. 
 Their origin, therefore, must be sought in a supra-human 
 source, — in God himself, as the ground of our being, and 
 the cause of the world. Doubt thus stands in the immediate 
 presence of the highest object of faith ; and the question now 
 arises, whether, in the interest of the most searching self- 
 examination, we dare quiet ourselves with the assumption 
 that some of our ideas are of divine origin ; whether; with this 
 assumption, the possibility of deception is excluded. The 
 more imperfectly we conceive of this God, whether as Fate, 
 Chance, or Necessity of Nature, the less has he the power to 
 preserve us from deception ; and the more perfectly he 
 appears as an all-powerful spirit, the more he has the power 
 to plunge us into deceptions. And if he has the power, why 
 not the will also ? Perhaps because he is good ; but if he 
 does not will that I err, why do I ? Plainly his will does 
 not protect me from error, and he has the power to blind me. 
 It may be that I live in a world of phantoms, in a mere illu- 
 sionary world, perhaps that I may hereafter be delivered from 
 it, or that I may never attain to the light of truth. It may 
 be that the divine omnipotence has so created me, that the 
 world which I represent to myself exists merely in my imagi- 
 nation, without truth and reality in itself.^ At all events, 
 this supposition is possible, and it is more than the fancy of 
 a self-tormenting hypercritic. The idea that the sense-world 
 in which we live is a mere phantom world, which blinds and 
 deceives us, is the theme of the MS,yS,, one of the oldest reli- 
 
 1 M&l., 1. pp. 240-242. Princ, sec. 5, pp. 65, 66. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: METHODICAL DOUBT. 333 
 
 gions.in the •world. In the course of the self-examination of 
 our philosopher, the plummet of doubt reaches so deep that 
 it penetrates to, and vindicates the possibility of, this concep- 
 tion, and thus demolishes the last bulwark, behind which 
 our ordinary beliefs, nourished by our confidence in the 
 senses, have protected themselves from scepticism. We 
 have, therefore, no beliefs that cannot and must not be 
 doubted, if we wish to completely rid ourselves of every self- 
 delusion. It may be that many of them are true ; but we do 
 not know it, since none of them are proved. We have no 
 reason to consider them certain, but reason enough to hold 
 them uncertain. Now, the declaration, " I doubt every thing," 
 follows from the perception of this universal uncertainty. 
 " What can I allege against these reasons ? I have no argu- 
 ments to weaken their force. I am at last compelled to the 
 open acknowledgment, that every thing which I have be- 
 lieved can be doubted, not thoughtlesslj' or lightly, but from 
 cogent and well-considered reasons ; and that, if the truth 
 is of any importance to me, I ought to guard as carefully 
 against assuming by chance that which is uncertain, as that 
 which is plainly false." ^ 
 
 n. DOUBT AS METHOD AND AS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 With our entire world of conceptions — which has not 
 stood the test of self-examination — we are prisoners to self- 
 delusion, and have grown accustomed to our fetters. Doubt 
 requires not only to break in upon and attack this habit 
 here and there, but all along the line, that it may utterly 
 destroy it : it requires to wean us from the habit of self-delu- 
 sion. No habit is stronger than that of belief, and none is 
 more diiBcult to get rid of. And if doubt is really to have 
 the power to banish self-delusion, it is not enough for us to 
 conceive and understand it, and have a distinct idea of the 
 reasons for it : we must accustom ourselves to this mode of 
 thought, and live in this critical state of mind as heretofore 
 
 1 M^d., p. 242. Prlnc, i. sec. 2. Eech., p. 351. 
 
334 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the uncritical. That is as difficult as this was easy. The 
 habit of self-delusion comes of itself; the weaning from it 
 only through discipline of the mind and method. " But it 
 is not enough by far to have observed this necessity: we 
 must continually re-present it to our minds. For those famil- 
 iar opinions are constantly returning and capturing the 
 easily believing mind, which is subject to them, as it were, 
 by prescription and domestic right. They return against my 
 will, and I cannot wean myself from the habit of deferring to 
 them, and confiding in them. Although I know very well 
 how doubtful they are, nevertheless they seem so true that 
 it seems more reasonable to believe them than deny them." * 
 Doubt becomes a principle : the critical direction of the 
 mind becomes a conscious resolution of the will and a 
 maxim. I wish to get rid of self-delusion, and not merely in 
 this case or that, here or now, but in all cases and at all 
 times. As self-deception is universal and habitual, so the 
 doubt which is to banish it must be universal, and become at 
 home in our mode of thought. We should note carefully 
 the object of this doubt. It is not directed against this or 
 that conception, the religious conception, for example, of 
 which many first think when doubt is spoken of, but 
 against a human state, the existence of which we can see 
 with half an eye, against the state of self-delusion, imagina- 
 tion, blindness. He who rejects or opposes the doubt of 
 Descartes, must approve of our self-delusion. He who holds 
 it better not to give way to that doubt, must hold it better 
 for us to continue in our self-blindness. It can, therefore, 
 be only a deluded mind, not one that is earnestly religious, 
 that fears such doubt. The opposite of self-delusion is truth- 
 fulness to one's self. This is the source of all truth and all 
 the courage in seeking truth. He who is not true to himself 
 |has not the courage to look through his blindness ; he has in 
 general no courage in seeking truth ; generally speaking, he 
 is not true, and all the candor which he has in other matters 
 
 1 Med., i. pp. 242, 243. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY: MEtSoDICAL DOUBT. 335 
 
 is at bottom false. That, therefore, is the iuteiition of the 
 Cartesian doubt and the task which it sets itself: be true to 
 yourself. Do not persuade yourself, and do not allow your- 
 self to be persuaded, that you are what you are not, that you 
 know what is not clear and evident to you, that you believe 
 that which at bottom you doubt, or ought to doubt. 
 
 Thus deeply inward is the inquiring and critical mind of 
 Descartes directed : he requires self-illumination in place 
 of self-delusion. He has to do only with his own mind, and 
 not with the world ; his doubt attacks merely the validity of 
 conceptions, and not states of the world ; it is therefore not 
 practical, but only theoretical. " I know that neither danger 
 nor error can arise from this : I have no reason to be afraid 
 of an excess of distrust, since I am here concerned, not with 
 practical, but merely with theoretical, problems. I will sup- 
 pose, then, not that the All-wise and perfectly good God is 
 the source of truth, but some malignant, and at the same 
 time powerful, demon, who has employed all his skill in 
 deceiving me. I will suppose that the sky, the air, the 
 earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all the things I perceive 
 without me, are the illusions of dreams, with which that 
 spirit has laid snares for my credulity. I will consider my- 
 self as without eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, as 
 possessing all these things merely in imagination, and I will 
 resolutely continue and strengthen myself in this mode of 
 consideration. If it is not then in my power to arrive at the 
 knowledge of truth, I shall at least be able to protect myself 
 from error. I will face that lying spirit, and be he ever so 
 powerful and cunning, he shall not overcome me. But the 
 undertaking is difficult, and a certain indolence is constantly 
 leading me back to my old habits of life : and like a prisoner 
 who rejoices in dreams over an imaginary freedom, and 
 dreads awakening, when he begins to suspect that it is only 
 a dream, and cherishes the pleasant fancy as long as possible , 
 so involuntarily I fall back into my old beliefs, and fear to 
 arouse myself from my slumber. I fear the laborious exist- 
 
336 HISTOR? OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ence that will follow this pleasant sleep, and which must 
 be spent, not in the light of day, but in the impenetrable 
 darkness of already excited doubts." ' To return is impos- 
 sible. The sun of truth must rise out of the ocean of doubt 
 
 itself. 
 
 1 Med., i. pp. 243-245. Pr., i. 3, p. 64. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY. 337 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 I. THE PRINCIPLE OF CERTAINTY. 
 
 1. One's Own TJiinhing Being. 
 
 ~r HAVE no conception the truth of which is evident to 
 -*- me. On the contrary, they are all of such a nature that 
 I perceive their uncertainty. Experience, which has con- 
 tradicted them in so many cases, testifies against the trans- 
 mitted conceptions of childhood; the errors of the senses 
 agamst the conceptions of sense ; dreams, against the appar- 
 ently most certain sense-perceptions; and, finally, against 
 the reality of those elementary conceptions that lie at the 
 foundation of all the rest, arises the possibility that the 
 world of the senses universally is a mere unsubstantial, 
 phantom world, that in the very roots of our being we 
 are involved in deception and illusion. Thus, every thing 
 is doubtful, and nothing certain except this very doubt. 
 Every thing is doubtful ; i.e., I doubt every thing. The 
 second proposition is as certain as the first, and I am as 
 certain of myself. If I subtract delusion from self-delusion, 
 myself remains : if that is possible, this is necessary. With-jj 
 out a self, there can be no self-delusion and no doubt. 
 Now I have found a point which doubt can never attack, 
 because it depends upon it. " Archimedes demanded only a 
 firm and immovable point in order to move the earth, and 
 we also can entertain great hopes if we can discover the 
 smallest certain and indubitable truth." Even suppose that 
 
338 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 we have been banished by a wicked demon into a world of 
 illusion, nevertheless we are, no matter in what cohdition 
 of mortal blindness. If that demon deceives me, it is clear 
 that I also am : let him deceive me as much as he can, he can 
 never bring it to pass, that, so long as I think that something 
 is, I myself am not. And accordingly, after I have con- 
 sidered every thing again and again, I come at last to this 
 proposition, which stands firm: "I am, I exist," is neces- 
 sarily true in the moment in which I express it or conceive 
 it.i 
 
 The next question is, What am I? We cannot answer, 
 " I am a man," or " I am this body," since, it is possible that 
 all bodies are only phantoms. I cannot, 'herefore, explain 
 the essence of my being by activities which, like self-motion, 
 nourishment, sensation, can certainly be ascribed to the soul, 
 but not without the body. If I separate from myself every 
 thing that is doubtful, nothing remains but the doubting itself. 
 If nothing of that which I hold uncertain exists, my uncer- 
 tainty yet remains. If I am nothing of that which I imagine 
 myself to be, my imagination yet remains. If every thing 
 is false which I afSrm or deny, it is yet true that I affirm or 
 deny. Now, doubting, imagining, affirming, denying, etc., are 
 modes of thought. Thought remains after subtraction of 
 
 ' every thing that is doubtful ; in thought, therefore, consists 
 my unchangeable essence; my thought is my true being; I 
 
 I think, therefore I am. "But why shall I imagine other 
 things? I am not that assemblage of members called the 
 human body ; also I am not a thin and penetrating substance 
 diffused through all these members, or wind, or fire, or 
 vapor, or breath, or any of the things which I imagine myself 
 to be. For I liave supposed that all those things in reality 
 are not; and though that supposition remains, I am neverthe- 
 less something." I am a thinking being. In this sentence, 
 
 1 Med., ii. pp. 246-248. Pr., i. sec. 7. In the Eech. de la v&itd, Eudoxe 
 characterizes the doubt of every thing with the above expression of the 
 Meditations as "un point flxe et immuable." 
 
THE PKINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY. 339 
 
 Descartes realizes, in relation to the knowledge of things, 
 the requirement of Archimedes. If I should doubt the cer- 
 tainty of my thought, I should put in question the possibility 
 of doubt itself, and should be obliged to return to the old 
 delusions. The proposition, therefore, "I think, hence T 
 am," excludes all uncertainty, and is the first and surest 
 truth which every one finds who philosophizes methodically.' 
 
 If to the question, " What am I ? " the answer is returned, 
 " I am a man," we must inquire farther, and the unknown 
 species be defined by the more unknown genus, according to 
 the "tree of Porphyry." What is man? What is rational 
 animal, living body, life, body, thing, etc. ? A labyrinth of 
 obscure conceptions. But the answer, "I am a doubting, 
 and therefore thinking, being," cannot in like manner be 
 resolved into an endless regress of questions, — what is 
 doubting, thinking, etc.? To this objection of Epistemon, 
 the philosopher of the schools, Eudoxe aptly replies, "We 
 must doubt and think in order to know what it is." He 
 who has experienced this activity does not inquire concern- 
 ing its genus and species, since it is a matter of immediate 
 knowledge.^ 
 
 2. The Principle of Certainty. The Mind as the Clearest 
 Object. — Every thing which is just as evident as the cer- 
 tainty of my own thinking being is just as true. Here the 
 object of thought is directly present to the mind, and we 
 know immediately both that it is and what it is. The pres- 
 ence of the object makes the perception of it clear : it is dis- 
 tinct because the object appears in its own nature unmixed 
 with other things. " I call that clear which is present and 
 manifest to the attentive mind, as we say we see an object 
 clearly when it is present to the eye looking on, and when 
 it makes on the sense of sight an impression sufficiently 
 strong and definite ; but I call that distinct which is clear, 
 and at the same time so definitely distinguished from every 
 
 1 Disc, iv. p. 158. U4A., li. pp. 248-253. Pr., i. sees. 7-10. 
 
 2 Reeh. de la v&ite, pp. 354-371. 
 
340 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thing else that its essence is evident to him who properly 
 considers it." The truth of self-certainty has both charac- 
 teristics : it is perfectly clear and distinct ; and it would be 
 less certain, that is, more uncertain, like every thing else, if 
 it had these characteristics in a less degree. Clearness and 
 distinctness are, therefore, the criteria of certainty or of truth. 
 Our philosopher, accordingly, expresses the principle or 
 " regula generalis " of truth by the formula, " What I clearly 
 and distinctly conceive is true.^^^ 
 
 The principle of knowledge follows from the proposition of 
 certainty. It is important to notice one of its consequences 
 immediately. The less the clearness and distinctness of a 
 conception, the less the certainty by which the truth and 
 reality of its object is evident. Now, clearness is dependent 
 upon the presence of the object, or the immediateness of the 
 relation between perception and its object. The more medi- 
 ate, therefore, the object, the greater the number of middle 
 terms between perception and its object, and the more ob- 
 scure the perception. Nothing is more immediately present 
 to us than our own being : nowhere has any one a greater 
 right to say that each is- nearest to himself, than in knowl- 
 edge. I am a thinking being or mind. Mind, therefore, is 
 of all objects the clearest ; its existence and nature are more 
 evident than those of things without us, of material objects, 
 the representations of which are mediate and dependent upon 
 the senses ; and obscure, because they are mediate ; and con- 
 fused, because the nature of my senses is mingled with the 
 nature of the object. To make an object distinct, is to rep- 
 resent it to ourselves in its purity, and to separate from it 
 every thing foreign to its nature ; and that we can do only 
 by examination and criticism, i.e., by judgment and thought. 
 To'^learly and distinctly ^pepresent a thing is, therefore, to 
 think. From the principle of certainty, therefore, follows 
 the principle in which the rationalism of Descartes' philoso- 
 phy finds distinct expression : True knowledge is possible only 
 
 1 Eech. de la vdrit^, pp. 354-371. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY. 341 
 
 through thought. Thought alone makes our ideas of things 
 clear and distinct. 
 
 Every conception which I have is my conception ; and 
 every conception, therefore, proves more certainly than it 
 does any thing else, that I am. I say this body exists because 
 I touch it : perhaps it does not exist, perhaps I only imagine 
 or dream that I touch it. But one thing follows with incon- 
 testable certainty, — that I, who touch the body, or imagine I 
 touch it, in reality am. That mind should be more clear 
 and evident than body, appears absurd to the common con- 
 sciousness : bodies are so distinct because we can see them 
 with our eyes, and grasp them with our hands. That mind 
 is more distinct than body, will seem less absurd, and the 
 nature of the object perceived by means of the senses less 
 distinct, if we earnestly try to conceive it. What- do we 
 distinctly conceive in a piece of wax, which we perceive as 
 a hard object which we can grasp with our hands? It is 
 not properties which we have just perceived; for the wax 
 melts, and they are present no longer. What remains is 
 something extended, ductile, changeable, which, by means 
 of its extension, is capable of passing through an endless 
 series of changes of size, and by means of its ductility and 
 changeableness, and endless series of forms. This endless 
 manifold can be conceived and comprehended by no presen- 
 tation of sense, but only by thought.' 
 
 n. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 1. The Conception of a Being without us. — If, now, truB- 
 knowledge consists in the clearness and distinctness of con- 
 ceptions, and if these are attainable only by thought,, thje 
 question arises. How, by means of thought, do I come' toi a 
 knowledge of things ? My certainty reaches no farther than 
 the activity of my thought : where this ceases, uncertainty 
 begins. If we represent to ourselves the internal and exter- 
 nal wor]4 as the hemispheres of the universe, the one lies 
 
 1 M^d., il. pp. 256-258. Pr., i. sees. 8-12. 
 
342 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the circle of illumination, the other in shadow. If the 
 light within us does not illuminate the dark world without 
 us, we remain in uncertainty and doubt concerning its exist- 
 ence. This, therefore, is the question which the problem of 
 knowledge comprehends, — How does the certainty of the 
 existence of things without us follow from the certainty of 
 our own existence ? To put the question in its most general 
 form. Is there any being at all without us, the existence of 
 which is as clearly and distinctly evident as our own think- 
 ing being? Have we a conception, from which the existence 
 of such a being manifestly follows? 
 
 Let us examine somewhat more closely the different kinds 
 of ideas we find in our internal world. Some of them seem 
 origijial or innate, others to have been voluntarily formed, 
 but most of them to have been received from without. 
 These last, the presentations of the senses, we consider effects 
 and copies of things without us, and, therefore, an indubi- 
 table evidence of their existence. We know indeed how 
 unfounded this opinion is, how the senses often, and dreams 
 always, deceive us. To be sure, the presentations of the 
 senses as such are never false. It is certain that I have this 
 perception, — that I present to myself the sun as a round disk 
 that moves of itself: only from this it does not follow that 
 the sun is a disk that moves in such a manner. The error 
 lies in this inference, it lies not in my presentation, but in 
 the fact that I hold my perception as the property and state 
 of a thing without me. In so doing, I am not merely having 
 a conception, but judging about it. It is a judgment when 
 we declare that a presentation in our minds is the effect and 
 copy of a thing outside of us. It is a groundless judgment 
 when we relate presentations of sense to external objects. 
 This is not the place to finally decide the question, whether, 
 by means of our sense-perceptions, the existence of bodies 
 can be proved. Here we only declare that the sensible prop- 
 erties which we find in our consciousness give no reason 
 to seek their cause or original without us. The reasons 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY. 343 
 
 whic,h are adduced for that purpose prove nothing : it is in 
 vain to appeal to the fact that they arise involuntarily, and 
 that we refer them to an outward object by a natural instinct. 
 These instincts are not infallible ; and the fact that those 
 sensations are independent of our will, does not exclude the 
 possibility of their proceeding involuntarily from the condi- 
 tions of our own nature. And even if they are effects of 
 external objects, it does not follow that they are related to 
 their causes as copies to their originals, since an effect may 
 be very unlike its cause. We must declare, accordingly, 
 that they in no way authorize the certain judgment, that 
 there are things without us. If, therefore, any of our ideas 
 is to make us certain of the existence of things outside of us, 
 it cannot be a sensation.^ 
 
 2. The Principle of Causality. — As certain as is our own 
 thinking nature by means of which we have ideas, so cer- 
 tain is the principle of causality : " From nothing, nothing 
 becomes ; every thing is the effect of a producing cause." If 
 less should be contained in the cause than in the effect, this 
 excess would have to be produced by nothing. From this it 
 follows that the cause never can be less than the effect, but 
 must contain more reality than, or just as much as, the effect. 
 In the first case, it is related to the effect, as the artist to a 
 work of art, since in him more is contained than in his work ; 
 in the second, as a form to its impression. That cause, Des-^ 
 cartes calls " causa eminens;" this, " causa for malis." If, now, 
 we find an idea in our minds which contains more reality 
 than our own nature, it is clear that we are neither its 
 " eausa eminens " nor its " causa formalis" therefore not its 
 cause at all ; that, therefore, th§ cause of this idea must exist 
 without us. The question is, whether we have, such an 
 idea.2 
 
 What we conceive are either substances or modes. Plainly 
 those contain more reality than these; and we have now, 
 therefore, to examine more closely the worth and value of 
 
 I Med., iii. pp. 268-272, » lb., iii. pp. 2T2-275. Pr., i. see. 17. 
 
344 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 conceived substances. As such we take our own being, and 
 the things without us. These are in part like us, in part dif- 
 ferent from lis ; the latter are either higher or lower than we ; 
 the higher are God and angels ; the lower are animals, or en- 
 tities below animals. Angels are beings between God and 
 men ; and, if we have the ideas of these two, we can make 
 that of angels, and do not need for this purpose any original 
 without us. Men are beings like ourselves, whose bodies are 
 different from ours. From the conception of our own being 
 and bodily substances, we can form those of other men. 
 The ideas of God and of body are accordingly the elements 
 out of which the ideas of the remaining substances are 
 formed by the activity of our own minds. What we repre- 
 sent to ourselves by way of the senses as belonging to ob- 
 jects, is obscure, and, therefore, either nothing or of less 
 reality than our thinking nature : what we distinctly con- 
 ceive in them is contained in our own thinking nature, or can 
 be derived from it. In no case does the conception of a body 
 contain more reality than that of our own being. ) There is, 
 therefore, at first sight no reason why we could not be the 
 producing cause of this conception. I am a thinking being: 
 every other finite thing is less than I am. When, therefore, 
 I conceive finite beings without me, the cause and the origi- 
 nal of my conception does not need to exist without me. 
 There remains, therefore, but one conception as the object of 
 our question, — the idea of God.^ 
 
 3. The Idea of God. — I am a finite being, God is infinite : 
 I am imperfect and defective, God is perfect and without 
 defects. It is, therefore, impossible for me to be the cause 
 of this idea. Either I cannot have such a conception at all, 
 or its cause must be a being of like reality ; i.e., God himself. 
 But I have the idea of God ; and in this case, to have it is 
 equivalent to having received it. Every conception, as 
 every phenomenon, has its cause. If I clearly and distinctly 
 perceive that I cannot be this cause, I know just as clearly 
 
 1 M^d., iii. pp. 276-280. Pr., i. sec. 18. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OP PHILOSOPHY. 345 
 
 and distinctly that it must be without me ; that there is, 
 therefore, a being without me. " If in one of my ideas, a so 
 powerful reality is represented, that I am certain that it can- 
 not be contained in me, either formally ^ or eminently, and 
 that I cannot, therefore, be its cause, it follows that I am not 
 alone in the world, but that yet another being exists as the 
 cause of that idea. But if I have no such idea, I have no 
 means of proving that a being exists different from me. I 
 have considered the matter on all sides, and with all possible 
 care, and up to this moment have been unable to reach any 
 other result." ^ 
 
 Through the idea of God, the darkness without our lonely 
 self-certainty is to be illuminated, and the problem of knowl- 
 edge solved. The question now arises. How is the knowledge 
 of things possible by means of the idea of God ? This must 
 be the subject of our next inquiry ; and we may be sure, 
 that, without it, the meaning and depth of the Cartesian 
 philosophy are not understood. 
 
 1 The following remark may serve to explain the expression, "formally 
 contained : " producing is with Aristotle shaping, or forming. What is con- 
 ceived, Descartes calls " objective ; " what actually exists, "formal." The con- 
 ceived object is "realitas objectiva;" the actual object, " realitas actiialis sive 
 formalis." That which contains the cause formally is nothing more or less 
 than the contents of the effect. 
 
 2 Disc, iv. p. 160. M^d., ili. p. 276. 
 
346 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. — HUMAN SELF-CEBTAINTY, AND 
 CERTAINTY OP GOD. 
 
 I. PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 1. Cause of the Idea of God. 
 
 AGAINST our self-delusion, Descartes had summoned 
 self-examination, that fundamental doubt which- left 
 but one certainty ; viz., that we doubt, that we think, that 
 we are. From this followed the principle of all certainty, — 
 that truth consists in clearness and distinctness of knowl- 
 edge. The fact of causality is clear and distinct ; it follows 
 from the fact of certainty, since it is impossible for us to 
 think and not to be ; this would be activity without a sub- 
 ject, change without substance, effect without cause. From 
 the principle of causality, it follows that we cannot be 
 the cause of a conception which contains more reality than 
 we ourselves do. Now, the idea of God contains more 
 reality : therefore we cannot be the cause of it. There 
 must, therefore, be a being without us, who has all the per- 
 fections that we conceive as belonging to him : the cause of 
 the idea of God is God himself. To be a cause is to be 
 active, and therefore real ; so that the existence of God is 
 evident merelj^ from the idea of God in us. 
 
 Since the solution of the problem of knowledge is to be 
 reached through this point, it must first of all be fortified 
 and protected against every doubt. Our certainty of the 
 existence of God is based first of all on the certain fact that 
 we exist, and have the idea of God. Is the inference valid ? 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. 347 
 
 Does it follow that God really exists, because we are, and 
 have the idea of God ? Perhaps we ourselves are able, by 
 means of our own powers, to produce this idea: perhaps 
 neither God nor we ourselves, but another cause, has pro- 
 duced both us and the idea of God within us. If it can be 
 proved, that, without the existence of the most perfect being, 
 it is impossible for us and the idea of God within us to exist, 
 these possibilities are excluded. 
 
 We must be perfect in order to produce the idea of the 
 perfect, according to the requirement of the principle of 
 causality. But in fact we are not perfect : and if we were in 
 our capacities, this perfection would not be actual, but 
 only potential ; i.e., a becoming or growing perfection which 
 is, equivalent to existing imperfection. Becoming is endless : 
 growing perfection is never completed. We are, therefore, 
 always in a state which, when compared with the idea of 
 God, is less perfect than this. A capacity for perfection is 
 actual imperfection. Mere capacity is not yet activity, not 
 producing cause ; therefore, not the cause of the idea of 
 God. 
 
 The principle of causality holds not merely of our ideas, 
 but just as well of our existence. If we suppose that the 
 cause of our existence is not the most perfect being, it must 
 be one that is less perfect — either I myself, or my parents, 
 or another being ; perhaps one, perhaps several. If I had 
 been my own creator, I should have had the power to give 
 myself all those perfections which I am able to conceive : I 
 should then have become God. But I do not possess these 
 perfections : they do not, therefore, stand in my power, and 
 I was not my own creator. Conserving is continued creat- 
 ing : he only who can create, can conserve. But I have not 
 the power to conserve myself: therefore, I did not have it 
 to create myself. The continuance of my existence is not 
 in my power, nor in that of my parents : therefore, they also 
 were not my creators. As a thinking being, I should have 
 to be conscious of this sovereign power if I had it. But I 
 
348 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 am conscious of the opposite : I am not, therefore, the cause 
 of my existence. It is just as little thinkable that the 
 Divine perfections which I conceive have more than one 
 cause, since with unity those causes would lack true perfec- 
 tion, and would not, therefore, be what they would have to 
 be. There remains, therefore, but one inference : one. being 
 different from us, proceeding either from a higher being or 
 existing of itself, has produced that conception. We must 
 deny the case of origin from a higher being, for this is to 
 suppose an endless regress of causes, which is impossible ; for 
 we would in that case never come to the producing cause, 
 and, therefore, never to the effect. That producing being 
 which must be different from us, and sui generis, can exist only 
 of itself : it is God. To deny the existence of God in this 
 sense, is to declare our own existence and the idea of God in 
 us impossible. " From the fact alone that I am, and have 
 the idea of a most perfect being, or God, it follows with com- 
 plete clearness that God also exists." ^ 
 
 2. The Idea of God as Innate. — We have received this 
 idea ; but since we have not received it through the senses 
 nor any other medium, we have received it immediately 
 from God himself; it is originally given, or innate; God has 
 stamped it upon us as lus work " as the mark of the artist." 
 This mark is not here different from the work, but is the 
 work itself : God is not merely the cause, but the archetype, 
 of our existence. "From the fact alone that God created 
 me, I believe that God fashioned me after his image, and that 
 I am like him. In this exact likeness consists the idea of God. 
 I am this exact likeness, and I therefore know the idea of God 
 by the same faculty through which I know mj'self. When 
 I make my own nature an object of study, I see not merely 
 that I am a defective, dependent being, aspiring unceasingly 
 after higher perfection, after something greater and better, 
 but I see at the same time that that primordial Being upon 
 whom I depend contains in himself all perfections, and that 
 
 .1 M^d.,iii. pp. 280-289. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. 349 
 
 not potentially as the goal of an endless striving, but in 
 reality and infinitely. I apprehend the existence of God. 
 The force of the proof lies in this, — that I am compelled to 
 perceive that I myself, with the idea of God in me, could 
 not possibly exist if God in reality were not, — I mean the 
 God whom I conceive, — that is, the Being who has all the 
 perfections which I do not comprehend, but can only touch, 
 as it were, with my thoughts afar off, the Being who is des- 
 titute of every kind of imperfection." ^ 
 
 3. Ontological and Anthropological Proofs. — In order to 
 prove the existence of God, Descartes used several different 
 arguments ; and it is a too superficial treatment of him to 
 emphasize merely the ontological proof, as is usually done. 
 We will inquire first what these proofs are, then their order, 
 and finally their deepest motives. 
 
 The principle of certainty is. Every thing which we clearly 
 and distinctly apprehend is true. Now, in the mere idea of 
 God, I apprehend his existence clearly and distinctly, and it 
 is accordingly indubitable. This is the inference from con- 
 cept to existence, the so-called ontological argument which 
 Anselm introduced into scholastic theology. The idea of 
 God is given in us as a fact of our inner experience, as a 
 fact in our world of conceptions, which cannot be produced 
 by us, but only by God himself. Therefore, God exists. 
 This proof concludes from the fact to the cause : it is a 
 posteriori, and can, therefore, be regarded as a proof from 
 experience. 
 
 The fact of our existence and of the idea of God in us can 
 be stated in this manner : we exist, and are endowed with the 
 idea of a most perfect being. Since we cannot ourselves be 
 the cause of our existence, it must be such a being, different 
 from us, as possesses all the perfections of which we have an 
 idea: otherwise it would not be able to produce us with the 
 ideas of them. This most perfect of all beings, or God, 
 therefore exists. This proof concludes from the nature of 
 
 1 M^d., iii. pp. 289-291. 
 
350 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 man, so far as it is imperfect, and conceives perfection to 
 the nature and existence of God. In it the two preceding 
 arguments, the ontological and empirical, are united. "We 
 call this proof anthropological, and add the remark, that, 
 without it the ontological or metaphysical argument cannot 
 be understood and estimated in the sense of our philosopher. 
 It is the real Cartesian proof of the existence of God. 
 
 The order in which Descartes develops his arguments is 
 worthy of remark. Where he leads us along the methodical 
 course which his own thoughts took in their search for truth, 
 and therefore proceeds analytically in his exposition, he 
 states the anthropological argument before the ontological, 
 as in his essay on method and in his " Meditations," — there 
 in all brevity, here in detail. But where he proceeds syn- 
 thetically in his exposition of the truths he has discovered, 
 he states first the ontological and then the anthropological 
 argument, as in the geometrical outline of the "Medita- 
 tions," which was contained in his reply to the second objec- 
 tion and in the "Principles." In the "Meditations" he 
 rests the whole force of his proof on the anthropological 
 argument, and does not develop the ontological argument 
 until afterwards, when he returns again to the idea of God.^ 
 
 4. The Anthropological Proof as Foundation of the Ontologi- 
 cal. — The ontological proof of Descartes is fundamentally 
 different from the scholastic one, in spite of its parallelism 
 with it. This difference is so important, that the usual 
 failure to observe it is equivalent to a complete lack of 
 insight into the system of our philosopher. Descartes must 
 have been convinced that the objections which overthre\v 
 the scholastic argument did not touch his, since he was 
 acquainted with them, and considered them in detail in his 
 fifth " Meditation." We will first notice the defects of the 
 usual ontological argument. 
 
 From the mere idea of God, his existence is claimed to 
 
 1 Disc, iv. pp. 159-162. Mdd., iii. pp. 280-289. lb., v. pp. 312-317. Obj. et 
 IWp., Propos., i.-iii. (Oiuvres, i. pp. 460-462.) Princ, i. 18-22. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. 351 
 
 follow, just as evidentlj' as, from the concept of a triangle, 
 the fact that the sum of its angles is equal to two right ones, 
 and, from the concept of a circle, the equality of its radii. 
 As little as we can conceive a hill without a valley, so little 
 can we think God without existence. As necessarily as hill 
 and dale are united, so inseparable are the concept and 
 existence of God. Either he is the most perfect Being, or 
 he is nothing at all. For the most perfect being would not 
 be what it is if any thing were wanting to it, and certainly 
 not if it lacked reality. But here the following objection at 
 once arises ' Our idea of God is a conception, like every other, 
 and we cannot see why that should be held of this concep- 
 tion which is held of no other , viz., that thought existence 
 is actual existence. In every other case the conceived object 
 is only possible, not actual. God alone, according to the onto- 
 logical proof, constitutes an exception : he exists because I 
 think him. But if I do not think him ? Does not my 
 thought stand in my own power? Are not my thoughts 
 voluntary? It depends, therefore, upon me whether there 
 is to be an argument for the existence of God, or not ! We 
 must, therefore, require as the first condition of an ontologi- 
 cal proof, that the idea of God is not an arbitrary, but a 
 necessary, thought, inseparably bound and united with our 
 nature. If this necessity cannot be grounded in the nature 
 of man, the ontological proof, even in its starting-point, i» 
 without foiindation. From this it is evident that it requires 
 to be anthropologically grounded and vindicated. 
 
 But even when that first condition is fulfilled, we are yet 
 far from the goal. Suppose the idea of God in us is neces- 
 sary: does his existence follow from it? If we are com- 
 pelled to conceive the most perfect being, we must, of course, 
 think it as actual ; but is, then, thought actuality already 
 real? Is existence within my conception also existence 
 without, and independent of it? It is impossible to see how 
 my conception and thought should at any time go out 
 beyond themselves, and testify to the reality of a being 
 
352 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 beyond all conceived and conceivable objects. So long, 
 therefore, as the idea of God is only my conception, produced 
 by my thought, however necessarily, so long is the existence 
 of God also only my idea. The thought existence is and 
 remains only possible : the reality, independent of me and 
 my. conception, is absolutely incapable of demonstration by 
 the merely ontological argument. If the idea of God in me 
 is to prove the existence of God, it must be more than 
 merely my idea: it must not merely represent the existence 
 of God, but in a certain sense be that existence itself. Sup- 
 pose that this idea which I have were the expression of 
 God's own nature, his immediate effect, and proclaimed 
 itself as such to me, then, certainly, it would be a direct 
 proof of the Divine causality, and, therefore, of the Divine 
 existence. But how dare I consider as an effect of God an 
 idea which I find as my conception, as one among others ? 
 And it is not enough that I dare so consider it : I ought 
 rather to be utterly unable to regard it as any thing else. 
 As certain as I am of myself, so certain ought I to be that 
 this idea is not my product, but the effect of God in me. 
 This is the point which is now to be proved, upon which 
 every thing in Descartes' doctrine of God directly depends. 
 If it can be proved that the idea of God in us (1) is neces- 
 sary, and (2) cannot be our effect, the point in question is 
 made out. It must be shown that an imperfect being such 
 as we are cannot produce the conception of a perfect being. 
 In any case, the knowledge of our own imperfection and 
 weakness, therefore the investigation of our own nature, our 
 self-examination, must be the first step on the way to the 
 knowledge of God. But it is not merely the first step, but 
 also the light on the way! This light, which Descartes' 
 doctrine of God and its ontological argument alone imparts, 
 is entirely wanting to the scholastic proof. In the latter 
 the important matter is, that we conceive a perfect being: 
 in Descartes' argument the important matter is, that we 
 conceive a perfection which we ourselves do not have, and 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. le^ 
 
 because we do not have it. With Descartes, therefore, the 
 ontological argument goes hand in hand with the anthro- 
 pological, which rests on human self-knowledge. If from 
 the nature of man it is evident that he is compelled to con- 
 ceive a perfect being, then, and only then, has the ontologi- 
 cal argument a secure starting-point. And if, in like man- 
 ner, it follows from human nature that the idea of God is 
 not its product, but the activity and effect of God in it, 
 then, and only then, can that proof reach its goal. 
 
 The conditions, accordingly, which our idea of God must 
 fulfil, in order to be capable of proving his existence, are its 
 necessary or original conception, and its divine origin. Des- 
 cartes comprises both in his expression, " Innate Idea." Not 
 from the mere idea of God is his existence inferred, but from 
 the innate idea, which, as the activity or effect of God, is the 
 expression in us of the divine existence. To infer his exist- 
 ence from this idea of God innate in us is equivalent to 
 apprehending the existence of God from his existence in us. 
 This is an immediate, not a mediate, inference : it is a simple 
 certainty, not a syllogism. We advance from the concept of 
 God to his existence, not as to something new, but rather 
 existence is discovered in the concept, not as one character- 
 istic among others, but this concept is the divine activity 
 . and existence itself. The knowledge of the existence of God 
 is, therefore, dependent upon no middle terms, but is just as 
 intuitive as the knowledge of our own existence. Both are 
 alike evident, and alike certain. As from the '■'■cogito" 
 " sum " immediately follows, so from " Beiis cogitatur," " Deus 
 est" immediately follows. As certainly as I exist, so cer- 
 tainly exists a being without me : as certainly as I know that 
 I am, so certainly know I now that lam not alone, that out- 
 side and independent of me exists yet another independent 
 being. In the " cogito, ergo sum," the mind was absorbed in 
 itself, in a monologue as it were : it had turned from the con- 
 sideration of outward things, and at first won no other cer- 
 tainty than that of its own existence. In the review of its 
 
3.'^4 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Xeas, one is discovered which excels all others ; and the first 
 ''glance, as it were, betrays its divine origin. While all other 
 conceptions are ever repeating to the lonely thinker, " Thou 
 art, thou art, I am only a mirror of your nature, an effect of 
 your power," this alone proclaims, to him, '■'•I am, I reflect in 
 thee another and far better nature than thine : I have not, 
 therefore, sprung from thee, but from my archetype." In the 
 case of all other objects, the fact of my conception proves 
 the possibility of their existence ; in this alone, its necessity. 
 In all other cases, concept and thing, essence and existence, 
 '■'■essentia" and '■'■ existentia," are two different things: here 
 alone they are one and the same. 
 
 n. THE CKRTAINTT OF SELF AKD THE CERTAINTY OF GOD. 
 
 1. The Certainty of Ones Own Imperfection. — The sentence, 
 '■'■ Deus cogitatur, ergo Deus est" is claimed to be as certain as 
 the sentence, '■'■cogito, ergo sum." The method of Descartes 
 requires the deductive union of truths. Between these two 
 propositions, therefore, there must be an immediate connec- 
 tion, and this must be evident ; and since the " cogito " is 
 indubitable, it must first of all be comprehended as the 
 ground of the " Deus cogitatur." Our conception of God is 
 necessary if it is immediately contained in that of our own 
 thinking being and is given by it, if our self-consciousness 
 and the consciousness of God form two sides of one and the 
 same intuition, which belong together as thoroughly as right 
 and left, above and below. This connection between 
 " cogito " and " Deus cogitatur," between the certainty of self 
 and the certainty of God, is the point to be proved and illus- 
 trated, without which the doctrine of Descartes remains mis- 
 understood. This doctrine cannot, as usually happens, be 
 conceived and expounded as if it first promises a method, 
 and then does not keep its promise, but leaps from the fact 
 of self-certainty to that of causality, and then to the onto- 
 logical proof of the existence of God, derives from the 
 essence of God some of his attributes, among them veracity, 
 
THE EXISTENCE OP GOD, ETC. 355 
 
 and then courageously advances to the knowledge of things. 
 If this were the fact with reference to the progress of Des- 
 cartes' thoughts, there would be in them no methodical 
 advance ; and Epistemon's objection would be well taken, 
 that we do not advance a step from the fact of self-certainty. 
 " A beautiful knowledge indeed ! You have a method to 
 prove every thing, to avoid making a false step, and trip, 
 therefore, around the same point, without taking a step in 
 advance ! " ^ Epistemon says what Descartes puts in his 
 mouth ! The philosopher was acquainted with this objection. 
 In order to discover the methodical progress from the 
 certainty of self to the certainty of God, we must take the 
 expression of the first, the " cogito " or the " sum cogitans" 
 exactly in the sense in which the philosopher conceives it 
 and establishes it. His desire for truth requires self-exami- 
 nation, which consists in the perception that we deceive our- 
 selves in many instances, and, therefore, possibly in all ; that 
 we have no reason to regard any of our opinions as true; 
 rather, that we are in a state, of universal uncertainty, and 
 completely destitute of the truth. On this knowledge of 
 self rests that all-embracing doubt which admits the possi- 
 bility of delusion everywhere, and distinctly recognizes that 
 we are destitute of the truth. The Cartesian doubt is noth- 
 ing else than the certainty of this defect, of this our universal 
 intellectual imperfection. In one and the same act, doubt 
 reveals to us our thinking nature and our defective intelli- 
 gence. Not for nothing follows the " cogito ergo sum " imme- 
 diately from the de omnibus dubito." lam myself, that being 
 whose existence is immediately evident to me. lam myself, 
 the being of whose possession of truth I doubt absolutely, as 
 to whose intellectual excellence I am completely puzzled. 
 He who does not find in the Cartesian " cogito," that expres- 
 sion of one's own thought, certain of itself, the confession of 
 one's own complete intellectual destitution so far as the state 
 of thought referred to in the " cogito " is concerned, he does 
 
 1 Kech. de lav^rit^. CEuvres, xi. pp. 372, 373. 
 
356 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not understand what that sentence means, and is ignorant, 
 both of its theme and its origin. The certainty of one's own 
 thinking being springs from doubt, and is penetrated with 
 the conviction that one's own thought is destitute of knowl- 
 edge and of truth, though sorely needing it. 
 
 But to be conscious of one's own imperfection is to strive 
 for, and therefore to conceive, perfection. The idea of the 
 perfect is, therefore, necessarily and immediately connected 
 with the act — it is indeed contained in it — which makes us 
 certain of our own imperfection. And exactly therein con- 
 sists the profound and now evident connection between the 
 Cartesian '■-cogito" and " Deus oogitatur." ^ 
 
 2. The Idea of the Perfect and its Primariness. — As neces- 
 sary as is the conception of myself, so necessary is the idea 
 of God : as necessary as is the certainty of my own imperfect 
 existence, so necessary is the conception of the perfect. 
 . This conception is necessary and inseparable from the 
 thought most entirely our own, but from this we are as yet 
 by no means entitled to infer the existence of God. There 
 arises on the contrary, from the point we have won, a series 
 of doubts of this inference. If the perfect is the goal of 
 our endeavors, it can be nothing else than an idea in us, 
 however necessarily such a goal may be conceived. When 
 we become conscious of our powers, we are aware at the 
 same time of our defects and limitations ; and while in 
 thought we increase our powers, and disregard their limita- 
 tions, we come by the known " via eminentia " to the concep- 
 tion of a most perfect being, which is none other than our own 
 imperfect self, with the omission of all that the first syllable 
 indicates. Exactly, therefore, because the idea of the perfect 
 proceeds from the consciousness of imperfect human nature, it 
 is a mere work of the latter ; it is only an idea, not God ; and 
 the anthropological argument which promised to support the 
 ontological proof, seems at first to be very unfavorable to it. 
 
 1 Cf. Disc, de la meth., iv. p. 159, concerning this progress in Descartes' 
 thoughts. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. 357 
 
 It is true that from the idea of the imperfect, — if we omit 
 the negations, — that of the perfect can be produced, and 
 brought into consciousness. But the problem is not thus 
 solved, but only referred to the question. How does the idea 
 of the imperfect arise ? How do we attain to the knowledge 
 of our own imperfection ? It is one thing to he imperfect, 
 another to hnow that we are. In the one case, imperfection 
 is a state in which I am involved : in the other, it is an object 
 which I make clear to myself. This perception, at least, is 
 not imperfect, but is as perfect as it is true. That I am 
 involved in self-delusion is an undoubted proof of my 
 defects : that I break through its barriers, and perceive my 
 self-delusion, is an undoubted proof of a perception present 
 in me, without which I should continue in the darkness of 
 delusion, and the idea of my imperfection would never occur 
 to me. If the question were as to the estimation of a work 
 of art, every one knows that the art critic would see its 
 defects more clearly than any one else, because he is familiar 
 with the perfections of art, and knows what this particular 
 work requires. There are no defects for idiots : either they 
 find every thing good, or they condemn without discrimina- 
 tion. Only the critic sees imperfections : they can be appre- 
 hended only in the light of the perfect, the light which 
 illuminates that " via eminentia " on which man supposes 
 he first finds the idea of the perfect. It is no wonder that he 
 finds it, since he had it already, and had to have it, when he 
 perceived his own imperfection. Without truth, there is no 
 desire for truth, no self-examination, no becoming perplexed 
 with reference to ourselves and all our conceptions, no 
 doubt, no certainty of self, no " cogito ergo sum." 
 
 3. The Primariness, Reality, and Truthfulness of God. — 
 The relation is now reversed, and what seemed to be the 
 inference, is in truth the ground. From the idea of the per- 
 fect, springs that of the imperfect : that is more origiyml than 
 this, therefore more original than the knowledge of our own 
 imperfection, of our own thinking being. In our certainty 
 
358 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of God, our certainty of self has its roots. The idea of God 
 is not merely one among others, but is the only one of its 
 kind, because it is the source of all light. It is not merely 
 as clear and evident as the conception of our own being, hut 
 far clearer, because it first illuminates this conception. " It 
 is of all our ideas the clearest and most distinct, and there- 
 fore the truest."^ This sentence of Descartes is now first 
 intelligible. 
 
 But as the primariness of the idea of God, its independence 
 of our thought and existence, its causality in reference to 
 our knowledge of self, is evident, the reality of God is there- 
 with clear of itself. It is proved that the idea of the perfect, 
 primary as it is, is not merely an idea, but God. Without 
 the reality of God, there is no idea of God, no idea of the 
 perfect in us, no perception of our own imperfection, no 
 " de omnibus cogito" no " eogito ergo sum.^' In this connec- 
 tion we see the progress of Descartes' thoughts in their 
 methodical conclusiveness. 
 
 And not only the fact that God is, now appears beyond 
 doubt (because the existence and idea of God first make 
 true doubt possible), but also what he is. The idea which 
 illuminates the state of our own intellectual imperfection in 
 the clearest manner, can be nothing else than intellectual 
 perfection itself, with which no kind of defect is compatible. 
 This God is, therefore, absolute truth and truthfulness itself, 
 which, with deception, excludes, also, from himself the pur- 
 pose to deduce.^ Thus is the last and most oppressive doubt 
 removed, that stood in the way of the possibility of true 
 knowledge, in our self-examination. Now I know that no 
 demon has banished me into a phantom world, and afflicted 
 me with incurable blindness. If I had remained a prisoner 
 in delusion, as in a dark, labyrinthine dungeon, with no way 
 out, I could not even doubt, since even doubt proves that I 
 am conscious of delusion, and that somewhat of the infallible 
 light has shone into my spirit. Now doubt is cleared up. 
 
 1 Mdd., iii. pp. 281, 282. 2 lb., iii. p. 291, iv. 294. Prino., i. sec. 29. 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ETC. 359 
 
 The knowledge of things is possible ; my presentations are 
 no phantoms ; things are as I conceive them, when I con- 
 sider them in that infallible light ; i.e., when I clearly and 
 distinctly apprehend them. 
 
 After we have thus become acquainted with the true 
 nature of Descartes' proof of existence of God, and the true 
 connection of its various parts, we cannot help perceiving 
 that the statements concerning the idea, reality, and truthful- 
 ness of God, are not edifying assurances, but principles, which 
 constitute the foundation of knowledge, and support the 
 remainder of the system. 
 
360 HISTOKY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EBEOR.— UNDERSTANDING AND WILL.— 
 HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 L ERROR AS THE FAULT OF THE WILL. 
 
 1. The Fact of Error. 
 
 npHE possibility of knowledge is established. With this 
 -L certainty arises a new doubt, diametrically opposed to 
 the first one, for the possibility of knowledge seems to be 
 grounded in a way that excludes the possibility of error. 
 At first nothing was clearer than our errors, now nothing is 
 more unintelligible. If our thinking nature springs from 
 the primary source of light and truth, if we are not pris- 
 oners to delusion, and if the world which we conceive is no 
 phantom world, but truly real, whence comes the possibility 
 of delusion, and that state of blindness in which we, in fact, 
 find ourselves ? The ground of it cannot be sought in God, 
 therefore not in the nature of our conceptions, thei'efore 
 only in ourselves. We are not deceived, but we deceive 
 ourselves. All error is self-deception. The question is. In 
 what does this self-deception consist, and from what source 
 does it spring ? ^ 
 
 It has already been pointed out, that, in the mere state of 
 conception, no error takes place, and that the possibility of 
 error first enters with judgment, which declares our concep- 
 tions, states, or properties of things without us.^ In a judg- 
 ment of such a kind, error is made or expressed, but this 
 expression of error is not its source. What is asserted in a 
 
 1 Med., iv. p. 3. 2 gee preceding chapter. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF ERROR, ETC. 361 
 
 judgment is either true or false, but a true or false asser- 
 tion is not yet my error. I have only erred when I hold a 
 true judgment false, a false one true, a doubtful one certain, 
 a certain one doubtful. To hold a true judgment false is to 
 deny it, to hold a false one true is to affirm it. If I hold a 
 doubtful judgment certain, and a certain judgment doubtful, 
 I deny in the one case the uncertainty, and in the other the 
 certainty. From this it appears, that not in judgment as 
 such, but in our acceptance or rejection, in our affirming or 
 denying of judgment, error properly consists ; and its source 
 can therefore only be contained in our faculty of affirming 
 Or denying, accepting or rejecting. 
 
 This faculty requires more precise determination. If we 
 were forced to affirm every true judgment, and to deny every 
 false one, we could not err. Error can therefore only arise 
 from such a faculty of affirming or denying as excludes all 
 force from itself, and depends entirely upon our inclination. 
 This unconditioned or free faculty to affirm, just as well as 
 to deny, the same proposition, is will, or the freedom of 
 choice (free will). A judgment is the work of the under- 
 standing : the affirming or denying of it is the work of the 
 will. Error consists in our preferring the false judgment to 
 the true, in our preferring to assert the false : it is only 
 possible because the choice between the two lies completely 
 in our power. It is accordingly clear that the two faculties, 
 understanding and will, co-operate to produce error, since by 
 virtue of its freedom the will is guilty of error through the 
 understanding, or what amounts to the same thing, since 
 the will turns the understanding from the path of knowl- 
 edge. ^ 
 
 2. Will and Understanding. — To make a thorough inves- 
 tigation of the source of error, the relation between these 
 two faculties must be more closely examined. If the will 
 were compelled to affirm the true judgment, to deny the 
 false one, to leave the uncertain one undecided, it would be 
 
 1 Med., Iv. p. 298. 
 
362 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bound to the understanding, by it mastered and guided, 
 equally limited in its sphere of action. But as we have 
 already seen, this is by no means the truth. Our under- 
 standing is limited. There is much that I cannot compre- 
 hend at all, or only obscurely and indistinctly: there is 
 nothing which the will cannot afSrm or deny, accept or 
 reject, or towards which it cannot occupy an attitude of indif- 
 ference ; i.e., nothing which it cannot neither affirm or deny. 
 It reaches farther, therefore, than the understanding: it 
 extends to the unknown as well as to the known, and can 
 affirm or deny the one as well as the other. " The will is 
 therefore greater than the understanding." It is not merely 
 greater, but since it extends to every thing, while the under- 
 standing is limited in its knowledge to a definite sphere, it 
 is unlimited, while the understanding is limited. This 
 unconditioned greatness of the will is our freedom, and like- 
 ness to God. " The will, or the freedom of the will," says 
 Descartes, "is of all my faculties the only one which, 
 according to my experience, is so great that I cannot con- 
 ceive a greater. It is this faculty pre-eminently by reason 
 of which I believe I am created in the image of God." But 
 if will and understanding are so related to each other that 
 the latter is subject to natural limits, while the former is 
 completely independent of them, it is evident that neither 
 of the two, taken by itself, can be the source of error , not 
 the understanding alone, because as our natural faculty of 
 knowledge, dependent upon God, it cannot be deceptive ; 
 not the will alone, since, as our unconditioned faculty of 
 freedom, it is, in the proper sense of the word, divine.^ 
 
 That concurrence of the two faculties through which error 
 is caused must accordingly consist in this : The human will, 
 by virtue of its freedom, perverts the understanding, and 
 transforms its infallible light into a Will-o'-the-wisp. Error 
 can be nothing else than a blameworthy ignorance. 
 
 3. Blameworthy Ignorance. — By means of its unlimited 
 
 1 M^d., iv. pp. 298-300. Princ, i. 34r^8. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF ERROR, ETC. 363 
 
 character, the will extends both to the known and the 
 unknown, to the clear and the obscure sphere of knowledge; 
 and, by means of its freedom, it can both affirm and deny 
 the one and the other. But if it affirms or denies independ- 
 ently of clear and distinct knowledge, it acts groundlessly ; i.e., 
 it judges without reasons, and errs therefore in any case, no 
 matter what judgment it affirms or denies. Error, therefore, 
 reaches farther than we at first determined. Even the affirma- 
 tion of a true judgment is an error if it is made without 
 grounds. I affirm the judgment without knowing that, and 
 why, it is true : I judge in the darkness, and stumble through 
 accident upon the truth, like a blind fowl upon a grain of 
 corn. If I would be true to myself, I must confess that I do 
 not know the truth with reference to the matter in question : 
 I am in darkness, and avoid every assertion about it. But as 
 soon as I judge, I imagine a certainty which I do not have ; I 
 deceive myself, therefore ; i.e., I err. Or I pretend to others 
 a certainty which I do not possess, and which I know that I 
 do not possess; I, therefore, deceive others; i.e., I lie. If 
 the affirmed judgment is false, the manifest error is a double 
 one ; it is an error, both in relation to the fact and person- 
 ally : I am deceived in the fact, and deceived concerning my- 
 self. To repeat an earlier example, it is no error for me to 
 conceive the sun as a moved disk. I err as soon as I judge 
 that the sun is a moved disk; I err as to the fact and 
 personally when I affirm the geocentric system ; I err if I 
 deny it without insight into the grounds of the system, and 
 hold the opposite one true. 
 
 n. THE WISH FOR TEUTH. 
 
 1. The Prevention of Error. — Error consists in groundless 
 assertion. It arises from the freedom of the will as the 
 faculty of affirming or denying groundlessly. In this faculty 
 lies likewise the power neither to affirm or deny ; i.e., to with- 
 hold every groundless assertion, or, what amounts to the same 
 thing, to avoid every error. As soon as I am true to myself, 
 
364 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I must be aware of my states of personal uncertainty, my 
 lack of insight; and by means of this knowledge, I am able 
 to abstain from every error and all mere apparent knowledge. 
 But if in every case of error the possibility not to err stood 
 open, every error into which we fall is our own deed and 
 fault. We should not err if our knowledge were perfect : it 
 is imperfect, and this imperfection is not our fault, but the 
 defect or limit of our nature. Without this defect, there 
 would be no possibility of erring ; and in spite of it, we 
 should avoid error if we carefully withheld our judgment, 
 and never again wished to seem to know, except when in 
 truth we clearly and distinctly perceive ; if we in no case pre- 
 ferred groundless judgment to those that are grounded. This 
 choice constitutes error, and the freedom of the will makes 
 this choice possible. Grounded judgments are few, while 
 ungrounded ones are numerous. The appearance of know- 
 ing more than one really knows, is tempting, and occasions 
 that misuse of freedom through which we prefer ungrounded 
 judgments to those which are grounded. We can now say 
 exactly what the understanding and will contribute to error. 
 The contribution of the understanding lies in its limits, that 
 of the will in its misuse. The limits of the understanding is 
 a natural defect, the misuse of the will is a moral one ; 
 namely, a lack of personal truthfulness, genuine knowledge 
 of self, and self-examination.' 
 
 From the above explanation, it follows that error enters 
 in a blameworthy manner as soon as we treat the unknown 
 as known. To the unknown belongs also the unknowable. 
 We are not able to know the purposes of God, and dare not, 
 therefore, pretend to know any thing by means of these pur- 
 poses : the teleological explanation of natural things is there- 
 fore erroneous. " Even from this reason I am convinced 
 that that whole class of final causes can have no place in the 
 explanation of nature, for it seems to me to be temerity to 
 inquire after the purposes of God." Here Descartes and 
 
 1 Mdd., Iv. pp. 304-308. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF ERROR, ETC. 365 
 
 Spinoza meet ; both deny the validity of the concept of pur- 
 pose in tlie explanation of things ; Descartes, because the 
 purposes of God are unknowable ; Spinoza, because they are 
 impossible. The step from unknowableness to impossibility 
 is not long, and is the logical advance of rationalism.' 
 
 That we err, is our fault, not the fault of God. In so far 
 as our will causes error, it is at once evident that it does not 
 belong among the works of God. But also the imperfection 
 of our intellectual nature does not derogate from the divine 
 perfection. The divine perfection requires the perfection of 
 the divine works ; but this consists in the wliole, and suffers 
 so little from the defects of individual things, that it rather 
 results from it. The imperfection of our limited existence 
 appears perfection when considered in reference to the whole, 
 therefore also in reference to God. "What would perhaps 
 have to be considered very imperfect if it existed alone, is 
 perhaps very perfect considered as part of the whole." Here 
 Descartes and Leibnitz meet. The vindication of the per- 
 fection of the whole from the imperfection of individuals 
 forms the fundamental thought of the Leibnitzian Theodicee 
 as the nullity of purpose and the concept of purpose of the 
 philosophy of Spinoza. ^ 
 
 2. The Lower and HigJier Freedom of the Will. — Our 
 errors are the fault of our will : they are caused by it, and 
 by it they can be avoided. We must, therefore, distinguish 
 within the will certain states or stages according as it, by 
 its action, is guilty of, or avoids, error. There are, therefore, 
 different stages of freedom, lower and higher ; and that 
 which directly produces error must be considered the lowest. 
 This consists in affirming or denying without reason; and 
 results from the irrational action of the will, i.e., from mere 
 arbitrariness, which is determined in its choice of judgments 
 and actions by no kind of rational considerations. The 
 indifference of the will is, therefore, the lowest stage of free- 
 dom. Freedom is so much the higher, and the will so much 
 
 1 Mid., iv. p. 297. " lb., iv. p. 297. 
 
366 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the freer, the clearer the reasons on account of which it 
 affirms or denies ; i.e., the more it acts in accordance with 
 insight. "But that indifference which I experience when 
 no sort of rational considerations incline me more to one side 
 than the other, is the lowest stage of freedom, and proves, 
 not its perfection, but the absence of knowledge. For if 
 I always clearly knew what is true and good, I should never 
 be in doubt what to judge and to choose, and I should thus be 
 entirely free without ever being indifferent." ^ Thus the 
 higher is distinguished from the lower, the rational from the 
 indifferent and groundless, the enlightened by freedom from 
 that which is blind, and destitute of knowledge. Through 
 the latter alone, moral action is possible. Here we see the 
 fundamental thought of Descartes' ethical doctrine. 
 
 3. Freedom from Error. — Here we again see in the clear- 
 est manner the beginning of the entire system. There was 
 only one means of penetrating the blindings of our deeply 
 rooted self-delusions : we had to become sceptical as to our- 
 selves, to doubt of the validity and truth of all our concep- 
 tions, to accustom ourselves to this doubt, and to strengthen 
 ourselves in this habit of self-examination, even as we had 
 done in the habit of self-delusion. This intellectual trans- 
 formation can take place only through the will, through the 
 wish for truth. Now we see to the very bottom of our 
 self-delusion, and of the doubt which is directed against it. 
 Error lies not in our conceptions, not in judgments as such, 
 but in affirming or denying them without reason ; in an act 
 of the will, therefore, which we have the power to withhold. 
 It is thus the will in the last analysis which darkens the 
 understanding, and plunges us into error: it is likewise 
 the will which preserves us from error, and frees us from it. 
 
 We wish to affirm or deny without having thought or 
 known : that is the untruth to ourselves, our self-delusion, our 
 error. We wish to affirm or deny according as we have dis- 
 tinctly known : that is the truth to ourselves, the doubt of the 
 
 1 M^d., iv. pp. 300, 301. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF ERROR, ETC. 367 
 
 truth of our conceptions, the perception of our ignorance, the 
 firm resolve to know, to think clearly and distinctly, and, so 
 long as we are in the dark, not to judge. To act according 
 to this resolution as an inviolable law is the business of the 
 will and character. " Thus we acquire the freedom not to 
 err as a kind of habit, and in this consists the greatest and 
 chief perfection of man." ' 
 
 Med., iv. pp. 306, 307. 
 
368 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY. — TRANSITION TO 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OP NATUEB. 
 
 I. THE SUBSTAKTIALITT OF THINGS. 
 
 1. The Uxistenee of Bodies. 
 
 AFTER we have proved the possibility of knowledge, 
 and explained error, we must now consider the ques- 
 tion as to the reality of the objects which we conceive as 
 things without us. Faith in the senses affirms this reality : 
 self-examination and doubt have shattered the faith in the 
 truth of the presentations of the senses. The idea of God 
 has made me aware that I am not alone in the world, and 
 from the perfection of God it is self-evident that the imper- 
 fection of my existence belongs to the perfection of the 
 whole. I am imperfect, because limited: I am limited, 
 because I am not the whole, but only a part of it, not 
 the only being except God, but only one among others. 
 There are, therefore, besides me, yet other beings in the 
 world. 
 
 My conceptions are true in so far as I do not deceive my- 
 self: things are as I conceive them if I think them clearly 
 and distinctly. They appear to me as bodies. Is not tliis 
 appearance my self-delusion ? Are there in reality bodies ? 
 Certain it is that the presentation or picture of bodies is 
 present to my mind, that I imagine their existence. If my 
 thought alone can be the cause of this imagination, or, what 
 amounts to the same thing, if thought and imagination are 
 completely identical, there is no reason to refer the fact, that 
 
OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 369 
 
 I represent to myself bodies, to an external cause. But 
 imagination, as it seems, is different from pure thought. I 
 experience this difference as soon as I think or imagine the 
 same object. It is difficult to imagine a figure with a thou- 
 sand sides, though it is thought as easily as a triangle. 
 Since, now, the essence of the mind consists in thought, the 
 faculty of imagination appears not only to be dependent 
 upon the mental nature, but to require the union of it with 
 the body. It appears, that, without body, our imagination of 
 it could not take place. The fact, therefore, of this imagina- 
 tion is claimed to be a valid reason for the existence of 
 bodies. The entire argument rests on the unproved assump- 
 tion, that thought and imagination are different, and that 
 imagination is something else than a mere modification of 
 thought. By such an argument in its most favorable inter- 
 pretation, the existence of bodies can only be made probable, 
 but never certain.' 
 
 But the attempted proof can apparently be supported with 
 greater certainty on the fact of our sensations and similar 
 experiences. How, without the existence of bodies, are such 
 affections possible as pleasure and pain ? impulses like hunger 
 and thirst? moods like joy and sadness? sensations like hard- 
 ness and softness, warmth and cold, color and tone ? sensa- 
 tions of smell and taste? It is certain that we have such 
 experiences ; that, of all our experiences, they are the most 
 vivid and importunate ; that they come without our will, and, 
 therefore, as it appears, from things without us ; that we re- 
 ceive knowledge of the latter in no other way than through 
 the impressions upon our senses, and we, therefore, regard 
 them as the expression of things themselves, as their exact 
 copies. Involuntarily we refer the presentations of our senses 
 to bodily causes, as though we were guided by a natural 
 instinct. We consider them as the elements of all our con- 
 ceptions, since they are the first we have, and so come to 
 think that all the ideas in our minds enter through the 
 
 1 M^d., vi. pp. 322-325. 
 
370 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 senses, and that all the impressions upon the senses are made 
 by bodily causes. But we know how terribly we have de- 
 ceived ourselves concerning the truth of the presentations of 
 the senses, not merely in dreams where they have no reality 
 at all, but also in states of waking, where perception repre- 
 sents the same object, now in one way, now in another, and 
 at times even completely deceives us. The four-cornered 
 tower appears round in the distance : after an amputation, 
 pain is still experienced in the amputated member. Accord- 
 ingly, we can prove the existence of bodies just as little by 
 our sensations as by our imagination.^ 
 
 So much is certain : we have sensitive presentations ; they 
 must be caused, and the power that produces them is either 
 within or without us. If it is in us, it must be the under- 
 standing or will; and, in that case, they must either be 
 thought or willed. But they are neither : they come without 
 the action of thought or will, often indeed against the will. 
 The cause, therefore, cannot be our mind, i.e., we ourselves ; 
 and it must, then, exist without us, either in God or in things 
 of a nature different from God and our own spiritual being. 
 Suppose that God is the cause : he must have produced them 
 either immediately, or through intermediate causes of a higher 
 nature than ours. They would in that case have originated 
 in a way that is, and must remain, entirely hidden from us ; 
 while we are impelled by our very nature to seek their origin 
 in an entirely different direction. Their true origin would 
 remain not only veiled from us, we should not only be 
 stricken with blindness concerning it, but we should be 
 involved in a complete delusion, — a delusion not due to our- 
 selves, not to any fault of ours, but to the very constitution 
 of our nature. We should be led into error by God himself, 
 and that is inconsistent with the divine truthfulness (intel- 
 lectual perfection). It is, accordingly, certain that the cause 
 of our sensitive presentations is not we, not God, but bodies 
 themselves, for that is the name we apply to natures different 
 
 1 M^d., vi. pp. 325-331. 
 
OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 371 
 
 from God and mind. Bodies are, but what are they ? That 
 is the next question.' 
 
 2. Substances. God and Things. — It is evident that bodies 
 in reality exist as the cause of our presentations of bodies, 
 that they exist independently of our thought, that our 
 existence is not essential to theirs. Such an independent 
 being, Descartes calls substance. " I say that two substances 
 are in truth diiferent, when each of them can exist without 
 the other." "Exactly in this consists the nature of sub- 
 stances, that they mutually exclude each other. This deter- 
 mination is valid, both of bodies and minds: each exists 
 independently of the other, and is in this respect substance, 
 but only in this. For if a substance is a being that needs 
 no other in order to exist, and is, therefore, completely inde- 
 pendent, there can, strictly speaking, be but one which itself 
 depends upon nothing, while every thing else depends upon 
 it. If there were several of such substances, they would have 
 to mutually exclude and condition, and therefore limit, each 
 other. There can be, therefore, but one absolutely independ- 
 ent being, but one substance in the true sense of the word ; 
 and that substance is God. He is substance in an absolute 
 sense ; mind and body olily relatively. God is infinite : mind 
 and body, on the other hand, are finite because they mutually 
 exclude and limit each other. There are, accordingly, two 
 kinds of substances, — God and things. The former is infinite, 
 the latter finite. "We cannot call them species of substance, 
 since they have no common genus. Descartes says explicitly, 
 that the word substance cannot be used in the same sense 
 (univoce') of things and God. God is the cause of all things. 
 Minds and bodies are, therefore, dependent beings in relation 
 to God, since they need for their existence the existence and 
 activity of God. The concept of substance in relation to 
 the world or the totality of finite things must, accordingly, 
 be limited so as to indicate such beings as require for their 
 existence merely the concourse of God. "By a substance 
 
 1 M^d., vi. pp. 331-335. Cf. above, chap. Iv. p. 358. 
 
372 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which in no way is in need of another being, but one being 
 can be understood ; namely, God. We cannot conceive how 
 others can exist save by the concourse of God. The term 
 substance does not, therefore, apply univoce, to adopt an 
 expression of the schools, to God and other beings ; i.e., no 
 meaning of this word can be accepted which is common to 
 God and to them." ' 
 
 In this explanation, two conceptions have important 
 results, — the unity of substance — in comparison with which 
 things, minds and bodies, are not real substances — and the 
 concourse of God. The first concept contains the motive of 
 Spinozism ; the second, of Occasionalism. 
 
 3. Attribute and Modes. — Substances are fundamentally 
 different in nature. We can only know what they are from 
 their manifestations or properties. That property which 
 expresses the essence of substance, and necessarily belongs 
 to, or dwells in it, is attribute. Attribute is the quality 
 without which substance can neither be nor be thought. 
 Within a substance, different and changing determinations 
 are possible ; its attribute remains, though it can assume 
 a variety of forms, and express itself in a variety of ways ; 
 these forms are modes, or modifications. We can think sub- 
 stance and attribute without modes, but not modes without 
 substance and attribute. Modes, therefore, are not neces- 
 sary but accidental properties of substance, and in this 
 respect we call them accidents. Thus, mind cannot exist 
 without thought, though it may very well without imagining 
 or desiring this or that object. Thought is the attribute of 
 the mind : imagination and desire are modes of thought. In 
 like manner, figure cannot be thought without space, though 
 space can very well be thought without figure : figures are 
 modes of space, while space itself constitutes a necessary 
 attribute of body. A substance can only change its modes, 
 not its essence. The change of its states, and therewith 
 
 2 Obj. et Rep. Def., v.-x. (CEuvres, i. pp. 453, 4S4, 464, 465. Pr., 1. sees. 
 51, 52.) 
 
OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 373 
 
 change in general, falls under the concept of mode. In God, 
 no change is possible : there is, therefore, in him only attri- 
 butes, not modes.^ 
 
 In these concepts all kinds of distinctions are contained. 
 These exist either between different substances, or between 
 substance and attribute as between different attributes, or 
 between substance and mode as between different modes. 
 The first kind of distinction Descartes calls real, the second 
 rational, the third modal. Real, for example, is the distinc- 
 tion between mind and body ; rational, that between mind 
 and thought, body and extension, extension and divisibility ; 
 modal, that between body and figure, or figure and motion.^ 
 
 n. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THINGS. 
 
 1. False Attributes. — We apprehend the essence of things 
 by means of their necessary attributes or properties. The 
 question in what these consist can now be accepted as the 
 form into which the problem of knowledge resolves itself. 
 What are things in themselves? What are tliey as objects of 
 our clear and distinct conception ? The question would be 
 easy to answer if they were not at the same time objects 
 of our obscure and indistinct conceptions. In the sifting of 
 these two modes of thought lies the difficult and critical point, 
 the problem without the solution of which there can be no 
 knowledge of things. What we clearly and distinctly conceive 
 in things is their true attribute : what we conceive in them 
 obscurely and confusedly is their false attribute. We havev 
 therefore, to undertake the critical separation of the two. 
 When we subtract from the intuition of things their faJse' 
 attributes, only the true remain. What, therefore, are the 
 false or imaginary attributes ? Plainly all those which we 
 ascribe to things as such, though they are only modtes in 
 which we conceive them. If we regard as a property of 
 objects what is merely a property of our thought, we attribute 
 to bodies what belongs to ourselves. The matter is then thor- 
 1 Princ, i. sees. 52-56. ^ n,., i. sees. 61, 62. 
 
374 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 oughly confused, and a knowledge of the nature of things is 
 impossible. The more habitual and involuntary is this mode 
 of consideration, the more thorough is the confusion, and the 
 more difficult the sifting. We consider the duration of a thing 
 as a property contained in its nature, and say the duration of 
 a thing consists of so many days, months, years, etc. These 
 determinations are nothing but certain quantities or numbers 
 of the motion of the earth or the moon. The thing that 
 endures so many months has, as such, nothing to do with the 
 moon. We compare its existence with the motion of the heav- 
 enly bodies : we number these motions, and measure thereby 
 the duration of the thing, and thus make the determination of 
 time, which the thing is claimed to have as a property. We 
 make it ; i.e., our thought. Time is not a property of things, 
 but of our thought : it is a " modus cogitandV Number and 
 measure are modes of thought. What is true of time is just 
 as true of number and all those common predicates which 
 thought forms in comparing things ; therefore, of all those 
 concepts of genera and species, the so-called universals, of 
 which Porphyry distinguished the well-known five, — quinque 
 voces, as they were called in the logic of the schools, — genus, 
 species, difference, property, accident. " Triangle " is a 
 genus ; " right-angled triangle " is species and specific dif- 
 ference ; the Pythagorean relation between the length of its 
 sides is its property (^proprirem), its rest or motion, its acci- 
 dent (accidens')} 
 
 The abstract characteristics of things are our modes of 
 thought, their sensible qualities our modes of sensation. We 
 suppose that the thing is hard or soft, cold or warm, sour or 
 sweet, light or dark ; that it has this or that color, this or that 
 sound, etc. All these determinations are not properties of 
 things, but states of sensations of our organs of sense. To 
 apprehend the so-called sensible qualities clearly and dis- 
 tinctly, we must distinguish accurately our nature from the 
 nature of things, and not ascribe to one what belongs to 
 
 1 Princ, i. sees. 57-G9. 
 
OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 375 
 
 the other. Sensations are in us, not in things. As soon as 
 we mingle our nature with that of things, the conception of 
 things is obscured, and knowledge confused. It seems as if 
 light and color actually belonged to, or dwelt in, the things 
 which we see ; as if pain or titillation were in the member of 
 our body in which we have that feeling. And we do not 
 err so long as we merely assert that it so appears. The 
 judgment that it is so first makes the error, this judgment 
 that obeys the appearance ! If we allow ourselves to be 
 deluded by this appearance, we are involved in self-delusion. 
 That we have these particular sensations, is true ; that we 
 conceive them as properties of things, is false. Sensations as 
 states of feeling are clear ; as properties of things, they are 
 obscure. What in the nature of things corresponds to or 
 causes this sensation is at first sight unknown. When, 
 therefore, we attribute sensible qualities to things them- 
 selves, we conceive something of the nature of which we are 
 ignorant; i.e., we have an obscure conception. We appre- 
 hend in bodies, extension, figure, motion, clearly and dis- 
 tinctly; not so colors and tones, warmth and cold, etc. 
 Our sensation as a property of things is a thoroughly ob- 
 scure conception. We judge that things are as we are sen- 
 sible of them. It is now clear how much value belongs to 
 this judgment. It is exactly equivalent to saying that 
 things are as we conceive them, when we conceive them 
 obscurely and confusedly. This judgment is fundamentally 
 false. It is not the sensation which is false, but the judg- 
 ment which is thoughtlessly and uncritically based upon it. 
 Here self-examination is wanting. This defect in this place 
 is " the first and most important cause of all our errors." ^ 
 
 2. The Multitude of our Errors, and their Chief Source. — 
 To separate the true from the false attributes of things, a 
 thoughtfulness is necessary, an attentive self-examination, 
 and a maturity of mind, which we cannot pgssess in child- 
 hood. Under the first influence of things, we are not able to 
 
 1 Princ, i. sees. 66-71. 
 
376 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 distinguish between their real and apparent properties, and, 
 therefore, suppose that they are like each other. Thus begins 
 the confusion. We believe things are as we perceive them. 
 We estimate the reality of bodies according to the kind and 
 degree of our sensation : the stronger the impression, the 
 greater appears to us their reality ; the weaker the impres- 
 sion, the less their reality ; and when we have no impression 
 at all, nothing exists for us. Thus, we regard the stars as 
 little points of light, the earth as immovable, its surface as 
 level, the air as less real than stones and metals, etc. We 
 live only in the objects which we conceive as external to us 
 and sensible without being aware, and without thinking, of 
 our perceiving activity. This self-forgetfulness, or this lack 
 of recollection of self, conceals from us our own mental 
 nature. Now, we believe that there are no other objects at 
 all than those which we conceive as falling under the senses, 
 no other substances than bodies, no other bodies than those 
 we perceive by means of the senses. Most men live in this 
 faith, and guide their thoughts and actions by it ; and it is, 
 therefore, no wonder that they think and act during their 
 whole lives in darkness. 
 
 Our speech shapes itself in accordance with our habitual 
 conceptions. Error insinuates itself into our use of language, 
 and obtains through words a generally received and stereo- 
 typed expression, which offers the most obstinate resistance 
 even to discovered truth. In spite of Copernicus and Gali- 
 leo, in the habitual language of men, the sun never ceases to 
 move around the earth. Communication takes place only by 
 means of language. Errors are not merely fortified by words, 
 but transmitted and propagated from generation to genera- 
 tion. Conceptions gradually cohere so closely with words, 
 that it is very difficult to separate them ; and most men hold on 
 to the words merely without being conscious of the concepts. 
 The word steps into the place of the thing. " Since we can 
 remember words so much more easily than things, we hardly 
 ever have the concept of a thing so distinct that we can 
 
OPPOSITION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 377 
 
 separate it from the words that express it. And the thought 
 of almost all men has more to do with words than things, so 
 that they habitually assent to words which they do not 
 understand, because they suppose that they once understood 
 them, or received them on the most trustworthy authority." 
 And this is the reason why the learning of books and the 
 wisdom of the schools are so poor and barren in true knowl- 
 edge : they repose on faith in words. 
 
 Words become stamped on the memory; and when they 
 have been kept there a long time, it begins to appear as if 
 the conceptions and things had been known for a long time 
 along with them, and that, therefore, it is entirely unneces- 
 sary to examine them. Words become an easy and familiar 
 object of memory, and familiar words pass for familiar things; 
 i.e., the strange passes for the familiar, and the familiar for the 
 known, and thus error is completed in its fundamental form. 
 That which is merely familiar, is, as a rule, least known, since 
 it is least examined, because it seems superfluous to examine 
 it. The appearance of familiarity is the greatest foe to 
 knowledge, and the strongest fortress of self-delusion. Thus, 
 error is completed, and made chronic in the worst form, — 
 worst because it is most averse to self-examination. "We 
 err most frequently in supposing, in the case of many things, 
 that we have known them for a very long time, and have 
 left them in charge of memory, and now affirm them as ob- 
 jects with which we are entirely familiar, while in truth we 
 have never known them."- 
 
 It is not our conception of sensible things which is the 
 error, but our belief in it. From this error the rest follow. 
 Our language and our memory do every thing in their power 
 to strengthen and diffuse our errors, and to bring self-delu- 
 sion to such dominion that the desire for self-examination 
 vanishes. "To philosophize in earnest, and to investigate 
 the truths of all knowable objects," — so Descartes ends the 
 first book of his " Principles," — " we must in the first place 
 lay aside our prejudices, and be on our guard against giving 
 
378 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 our assent to communicated opinions until we have exam- 
 ined them carefully, and found them true. We must then 
 methodically and carefully examine our opinions, and accept 
 only those as true which we clearly and distinctly appre- 
 hend. In this investigation we shall first know that we are 
 thinking beings, that there is a God upon whom we depend, 
 and that from him follows the possibility of a true knowl- 
 edge of all things since he is their cause. We shall find 
 likewise that we bear in us eternal truths, like the law of 
 causality; that we conceive likewise a bodily or extended 
 divisible and movable nature as an actual object; that we 
 have certain affections and sensations, the causes of which 
 are yet unknown to us. In these few propositions are con- 
 tained, as it seems to me, the most important principles of 
 human knowledge." "The philosopher ought to accept 
 nothing as true that he does not perceive to be such ; and if 
 he trusts the senses without examination, he reposes more 
 confidence in the inconsiderate judgments of childhood than 
 in the decisions of mature reason." 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 379 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, (a) THE MATHEMATICAL 
 PRINCIPLE OF THE EXPLANATION OF NATURE. 
 
 I. EXTENSION AS THE ATTRIBUTE OF BODY. 
 
 1. Body as an Object of Thought. 
 
 IN the progress of methodical inquiry, the reality of our 
 mind, of God, and of bodies, has been put beyond doubt. 
 We know clearly and distinctly that there are things with- 
 out us which exist independently of our thought, and are, 
 therefore, substances; that they are finite hke ourselves in 
 distinction from God, bodily in distinction from us who are 
 spiritual. This perception of the opposition between mind 
 and body forms the concluding point of the metaphysics and 
 the starting point of the philosophy of nature : it is the tran- 
 sition from the doctrine of knowledge to the doctrine of body. 
 The fundamental question of physics is, What are bodies in 
 themselves ? In what does their attribute consist ? 
 
 From the opposition of the two substances, it follows that 
 no property of spiritual beings can be mingled with the con- 
 ception of body ; that all mere subjective modes of concep- 
 tion, particularly our modes of sensation, must be subtracted 
 from it. Bodies are what they are after the subtraction of 
 all their sensible qualities. They are, even when we do not 
 perceive them: their perceivable or sensible qualities do 
 not, therefore, belong to their nature as such. A stone 
 seems hard when we touch it : if it changes into dust, it does 
 not cease to be stone, though it is indeed no longer hard. 
 What is true of hardness, is true also of warmth and cold, 
 
380 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 color, weight, etc. Color does not belong to the nature of 
 stone, since there are transparent stones: weight does not 
 belong to the nature of bodies, since there are some, as fire, 
 which are not heavy. In the sifting and criticism of the 
 concept of body, Descartes follows exactly the same course 
 as in the examination of mind. In the knowledge of self, 
 the point was to ascertain the pure concept of our nature ; 
 in the knowledge of the world without us, the pure con- 
 cept of body. In the former case, it was necessary to sep- 
 arate from our nature every thing that does not necessa- 
 rily belong to it, every thing the reality of which can be 
 doubted; and nothing remained except the activity of thought 
 itself, and that constituted the attribute of mind. And in 
 like manner every thing must now be separated from the 
 nature of body that does not necessarily belong to it, every 
 thing which can be separated from it without annihilating 
 the independent existence or substance of bodies. Nothing 
 thus remains except pure materiality or extension, and this 
 is the attribute of body. 
 
 If the two attributes, opposed in their natures, are min- 
 gled with each other, as in considering our modes of thought 
 and sensation as properties of bodies, there arises a twofold 
 confusion, and we deceive ourselves, both concerning the 
 nature of bodies and ourselves. To conceive bodies as the 
 substance in which universal concepts and sensible proper- 
 ties inhere, is to transform them into thinking natures, or to 
 anthropomorphize them. The fundamental aim of the Car- 
 tesian philosophy of nature is just the opposite. It aims to 
 free physics from all anthropomorphism, and to apprehend 
 the nature of objects after the subtraction of the mental 
 nature of man. Involuntarily we attribute our properties 
 to body, and our mode of considering them is likewise the 
 veil which hides them from our eyes. To remove this veil is 
 therefore the first condition of knowing them. When the 
 veil, which is woven, as it were, out of our mental nature, 
 falls off, nothing else can be revealed than body in its naked- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 381 
 
 ness, in its nature opposed to, and deprived of, mind ; and 
 this is merely extension. Mind is as the self-conscious, 
 likewise the self-active, inner nature : all self-action is of 
 a spiritual nature.' Completely opposed to this is the inert 
 state of the being which is acted upon merely from without ; 
 i.e., of extended being, or matter. Extension is, therefore, 
 the attribute of body: the opposition between mind and 
 body is equivalent to the opposition between thinking and 
 extended substance. 
 
 Since all further inferences and problems of Descartes' phi- 
 losophy depend upon this concept of extension, the ground- 
 ing of it should be explained yet more searchingly. We 
 must make clear to ourselves the fact, that, from the point 
 of view of the Cartesian doctrine of mind, no other concep- 
 tion of body is possible, and that this, as an object of thought 
 and the opposite of mind, contains no other attribute than 
 extension. Body is to be considered purely physically, i.e., 
 as a mere object of knowledge ; and this can be done only 
 when our consideration fulfils the conditions under which 
 objects are first of all possible. The common opinion is, that 
 they are given without any thing further, and we have only 
 to open our senses to receive them, and await their impres- 
 sions : they are the models ; we, the table of wax. But the 
 matter is not so simple. There is no object without a pla- 
 cing of myself over against it, without distinguishing myself 
 from the thing, and the thing from myself; i.e., without 
 separating my nature from the nature of the thing, and with- 
 out stepping opposite to the external world as a self-conscious 
 or thinking being. There is no object without subject, no 
 " thou " without " I." There is no subject without the 
 certainty of self, no self-conscious discrimination without 
 thought. Thought only has objects, since it causes them to 
 arise. They are as little given as thought itself, which is 
 no existing, ready-made thing, but an activity which only 
 reaches as far as we are certain of it, as it illuminates con- 
 sciousness. Without the thinking certainty of self, the 
 
382 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 '■'■eogito ergo sum,'^ there are no objects, also no bodies as 
 objects. In our sensations, things do not stand opposite to 
 us : they touch us and grasp us. They are not our objects, 
 but our states and affections : we are not free from them, but 
 under their impression ; and, therefore, we do not know what 
 they are, but only how we are sensible of them. To consider 
 body as an object, according to the requirements of knowl- 
 edge, is, therefore, exactly the same as taking an attitude, 
 not of sensation, but of pure thought, towards body ; to place 
 it over against the mind, and to separate it from every thing 
 of a mental nature, i.e., to place it opposite to the mind, 
 to consider it as the opposite of mind, as an inert, merely 
 extended being, destitute of a self. If the mind is only a 
 thinking being, body is only extended : if that according to 
 its nature is bodiless, this is mindless. These two concepts 
 mutually demand and support each other.' 
 
 2. Bodg as Quantity of Space. — Body is an extended sub- 
 stance : it is nothing more. As the mind is nothing without 
 thought, so the body is nothing without extension. Between 
 substance and attribute, there is no real difference. Body 
 and extension are, therefore, identical. A body without 
 extension is either a word without meaning, or a confused 
 concept. Extension is distinguished in length, breadth, and 
 thickness ; it has no other distinctions than those of spatial 
 dimensions ; it is merely spatial. Extension and space are, 
 therefore, identical. Body distinctly conceived is, therefore, 
 nothing except quantity of space. The physical concept of 
 it is, therefore, identical with the mathematical. Space is 
 related to body as universal extension to a limited portion 
 of it. Every body is a limited quantity of space : without 
 it are others, some of which immediately surround it. The 
 space which the body occupies is its place, and, in reference 
 to its surroundings, its position. The external place is the 
 space (^superficies') in which the surrounding and surrounded 
 bodies touch each other. The inner place is the space which 
 
 ' Princ, ii. sees, i, 9, 11. CEuvres, iii. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 383 
 
 the bodj' fills : the inner place and size of the body are there- 
 fore identical.' 
 
 Against the position that body and quantity of space 
 (extension) are identical, two doubts arise, based on the 
 rarefaction of bodies, and empty space. If body and exten- 
 sion were identical, the same body would have to occupy the 
 same extension all the time, and could not be extended, now 
 more, now less, which is the case in the rarefaction and con- 
 densation of bodies. But the supposition upon which the 
 objection rests is not true. Rarefaction is not increased 
 extension, since extension, or matter, consists in the multi- 
 tude of parts ; but rarefaction does not consist in increasing 
 the parts of bodies, but in enlarging the spaces between them, 
 or in other bodies entering into them. Thus, the sponge 
 which is filled with water does not increase in size because 
 its parts increase in number, but because there is more water 
 than before in the spaces between them. The rarefaction 
 and condensation of bodies does not, therefore, consist in 
 their increased or decreased extension, but in the enlarge- 
 ment or diminution of their pores.^ 
 
 But empty pores are empty space : this is extension with-- 
 out body, and is, therefore, an actual proof that body and 
 extension are not identical. This objection also is invalid,, 
 and rests on confused concepts. Empty space is either 
 understood relatively or absolutely : in the first case it is Bot 
 empty, in the second it is' without meaning. A water- 
 pitcher, a cauf, and a trading-vessel are said to be empty 
 when the first is empty of water, the second of fish,, and the 
 third of goods, although they are always filled with other 
 bodies. We call the space empty which does not contain 
 certain bodies which we expected to find there,- or which in 
 general are capable of being perceived by the senses. This 
 customary (relative) concept of empty space has, however, 
 led to the philosophical (absolute) concept. There is no 
 necessary connection between a vessel and its contents ; it 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 10-15. ^ lb., ii. sees. 5-7. 
 
384 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 can contain air, water, sand, and also nothing ; and when 
 every content is lacking, it is absolutely empty. Absolute 
 emptiness is nothing, space is something; and there is just 
 as little an empty space as a something which is nothing. 
 A vessel can be empty of this or that thing, but not abso- 
 lutely empty, since in that case it could not exist. In 
 absolute emptiness, there would be literally nothing to sep- 
 arate the concave walls of a vase from each other ; and these 
 would have to fall together, and there would be no config- 
 uration and no vessel. In truth, there is no emptiness, but 
 only the appearance of emptiness. Every body is extended, 
 and is full in the same proportion as it is extended : it can- 
 not be more or less extended, therefore not more or less full 
 than it is whether it is filled with gold or lead or water or 
 air, or whether it seems to be empty.' 
 
 n. THE MATERIAL WORLD. 
 
 Body and extension are identical : there is nothing empty. 
 Where space is, there are bodies and only bodies ; these 
 stretch through the whole of space, however far it extends ; 
 it extends as far as extension. 'JVithin extension, there is 
 nothing which is unextended or indivisible. There are no 
 atoms : the smallest parts of bodies are always still divisible, 
 therefore not atoms, but molecules or corpuscles. And just 
 as, little can extension anywhere cease or be bounded; for 
 with this boundary, the iinextended would have to begin, 
 and the boundary itself could therefore no longer be 
 extended. It is, therefore, absolutely impossible to enclose 
 extension within bounds : it is absolutely boundless. There- 
 fore the material world is infinite. 
 
 Since extension can nowhere be empty, or cease at any 
 place, it is continuous, and forms a continuum. There are, 
 therefore, not different kinds of extension or matter, there- 
 fore, also, not different material worlds. The material world 
 is merely extended, boundless, and one. Beyond thought, 
 there is no other world than the material. 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 16-19. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 385 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. ■ 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. (6) THE MECHANICAL PEIN- 
 CIPLB OP THE EXPLANATION OF NATURE. 
 
 I. MOTION AS THE FUNDAMENTAL PHENOMENON OF THE MATERIAL 
 
 WOELD. 
 
 1. Motion as a Mode of Extension. 
 
 i A LL the phenomena or events of the inner world are 
 't^^^^ modifications of thought : all the phenomena and mod- 
 ifications of the outer world are modifications of extension, 
 which, we have seen, is the attribute of material substance. 
 Now, if extension is infinitely divisible, its parts can be united 
 and separated, and thus different formations or forms of matter 
 result. This union and separation take place through the 
 approach and removal of the parts ; i.e., through motion. Ex- 
 tension is therefore divisible, capable of form, and movable. 
 Its possible changes consist in division, formation, and motion : 
 there are no other modifications of extension. With the fol- 
 lowing declaration, Descartes concludes the second part of his 
 " Principles : " "I frankly avow that I acknowledge ift the 
 nature of bodies no other matter than that which can be 
 divided, formed, and moved in a great variety of ways, that 
 which mathematicians call magnitude (quantity) ; that in this 
 matter I consider merely its divisions, figures, and motions, 
 and accept nothing as true that does not follow from these 
 principles as evidently as the certainty of mathematical prop- 
 ositions. In this way all the phenomena of nature can be 
 explained. I think, therefore, that no other principles in 
 physics than those here expounded are necessary or admis- 
 sible." 1 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sec. 64. 
 
386 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 These principles can be simplified. All division and for- 
 mation of matter takes place through motion. All the 
 modifications of matter can, therefore, be analyzed into 
 motion. The changes in the material world are all phe- 
 nomena of motion : every change in matter and all the dif- 
 ferences of its forms are dependent upon motion.* The 
 stand-point of the Cartesian philosophy of nature is now per- 
 fectly clear: the nature of bodies consists in quantity of 
 space and their changes in motion ; that is conceived math- 
 ematically, this mechanically. Descartes' explanation of 
 nature, therefore, rests completely on mathematical-mechan- 
 ical principles. 
 
 2. Motion as Change of Place. — All motion consists in a 
 spatial change. Now, the space which a body takes up in 
 relation to other bodies is its place, or position. If a body 
 moves, it changes its place : all motion is, therefore, change of 
 place. " It is the action by means of which a body passes 
 from one place into another." ^ 
 
 jThis concept must be more precisely determined that it 
 may be guarded against the objection that the same body in 
 the same time can be both moved and not moved. A body 
 can change its place while it rests, as a man sitting in a ship 
 which is moving with the current of the stream. He is 
 changing his place with reference to the banks of the stream, 
 but not with reference to the ship in which he is sitting ; he 
 remains in the same position with reference to the bodies 
 that immediately surround him; i.e., he rests. Since motion 
 can be considered only as a mode of a moving body, or as a 
 change peculiar to it, it cannot be predicated of a body that 
 changes its place without its own action. A body or (since 
 all bodies are parts of one and the same matter) a part of 
 matter moves only when it changes its place in relation to 
 the immediately surrounding bodies ; i.e., when it is trans- 
 ported from the vicinity of the bodies that directly touch it 
 to the vicinity of others. Now, that change of place which 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sec. 23. 2 ib.^ ji. gee. 24. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 387 
 
 has the character of such a transposition or translation 
 (transport) from one place to another is motion in the strict 
 sense of the word. 
 
 But this concept also requires a yet more precise determi- 
 nation, that it may meet the above objection from a new 
 point of view. Change of place is always relative. If a 
 body A changes its place in relation to the immediately 
 neighboring parts of the matter B, B also changes its place 
 in relation to A. It is possible that both bodies are active 
 and in motion at the same time. But there are cases in the 
 change of place of immediately neighboring parts of matter, 
 in which only one of the bodies moves. Two bodies, A and 
 B, move on the surface of the earth directly towards each 
 other. This motion is reciprocal, and belongs to each of the 
 two in like manner. Both bodies change their places at the 
 same time in relation to the parts of the surface of the earth 
 that immediately surround them : this change of place is 
 also reciprocal, and the earth also must be considered to 
 move in relation to A and B ; i.e., it must at the same time 
 move in two opposite directions, which is impossible. The 
 bulk of the earth is, therefore, considered as resting in rela- 
 tion to the bodies of the earth and so many smaller bodies 
 that move here and there on its surface. From this it is 
 evident that a body is moved when it passes from the vicin- 
 ity of those parts of matter that directly touch it, and which, 
 in relation to it, are considered at rest. A ship that is urged 
 forward by the stream, and backwards by the wind, with 
 the same force, remains opposite to the same place on 
 the bank: it does not change its place on the earth, but 
 rests, while the particles of water and air which surround it 
 are in constant motion. " If we would know," says Descartes, 
 " what motion really is, in order to determine it precisely, 
 we must explain it as the translation of place (transport) of 
 one part of matter or of one body from the vicinity of those 
 bodies which directly touch it, and are considered at rest, 
 into the vicinity of others." " By a body, or a part of matter. 
 
388 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I understand the whole of the mass in motion, not taking 
 into consideration the parts of which it may be composed, 
 and which may have at the same time still other motions. 
 I say that it is the translation from one place to another, not 
 the force or activity which causes it, with a view of showing 
 that motion is always in the moving object, and not in the 
 thing that causes it, since I believe that these two things are 
 not usually distinguished with enough care. As figure is a 
 property of the figured, and rest of the resting, thing, so I 
 understand motion as a property of the moving thing, but 
 not a being for itself or substance." ' 
 
 From this explanation certain inferences can be drawn, 
 both in relation to simple and complex and also compound 
 mptions. 
 
 The first inference is, that every body has and can have but 
 one motion peculiar to it, since its active change of place 
 holds only in relation to the matter in its vicinity, and which 
 is at rest. But as part of a greater body, which itself has a 
 motion peculiar to it, it can, without damage to its own 
 motion, take part in an infinite multitude of other motiofiSr] 
 Thus, the wheels of a watch move in a way peculiar to 
 themselves, while they take part in the motion of the sailor 
 with the watch in his pocket, as he walks up and down in a 
 ship, with the sailor in the motion of the ship, with the ship 
 in that of the sea, with the sea in that of the revolution of 
 the earth on its axes, etc. The wheels of this watch have 
 their own motion, belonging only to them, while they, at the 
 same time, take part in a complication of a great multitude 
 of other motions. Without distinguishing precisely a body's 
 own motion from those in which it participates, we should 
 be unable to determine whether and how a body moves. 
 Now, this motion peculiar to a body, although in the same 
 time it is only this and no other, i.e., appears as simple, can 
 very well be compounded of, or result from, different motions ; 
 as, for example, a wagon-wheel in motion both revolves 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 15, 24-30. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 389 
 
 about its" axle and advances in a straight line, or a point 
 which is urged at the same time in different directions moves 
 injtiie diagonal of the two. 
 
 / It further follows from the concept of motion, that no body- 
 can be moved by itself alone while all others are at rest. 
 There is no empty space, and, therefore, no empty place. If, 
 therefore, a bod« leaves its place, another must enter into it 
 at the same time,\while it itself forces from its new place the 
 bodies which TTmds there, and forces them in turn to expel 
 other bodies from the position they have occupied up to that 
 time. There is, therefore, with every moving body the 
 motion of several, which form a chain, the last link of which 
 catches into the first, so that always a complex of bodies is 
 moved which forms a riag or circle.' 
 
 II. THE CAUSES OF MOTION". 
 
 \ 1. The First Cause of Motion, and its Quantity. — The law 
 of causality requires that nothing should happen without a 
 cause. The cause of motion is force, the opposite of motion 
 is rest. Rest is arrested or hindered motion. Nobody can 
 be moved, no motion can be stopped, without force. \ Rest, 
 therefore, is not possible without force. The opposite opin- 
 ion is a childish error, based on the experience of childhood, 
 — that we need force and exertion to move a body, but none 
 to cause it to rest. As soon as one tries to stop a moving 
 body, or make it rest, he will at once learn whether it re- 
 quires strength, or not.^ 
 
 Motion and rest are the two opposite modes or conditions 
 of body. Bodies are merely extended and movable: they 
 neither move nor come to rest by means of their own force, 
 since of themselves they are destitute of force. From 
 whence, therefore, come motion and rest into the material 
 world, since they do not come from the material world itself? 
 Both must be caused; and as they can be caused neither by 
 body nor by minds, their first cause can only be God. In 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 31-33. " lb., ii. sec. 26. 
 
390 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 relation to minds, he is the principle of knowledge; in rela- 
 tion to bodies, the principle of motion and of rest.j He illu- 
 minates the mind, and moves bodies, or causes them to rest. 
 Matter is created in a state in part of motion, in part of rest : 
 both belong to it originally. We must, therefore, conceive 
 the material v^orld as from the very beginning in part mov- 
 
 Tj, in part at rest. 
 Now, if bodies of themselves have power neither to pro- 
 duce'nor stop motion, they have, also, not the power either 
 to increase or diminislij|r7 The quantity of motion and rest, 
 in the material world, therefore, always remains the same. 
 If in one part of matter motion is increased, it must be 
 diminished in another to exactly the same exte nt : if it van- 
 ishes in one form, it must appear in another. \The quantity 
 of motion in the world is constant.^ Descartes deduces this 
 law from the unchangeableness ^f the Divine nature and 
 activity. The law is necessary because its opposite is impos- 
 sible, both because of the nature of God and of bodies.' 
 2. The Second Causes of Motion, or the Laws of Nature. — 
 
 ^From the unchangeableness of God, it follows that all the 
 changes in the_ material world take place according to un- 
 changeable rules. / These rules Descartes calls laws of nature. 
 
 ISince all the changes of matter are motions, all the laws of 
 nature are laws of motion; and since God is the first cause 
 of motion, these laws are characterized as its second causes 
 (casMSff secundce'). Bodies are of themselves without force : 
 none of them, therefore, can of themselves change from the 
 state in which they happen to be. They remain or continue 
 in the given state of form and position, rest or motion, until 
 an outward cause effects a change. 
 
 (1) In this consists the first law of nature. All changes 
 in the material world are due to outward causes. We can 
 call this the law of inertia or constancy, only we must not 
 iinderstand that this means rest, and imagine that a body of 
 itself strives to restjv— to continue in a state of rest, and to 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sec. 36. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 391 
 
 return from a state of motion into that of rest. As if a body- 
 preferred rest to motion, and would rather be inactive than 
 active ! This conception is fundamentally false. Jlf there 
 were such an endeavor, every body would immediately place 
 itself in a state of rest, as soon as the outward cause of its 
 motion ceased to act. A body which we pushed with our 
 hand would come to rest the moment our hand let it go. But 
 it continues its motion until outward causes, i.e., others which 
 it meets on its way, hinder it, and cause it to rest.) Because 
 we do not perceive these causes, we suppose that the body 
 Qomes to a state of rest, not because of the action of outward 
 causes, but of its own exertions. This judgment through our 
 ignorance is our error.' 
 
 If we can venture to speak of any exertion of a body at 
 all, it can only consist in an effort to continue in Avhatever 
 state it is in, but not in one state at the expense of another, 
 but in preserving the state in which it may happen to be, 
 whether of motion or of rest ; i.e., in opposing or offering 
 resistance to every external cause which acts upon it. This 
 effort to preserve its state coincides with the existence of 
 body. Every thing seeks to preserve its existence, and 
 defends itself against destruction : every body by means of its 
 inertia or constancy defends itself against the destruction of 
 its existing states ; i.e., it opposes every external cause that 
 seeks to change any of its states. Without such a resistance, 
 the quantity of motion in the material world would not be 
 constant. This resistance is, therefore, necessary. Now 
 every act is an expression of force, and we can, therefore, 
 speak of a force of resistance in bodies, and, in this sense, we 
 can admit the validity of the concept of force in the material 
 world. Bodies have indeed no original forces to exert, but 
 only a force to oppose to external influences. " The power 
 of every body to work upon another, or to make resistance 
 to its influence, consists only in this : every thing strives to 
 continue so far as it can in the state in which it finds itself, 
 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 37, 38. 
 
392 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 according to the first of the laws of nature." Every part of 
 matter has this force ; tlie greater, therefore, the number of 
 parts of a body, the greater its force. The quantity of jjarts 
 is called mass, and the quantity of motion, velocity. The 
 greater, therefore, the mass in motion, the greater the action, 
 and therefore the force. The measure of force is, therefore, 
 equal to the product of the mass into the velocity.' 
 \~~^Y) From the law of constancy it follows that every body 
 immotion continues its motion, and of itself, — to be sure, 
 in a direction which remains unchangeably the same. If it 
 describes a curve, its direction is changed every moment; 
 and this can only happen under the constant influence of an 
 external cause. Unchanged uniform direction is a straight 
 line. Every body in motion must, therefore, strive of itself 
 to continue its motion in a straight line, and if, by reason of 
 an external cause, it is moved in a circle (as a stone in a 
 sling), to continue it in a tangent of the ctfcle. Every body 
 must preserve its state of motion : it must, therefore, en- 
 deavor to continue to move in the direction of a straight 
 line, since every deviation from it can only be effected by 
 external causes. In this consists the second law of nature.^ 
 , (3) There is no empty space. Every moving body must, 
 therefore, meet another body with which it collides, as it 
 moves on its course, which it endeavors to prolong in a 
 straight line. A collision takes place between bodies mov- 
 ing either in opposite or_the same directions, or between 
 bodies one of which is at rest. In the first case, three possi- 
 bilities arise : either the masses and velocities of both bodies 
 are equal; or the masses are unequal, and the velocities 
 equal ; or the masses are equal, and the velocities unequal. 
 If one of the bodies is in a state of rest, there are likewise 
 three possibilities to be distinguished : either the body at 
 rest is greater or smaller than, or equal to, the body in 
 motion. In the second of the above cases, when the collid- 
 ing bodies are in motion in the same direction, if the smaller 
 
 ' Princ, ii. sec. 43. > lb., ii. sec. 39. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 393 
 
 mass, moving more rapidly, overtakes the greater, three pos- 
 sibilities arise according to the relation of the differences of 
 size to the difference of velocities, which, however, are not 
 considered as separate cases. All together, there are, accord- 
 ingly, seven cases which Descartes distinguishes in the 
 collision of bodies, and consequently seven rules accord- 
 ing to which the changes resulting from the collision take 
 place.' 
 
 These laws are determined under the following supposi- 
 tions : (1) that in the states of different bodies, not their 
 motions, but only their motion and rest, are opposed to each 
 other, and, therefore, between bodies in motion no other 
 opposition is possible than that of their directions ; (2) that 
 the colliding bodies are completely hard or solid ; (3) that 
 complete abstraction is made of every influence of other 
 bodies surrounding them which might increase or diminish 
 their motion, especially the influence of fluid bodies. Under 
 these suppositions the law is to be determined in each of the 
 different cases according to which a body changes its motion 
 and direction in consequence of a collision. The change 
 follows from the force of resistance exerted by a body, and 
 depends upon its size. The greater force of resistance, so 
 Descartes thinks, overcomes the smaller, or hinders its 
 action.^ 
 
 If, therefore, a body B is moving in a straight line, and 
 meets another body C having a greater force of resistance, 
 it cannot move the latter from the spot, or push it away, 
 since, according to the supposition, C is perfectly hard or 
 solid ; but B, in consequence of the resistance, cannot con- 
 tinue on its way, but must return in the opposite direction. 
 It therefore loses its direction, but not its motion, since 
 directions are opposed, not motions. But if B has the 
 greater force of resistance, it will continue on its way with 
 the body C : it does not change its direction, but only the 
 quantity of its motion, of which it loses as much as it imparts 
 
 » Princ, ii. sees. 46-52. ^ lb., il. sees. 44, 45, 53. 
 
394 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to the other body. Since the quantity of the motion (mass 
 in motion), i.e., the product of the mass into the (simple) 
 velocity, always remains the same, the velocity must decrease 
 in the same proportion as the moving mass is enlarged or 
 increased in size. This can be increased only through 
 imparted motion; and, therefore, every body which puts 
 another in motion must lose as much of its own motion as 
 it communicates to that body.' 
 
 If we call the motion which one body communicates to 
 another, its action, and the loss of mption which it thereby 
 itself experiences, re-action, in every case of communicated 
 motion, action and re-action are equal. And since within 
 nature no motion originates, but all is only imparted, since 
 it can only be produced by means of external, i.e., mate- 
 rial, causes, that equation is the real, fundamental law of 
 the mechanically-moved material world. That Descartes 
 treats this law, which he derives from the constancy or 
 conservation of the quantity of motion in the world,^ as a 
 special case, and does not regard it as valid for all cases of 
 collision, is an error of his doctrine of motion, due to false 
 presuppositions. If all changes of bodily states follow from 
 external causes, the loss of motion which a body suffers must 
 be considered as an effect, whose external cause is the force 
 of resistance exerted by the body to which it communicates 
 motion, however great or small that force of resistance may 
 be. It is false that the smaller force is without effect in 
 relation to the greater, or that the greater can completely 
 prevent the action of the smaller ; ^ it is false that in the 
 collision of bodies the one avails as the impelling, the other 
 merely as the impelled, body, and that every thing now 
 depends on this, whether that is greater or less than this ; 
 finally, it is false that the opposition between rest and 
 motion is absolute, and that there are no oppositions between 
 motions. 
 ^'ITrom the principles of Descartes, it follows that bodies of 
 
 1 Priuc, ii. sees. 40-42. 2 lb., ii. sec. 42. s ib., ii. sec. 45. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 395 
 
 themselves are destitute of force, that they only have a force 
 of resistance because they are obliged to continue in their 
 states, that all changes in the material world are due to 
 external causes, and all motion, therefore, to impulse and 
 pressure, and that, therefore, there are no inner concealed 
 causes, no secret forces, no so-called qualitates occultce in gen- 
 eral in the material world. Gravity is regarded as such a 
 force, an original property of a body belonging to it of itself. 
 Descartes denies it. Therein consists the opposition between 
 Galileo and Descartes: with gravity he was obliged to reject 
 gravitation and the power of attraction /TTherein consists the 
 subsequent opposition of Newton toTDescartes : he is, there- 
 fore, compelled to deny the so-called central forces, as well 
 as every actio in distans, and to explain the case of bodies, 
 as the courses which planets describe, by the impact, or the 
 external and immediate influence, of other bodies. Since 
 the laws thus far considered relate merely to the collision of 
 solid or hard bodies, all the motions which cannot be derived 
 from them must be explained by means of the distinction 
 between solid and fluid bodies, particularly from the consti- 
 tution, motion, and influence of the latter.^ 
 
 ni. HYDRO-MECHANICS. — SOLID AND FLUID BODIES. 
 
 1. Distinction between the Two. — Since there are no other 
 opposite states in body than motion and rest, it is evident 
 that from these alone the opposite states of cohesion of solid 
 and liquid bodies must be derived. Perception plainly 
 teaches us that solid bodies resist every opposing motion, 
 every attempt to separate their parts, or move them out of 
 their places, — which is not the case with fluid bodies. Now, 
 as we have seen, according to Descartes, motion is not 
 opposed to motion, but rest. What, therefore, makes a body 
 solid, or its parts capable of resisting the intruding motion 
 which seeks to separate them, or move them out of their 
 places, can be nothing else than that these parts are every- 
 
 1 Princ, ii. 53. 
 
396 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 where in a state of rest; and the great mobility and separa- 
 bility of the parts of a fluid body consist in the fact that 
 they are everywhere in motion, even in their smallest parts. 
 Nothing can make the combination or connection of material 
 things stronger than their rest ; for, if this were not so, a par- 
 ticular kind of cement would have to hold or unite them 
 together. Now, this medium could only be a substance or a 
 mode ; but the parts themselves are substances, and rest is a 
 mode of those substances, — rest, which of all material states 
 is the most hostile to motion. The fact that fluid bodies, as 
 water and air, are able to dissolve many solid bodies by their 
 influence, proves that their parts must be continually in 
 motion, since they could not otherwise decompose those 
 bodies.* 
 
 2. Solid in Fluid Bodies. — Parts of matter are either at 
 rest or in motion, therefore bodies are solid or fluid. Since 
 there is no empty space, there must be fluid bodies in every 
 space where there are no solid ones. All pores are, there- 
 fore, filled by fluid bodies, and they surround solid bodies. 
 Suppose, now, that fluid matter, the smallest parts of which 
 are continually in motion, and at the same time in such a 
 way that they are tending in every direction, completely 
 surrounds a solid body: the latter will be in contact with 
 fluid parts on all sides, and urged with like force in different 
 directiotis, so that it is suspended, or at rest, in the fluid 
 matter that surrounds it. There is no cause by virtue of 
 which the body must move in one direction rather than 
 another. As soon, therefore, as such a cause enters, giving 
 to the body a definite impulse, though with but the smallest 
 expenditure of force, it puts the body in motion. The 
 smallest force suffices to move a solid body when it is com- 
 pletely surrounded by fluid matter.^ 
 
 Now, suppose that the fluid matter in which the solid body 
 is suspended, or at rest, is put in motion in a definite direc- 
 tion with its entire mass, like a stream towards the sea, or 
 
 I Princ, ii. sees. 51-56. * lb., il. sees. 66, 57. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 397 
 
 air moved westward by an east wind : the solid body is 
 seized by the current, and borne onward with the fluid parts 
 which touch it and surround it. It will always, therefore, 
 have the same neighbors while it drifts with the stream, and 
 will not, therefore, change its surroundings or its place. It 
 is at rest in the fluid matter that surrounds it, the whole 
 mass of which is in motion in a definite direction.' 
 
 3. The Heavens and the Earth. The Motion of the Planets. 
 The Hypotheses of Vortices. — Descartes bases his theory of 
 the rest and motion of the heavenly bodies on his doctrine 
 of the rest and motion of solid and fluid bodies and the influ- 
 ence of the latter upon the former. The heavenly bodies do 
 not rest on pillars, and are not suspended by cords, nor are 
 they fastened in transparent spheres; but they are poised in 
 the spaces of the heavens, which cannot be empty, but must 
 consist of fluid matter, which surrounds the heavenly bodies 
 on all sides. They are distinguished in relation to size, light, 
 and motion. Some are self-luminous, as the fixed stars and 
 suns: others are opaque, as the planets, the moon, and the 
 earth. The sun is analogous to the fixed stars, the earth to 
 the planets. Some do not seem to change their position 
 with reference to each other, and appear to be immovable : 
 others change their places, and are regarded as wandering 
 stars. Those are called fixed stars, these planets. The sys- 
 tem of the heavenly bodies, especially that of the planets, 
 appears, therefore, as a special case, and at the same time as 
 the greatest example in which fluid matter surrounds other 
 bodies on all sides.^ 
 
 In order to explain the motion of the planets, the stand- 
 point must first of all be determined from which it is con- 
 sidered and judged. For every thing depends on whether 
 this stand-point itself is at rest or in motion in relation to the 
 planets. Three hypotheses have been advanced to explain 
 it, — that of Ptolemy in antiquity, and those of Copernicus 
 and Tycho Brahe in modern times. The Ptolemaic hypoth- 
 1 Princ, ii. sees. 61, 62. ^ lb., iii. sees. 5-14. 
 
398 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 esis is abandoned by science, because it is inconsistent with 
 absolutely certain facts, which more recent observation and 
 investigation have established, especially the phases of light 
 of Venus, discovered by the telescope, and similar to those 
 of the moon. Only, therefore, the hypotheses of Copernicus 
 and Tycho Brahe can now come in question ; and they agree 
 in reference to the heliocentric motion of the planets, not in 
 reference to the motion of the earth, which Copernicus af- 
 firmed, and Tycho Brahe denied. Is the earth at rest, or in 
 motion ? That is the point of controversy in deciding which 
 Descartes asserts that he agrees with neither of the two 
 astronomers. Although the Copernican hypothesis is some- 
 what simpler and clearer than that of Tycho Brahe, Descartes 
 maintains that it has not distinguished with sufficient care 
 between motion and rest, while Tycho has denied the motion 
 of the earth in a sense which is inconsistent with the truth. 
 Because Tycho did not sufficiently consider in Avhat motion 
 really consists, he maintained in words indeed that the earth 
 is at rest ; but at bottom his theory requires its motion, even 
 more rigidly than that of Copernicus himself. One should, 
 therefore, proceed more carefully than Copernicus, and more 
 correctly than Tycho. " JNIy position is different from that 
 of those two philosophers only in this," says Descartes some- 
 what ambiguously, " that, with more carefulness than Coper- 
 nicus, I deny the motion of the earth, and I seek to ground 
 my theory with more truth than Tycho. I will here expound 
 the hypothesis which seems to me the simplest of all^and the 
 fittest, both for the explanation of the phenomena, and for 
 the investigation of their natural causes. I will, however, say 
 explicitly, that I by no means desire that this theory of mine 
 should be regarded as the complete truth, but only as an 
 hypothesis or opinion which may possibly be erroneous." ^ 
 
 The two essential presuppositions of Descartes' hypothesis 
 are the immeasurableness of the universe and the nullity of 
 empty space. From the first, it follows that the universe 
 
 1 Princ., iii. Bees. 15-19. Of. introduction, chap. vi. pp. 125-130. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 399 
 
 is not a spherical body, and does ndt consist in concentric 
 spheres to which the stars are fastened ; that there is, there- 
 fore, no celestial sphere beyond the farthest planet (Saturn), 
 and that the sun does not lie in the same spherical superficies. 
 From the second, it follows that the spaces of the heavens 
 are filled with fluid matter, and that the heavenly bodies are 
 surrounded by the latter, and subject to its influences. This 
 is the point where Descartes applies his hydromechanic prin- 
 ciples to the motion of the heavenly bodies ; that is, to the 
 planets and the earth. The earth is completely surrounded 
 by fluid matter, and is acted upon uniformly in all directions, 
 or borne onwards by its current, as a solid body in fluid mat- 
 ter. It rests in the heavens as a ship on the sea, which is 
 moved by no wind, propelled by no oar, held fast by no 
 anchor, but quietly floats with the current. And the same 
 is true of the rest of the planets. " Each is at rest in that 
 space in the heavens in which it is ; and all the change of 
 place which we observe in tliose bodies, follows only from the 
 motion .of the matter of the heavens which surrounds them 
 on all sides." We cannot say, therefore, if we have the 
 true idea of motion, that the planets and the earth are 
 themselves moved. This would be the case if they changed 
 their surroundings; i.e., if the space of the heavens which 
 surrounds it rested while the planets wandered through it. 
 But this space of the heavens is itself fluid in all its parts, 
 is always matter in motion, which as such never ceases to 
 surround the heavenly bodies, though the individual parts 
 in contact with them are perpetually changing; i.e., now 
 these, now those, parts of that matter are in contact with the 
 superficies of that body. Thus, on the surface of the earth, 
 Avater and air are in continual motion ; while the earth itself, 
 in reference to the parts of its waters and atmosphere,, iSs 
 not regarded as moved. It rests in its moved space in the 
 heavens, in this flowing matter which surrounds it, and in 
 reference to which it does not change its place. But although 
 it rests, it does indeed change its position with reference to 
 
400 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the other heavenly bodies. If any one, speaking in the 
 usual way, persists in ascribing motion to the earth, it moves 
 exactly as does a man who is asleep in a ship while it takes 
 him from Dover to Calais.^ 
 
 If, now, we suppose that that flow of the matter of the 
 heavens which surrounds the planets and carries them on- 
 wards with it, describes a current spinning round like a 
 vortex, in the centre of which is the sun, and that the earth 
 is one of these planets, it is evident in what sense Descartes 
 teaches the heliocentric motion of the earth, like Copernicus, 
 without denying with him that it is at rest, and still less 
 with Tycho affirming this rest in a cosmical centre. How 
 he explains the motion of the earth and planets, not by 
 virtue of their weight and attraction, but only by the impel- 
 ling force of the matter that immediately surrounds and 
 touches them, is also evident.^ 
 
 The rotary-moving current, or the central motion of the 
 matter, Descartes calls a vortex, or whirlpool-like motion 
 (tourbillon'),' and explains thereby the course of the wander- 
 ing stars (planets, moons, comets). It is with this motion 
 of the matter of the heavens as with the eddies of water 
 which rotate about a centre in ever widening circles, and 
 carry along with them the floating bodies that come within 
 them. The nearer the centre, the quicker the rotary motion, 
 the more rapid the rotation ; and the more distant the cen- 
 tre, the slower the rotation. "As waters when they are forced 
 to a reflux form an eddy, and draw violently within their 
 rotary motion, and carry along with them, light floating 
 bodies, as, for example, straws ; as then these bodies, seized 
 by the eddy, turn about their own centre, and those nearer 
 the centre of the eddy always complete their rotation earlier 
 than the more distant ones; as, finally, this eddy always, 
 to be sure, describes a circular figure, but almost never a 
 perfect circle, but extends itself, now more in length, and 
 now in breadth, wherefore the parts at the periphery are not 
 
 1 Prino., iii. sees. 20-29. = 11)., iii. sec. 30. » lb., iii. sec. 47. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 401 
 
 equally distant from the centre, — so one can easily see that 
 the motion of the planets is of the same character, and 
 that no other conditions are necessary to explain all their 
 phenomena." ^ 
 
 Among these phenomena, the motion and time of rotation 
 of the planets, and spots of the sun, of the earth and moon, 
 the obliquity of the orbits of the earth and the planets 
 (ecliptic), the elliptic form of these orbits, the consequent 
 unequal distances of the planets from the sun, and the there- 
 fore unequal velocities, are particularly conspicuous. "I 
 need not farther show how, by this hypothesis, the changes 
 of night and day and of the seasons, the phases of the moon, 
 the eclipses of the sun and moon, the standing still and 
 retrogradation of the planets, the precession of the equinoxes, 
 the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, and similar facts, 
 can be explained, since all these phenomena are easily 
 understood by any one who has a little knowledge of 
 astronomy." ^ 
 
 We now know upon what presuppositions the Cartesian 
 hypothesis depends, and in what it consists. It would lead 
 us too far from the system itself to show more particularly 
 how Descartes seeks to ground his hypothesis ; how from 
 chaos this so-ordered world, fluid and solid matter, the rotary 
 currents of the fluid matter, the kinds of matter and heav- 
 enly bodies, arise according to the laws of motion. He 
 assumes that matter in its original condition was distributed 
 in a certain uniform manner ; that in some places its parts 
 had a rotary motion, by means of which fluid masses were 
 formed which revolved around a common centre, while each 
 of their little particles moved about its own centre, from 
 which proceeded the distinction of central and peripheric 
 masses ; that the rotating and difi'erently shaped molecules, 
 by their mutual contact and friction, changed their con- 
 figuration, blunted their corners, and gradually rounded 
 them oif in such a way that they assumed the spherical form 
 
 1 Princ, iii. sec. 30. " lb., iii. sees. 31-37. 
 
402 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of globules; that thus intervals arose which had to be filled 
 up, and were immediately filled up by yet smaller and more 
 rapidly moving particles, which decreased in size through 
 that mutual blunting and rounding off of the molecules; 
 that the excess of the thus resulting waste was driven into 
 the centres of the rotary currents, and constituted the 
 material out of which the central masses (^fixed stars') were 
 formed, while the surrounding masses, moving in concentric 
 spheres, shaped in their smallest parts in the form of a 
 globule, constituted the space of the heavens. From the 
 laws of motion it follows that every body having a circular 
 motion, like a stone in a sling, constantly tends to fly off from 
 the centre, and proceed in a straight line. Every particle of 
 the central masses and the matter of the heavens has this 
 centrifugal tendency, and in this light consists. The kinds 
 of matter and the classes of the heavenly bodies are distin- 
 guished in reference to light. The heavenly bodies are 
 either luminous, transparent, or opaque. The central bodies 
 (fixed stars and suns) are luminous ; the heavens are trans- 
 parent; the wandering stars (the planets and comets, the 
 earth and the moon) are opaque. There are, accordingly, 
 three kinds of matter or elements : the first are those smallest 
 and most rapidly moving particles, of which luminous bodies 
 consist ; the second the spherical molecules which form the 
 material of the heavens ; the third the coarser matter, moved 
 with greater difSculty because of its size and form, which 
 constitutes the material of the wandering stars. Ether is 
 that subtile matter which fills every apparently empty space, 
 and is the lightest and most easily moved of all the kinds of 
 matter, and is always in rapid motion.' 
 
 When Descartes expressly says that his hypothesis for 
 explaining the system of the universe not only may be, but 
 in certain respects is, false, he plainly wished to protect him- 
 self from the fate of Galileo. For, according to the experi- 
 ence of Galileo, it was not enough to announce his theory of 
 
 1 Princ, ill. sees. 54-64. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 403 
 
 the universe as a mere hypothesis : it must be declared to be 
 erroneous. Descartes made this declaration of his own 
 accord beforehand, to avoid being compelled to make it 
 afterwards. He acknowledged his error, because, as he 
 said, his explanation conflicted with the biblical account of 
 creation. The Bible asserts that the order of the heavenly- 
 bodies was created ; while he explained it as gradually arising 
 according to purely mechanical laws, in order to make it 
 comprehensible by man.' 
 
 This equivocation is to be charged to the account of the 
 time and his character, and, after the detailed discussions of 
 that point in our history of his life, needs no further vindica- 
 tion or justification. In the attempt to explain the origin of 
 the system of the world by purely mechanical laws lies the 
 importance of Descartes' philosophy of nature. That was 
 the object of his first work, which, for reasons with which the 
 reader is already acquainted, remained unpublished, and was 
 lost as far as the essay on light. Its essential contents are 
 contained in the two last books of the " Principles ; " and we 
 may fairly suppose, that, after the publication of this work, 
 that of the " Monde " was superfluous. 
 
 But as to the relation of our philosopher to modern 
 astronomy, particularly to Copernicus and Galileo, a definite 
 judgment can now be pronounced. He did not mention 
 Kepler's great discoveries, and probably was not acquainted 
 with them. The geocentric hypothesis of Tycho he rejected. 
 If one explains the heavens as rotating about the earth, and 
 correctly understands motion in its relative and reciprocal 
 sense, he must ascribe far more motion to the earth in re- 
 lation to the heavens on the theory of Tycho than even 
 Copernicus maintained.^ 
 
 Descartes teaches that the motion of the planets is helio- 
 centric, and that the earth is a planet : he teaches its daily 
 revolution on its axes, and its yearly motion about the sun 
 in an elliptic orbit. He, therefore, agrees essentially with 
 
 1 Princ, iii. sees. 43-45. " lb., iii. sees. 38, 39. 
 
404 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Copernicus and Galileo. But he bases his theory on me- 
 chanical laws of a different sort from those maintained by 
 Galileo. We have already become acquainted with his mode 
 of proof; it is a deduction from his principles; and whatever 
 may be its validity and truth, the difference between him 
 and Galileo is in no wise a pretence. That Descartes also 
 denied the motion of the earth, in a certain sense follows 
 from his concept of motion which he had to apply to the 
 heavenly bodies. In all these paints, without ignorance of 
 the matter, there can be no talk of any kind of accommodation. 
 The Cartesian denial of the motion of the earth has nothing 
 whatever in common with the ecclesiastical : rather is it 
 completely opposed to it. Descartes affirmed that motion of 
 the earth which the Church, the Bible, Ptolemy, and common 
 opinion denied. For all that he said, " You see that in terms 
 I deny the motion of the earth, while in reality I maintain 
 the system of Copernicus." He affirms the heliocentric 
 motion of the earth, and that is the only question at issue. 
 It would have been more than sophistical if he had sought, 
 in opposition to Galileo, to appear to maintain the rest of the 
 earth, in agreement with the Church, or out of deference to it. 
 Perhaps it would not have been disagreeable to Descartes 
 if the world, and particularly the authorities of the Church, 
 had deceived themselves concerning this point of his doc- 
 trine. But that he sought to deceive any one concerning it, is 
 false, and can only be believed by those who are miac- 
 quainted with his works. Of the accommodation, therefore, 
 with which he is charged, only so much remains : Descartes, 
 after he had openly and honorably presented and established 
 his doctrine, declared that his hypothesis was false so far as 
 it conflicted with the faith of the Church. He acted as Gali- 
 leo did, except that he anticipated the retraction with a view 
 of avoiding chicanes.' 
 
 4. Emptiness and the Pressure of the Atmosphere. — The 
 conviction that empty space is impossible, and that all 
 
 1 Cf. book i. chap. v. pp. 230-235. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, ETC. 405 
 
 motions in nature can only be produced by external, material 
 causes and their immediate influence, i.e., by pressure and 
 impact, necessarily led Descartes to fundamentally deny 
 with the vacuum, also the so-called " horror vacui " of nature, 
 — a conception which still prevailed among the physicists 
 of his generation, — and to declare it one of the greatest 
 of errors. It is just as false to affirm the reality of empty 
 space as to deny it with the Peripatetics on the ground that 
 nature abhors a vacuum, and will not, therefore, permit it. 
 It is to unite both errors to limit the " horror vacui " to a 
 certain degree, as did the advanced physicists of Descartes' 
 time, that in spite of it a certain void might exist in nature. 
 By such hypotheses they sought to explain the ascent of 
 fluids, as water in the bore of a pump, and quicksilver in a 
 tube. Descartes opposed to the assumption of emptiness 
 his subtile matter (ether), by reason of which there could be 
 no vacuum anywhere. This was the point of controversy 
 between him and Blaise Pascal, who denied the existence of 
 his subtile matter, and maintained the reality of a void, on 
 the ground of a moderate horror vacui. 
 
 When we perceive motions or rest, without at the same 
 time being able to perceive their material causes, we are 
 inclined to believe that no causes whatever are present. 
 Thus, the motion of the atmosphere, the pressure which it 
 exerts on all bodies which it surrounds and touches, is a con- 
 stantly acting cause, however little the moving mass falls 
 under the observation of senses. Descartes insisted that for 
 the actual explanation of certain phenomena of the motion of 
 fluid bodies, the pressure of the atmosphere (weight of the air) 
 must be supposed instead of empty space and the horror of a 
 vacuum. Even in the dialogue of Galileo, he met the as- 
 sumption of the " horror vacui " where the cause of the phe- 
 nomenon should have been sought in the weight of the air, 
 and criticised it in the observations which he made on that 
 work in a letter written in October, 1638. Nine years later, 
 in a conversation with Pascal, he advised him to convince him- 
 
406 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 self by an experiment of the nullity of emptiness and the 
 reality of atmospheric pressure, by noting the height of quick- 
 silver in a tube at the foot, and also at the top, of a very 
 high mountain. He would find, that, as he went higher up 
 the mountain, the column of quicksilver would fall, in con- 
 sequence of the decreasing pressure of the atmosphere. He 
 could easily have this experiment performed in Auvergne, 
 where he resided. The experiment was made on the Puy-de- 
 D8me, and confirmed what Descartes predicted without hav- 
 ing made the experiment. Pascal, however, did not mention 
 this circumstance, and also gave the philosopher no account 
 of the success of that experiment. Descartes attributed this 
 unreasonable conduct to the hostile influence of Roberval, 
 who was the friend of Pascal, and hence made a profession 
 of enmity to Descartes.' 
 
 As to the matter itself, the priority of the discovery can- 
 not be claimed for Descartes. The experiment which he 
 recommended to Pascal in the summer of 1647, consists in 
 the barometrical measurement of altitudes ; and the barome- 
 ter was invented by Toricelli some years before (1643). 
 But Descartes was before acquainted with the law upon 
 which the invention rests, as his letters in the years 1631 
 and 1638 show. And not even the testimony of his letters 
 is required, since the law necessarily follows from his princi- 
 ples, as we have seen. Applied to the motion of floating 
 bodies (solid bodies in water), the invention which goes by 
 the name of the Cartesian diver could easily be made and 
 explained by the activity and modifications of the pressure of 
 the air. 
 
 1 Concerning Descartes' doctrine of the pressure of the atmosphere, com- 
 pare his letters, June 2, 1631, and October, 1638, to Mersenne (concerning Gali- 
 leo), and those of June 11 and August 17, 1649, to Carcavi (concerning Pascal). 
 CEuvres, vi. p. 204 ; vii.p. 436 ; x. pp. 343, 351. Millet : Descartes, etc., il. pp. 
 214-2J0. See above, book ii. chap. vii. pp. 270, 271. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 407 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 UNION OP SOUL AND BODY. — PASSIONS OP THE SOUL.— 
 NATURAL AND MORAL LIPS OP MAN. 
 
 I. ANTHROPOLOGICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 1. Meaning and Extent of the Problem. 
 
 rr^HERE yet remains a problem after the fundamental 
 -•- questions of metaphysics are answered. These relate 
 to the existence of God and the mind and body, and require 
 their clear and distinct knowledge, i.e., the determination of 
 their reality and essence ; and this is only evident when it is 
 conceived without any mingling with its opposite. The be- 
 ing of God required to be apprehended independently of all 
 finite and imperfect things ; that of the mind, independently 
 of the body ; that of the body, independently of the mind. 
 Both, therefore, must be considered as completely opposite 
 substances, the mind merely as a thinking, the body merely as 
 an extended, being ; the processes of the mind only as modes 
 or kinds of thought ; the processes of body only as modes or 
 kinds of extension, i.e., as motions. God, as the real ground 
 of all things, must, in reference to the mind, be regarded as 
 the original source of knowledge, and, in reference to body, 
 as the original source of motion. 
 
 If, now, there are processes of a mental nature which are 
 united with certain motions in such a manner that the former 
 cannot exist without the latter, we have a fact before us 
 which involves a new problem. Such a fact cannot be 
 explained by the dualism of mind and body, that funda- 
 mental concept of Descartes' philosophical principles. The 
 
408 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 new problem, therefore, is not metaphysical. A union of 
 mind and body can only take place in a being which consists 
 of them both. We ourselves are this being, and certainly 
 among all finite substances only we, since we are thinking 
 natures, and as such we immediately and, therefore, with 
 absolute certainty, know our own being and existence. We 
 are likewise united with a body which we conceive as ours. 
 Our sense-perceptions prove that there are bodies without 
 us ; our affections and natural impulses, that one of them is 
 ours. "Nature teaches me nothing more explicitly than 
 that I have a body, with which it stands ill when I feel pain, 
 and which needs food and drink when I suffer hunger and 
 thirst. I cannot doubt that there is something real in these 
 feelings. Those affections and impulses make it clear to me 
 that I am not in my body like a pilot in a ship, but that I 
 am united with it in the closest manner, and, as it were, 
 mingled with it so that we constitute one being in a certain 
 measure. Otherwise I should not feel pain by reason of my 
 mental nature when my body is injured, but should perceive 
 this injury merely in an intellectual way, as the captain 
 perceives any damage to his ship. If the body needed food 
 and drink, I should apprehend these states without having 
 the unclear feelings of hunger and thirst. These feelings are, 
 in fact, obscure conceptions, which proceed from the union 
 and, as it were, mingling, of the mind with the body." 
 Among all knowable minds, the mind of man is the only one 
 which is united with body; and, therefore, the new problem 
 is anthropological?- 
 
 The nature of the mind consists in thought ; true knowl- 
 edge in clear and distinct thought, which is both striven for 
 and obtained by the absolute power of the will as well as 
 hindered and prevented thereby. Genuine freedom of the 
 will seeks true knowledge, and acts according to it. In this 
 the human mind fulfils its nature and its destiny .^ In the 
 union with the body, its clearness is obscured, and its free- 
 
 1 M^d., vi. pp. 335, 336. = Cf. book ii. chap. v. pp. 366, 367. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 409 
 
 dom limited : it is, therefore, itself in a condition which is 
 not conformable to its nature. Now, freedom of the will and 
 clearness of thought appear as a goal to be reached, as a 
 work to be done, as a problem to be solved, and only solved 
 by a proper exercise of the power of the will. Thus, the 
 anthropological problem comprehends that of ethics. 
 
 Nevertheless, this union of the mind with the body is, in 
 its way, also according to nature, since it is grounded in the 
 order of things. We cannot, therefore, regard our bodily 
 life in Platonic fashion, as a decree or punishment due to a 
 fall from the spirit world, and desire for the enjoyments of 
 earth, but as the result of natural laws. But if the union 
 of mind and body is in harmony with the laws of nature, it 
 cannot even in reference to the mind be considered as con- 
 trary to nature, however little it conforms to the essence of 
 the mind. We must, rather, with the naturalness acknowl- 
 edge also the Tightness of that union, and of every thing 
 that necessarily follows from it, as impulses, inclinations, 
 passions, etc. All these activities of human nature are, as 
 such, good and necessary conditions or instruments of 
 spiritual life. If they check and darken the latter, this is 
 not the fault of nature, but of the will. Its original direc- 
 tion is not false, and the deviation from it is our error. Its 
 natural character is not bad, but the degeneracy of it because 
 of our will. What comes to pass in the dual nature of man 
 requires to be naturally explained and morally vindicated; 
 i.e., its worth in freeing the mind must be apprehended. It 
 is particularly the passions which Descartes regards from a 
 purely natural point of view, convinced that he thus con- 
 siders them from an entirely new point of view. " How defec- 
 tive are the sciences which the ancients have handed down to 
 us, is nowhere more evident than in their treatment of the 
 passions. For as much attention as has been given to this 
 subject, and as easy as it is to be understood, since every 
 one can discover the nature of the passions in himself with- 
 out tany observation of outward things, the doctrines of the 
 
410 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ancients concerning it are so inadequate and uncertain that 
 I am obliged to entirely forsake the usual paths in order to 
 approach the truth with some confidence. I must write, 
 therefore, as if I had to do with a subject that no one has 
 considered before me." With these words, Descartes begins 
 his essay on the passions of the soul. " My intention is," 
 says he in the prefatory letter, " to treat the passions of the 
 soul, not as a preacher, also not as a moral philosopher, but 
 only as a physicist." • 
 
 2. The Cardinal Point of tJie Problem. — Now, if Descartes 
 regards the passions as the principal object of consideration 
 in anthropology, he must find here the characteristic expres- 
 sion of human (mental-bodily) life, the ground of the knowl- 
 edge of man's dual nature. The explanation of this fact is 
 for him the cardinal point of the problem of psycliology. As 
 motion is related to body, so is passion to man : as there the 
 concept of motion had first of all to be more precisely 
 determined, so we must here ascertain in what the nature of 
 passion consists. 
 
 • It is at once evident that all the passions are of a passive 
 nature. Nevertheless, every thing of a passive nature is not 
 passion. In opposition to the nature of body, the nature of 
 mind consists in self-activity, the source and power of which 
 is in the will. Everj^ thing, therefore, which takes place in 
 us without being willed by us, is, in the widest sense, of a 
 passive nature. Of this nature are all involuntary functions, 
 even the apprehensions or perceptions which we form and 
 experience independently of every act of self-determination 
 and choice. Some of these perceptions are inner, and relate 
 merely to the mind, as the involuntary apprehension of our 
 thoughts and volitions. Our thinking nature is not passive, 
 but the apprehension of it is so far as this forces itself upon 
 us of itself, and we are compelled to be aware of it. There 
 are other perceptions which relate merely to body, either our 
 
 1 Les passions de I'&me, part 1. art. i, R^p. k la lettre, ii. (Euvres, t. iv. 
 pp. 34-38. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 411 
 
 own or those that are external to it. To these belong the 
 feelings due to our senses or our sensations, as colors, sounds, 
 etc. ; the bodily affections, as pleasure and pain ; the bodily 
 impulses, as hunger and thirst. All these perceptions, inner 
 and outer, are of a passive nature, but are not passions in 
 the strict sense of the term. We are passive in them, but 
 not impassioned.! 
 
 There is a third class of passive states, which belongs 
 neither to the mind alone, nor to the body alone, but to both 
 at the same time, — states in which the soul itself suffers under 
 the influence and concurrence of the body. It can remain 
 indifferent in seeing and hearing, hunger and thirst, but not 
 in joy and anger. It alone is susceptible of joy and sorrow, 
 love and hate ; but it could not be if it were destitute of a 
 body. Passion consists in this kind of passive experience. 
 It would be impossible for the passions to be able to arouse, 
 animate, and affect our souls as powerfully as they do if they 
 were not mental forces. It would be impossible for them to 
 have such capacity as they have to obscure and confuse the 
 mind, if they were not at the same time of a bodily nature. 
 They are states of the mind, not such as are produced by its 
 free energy, but which attack it and lay hold of it without 
 any exercise of the will. They are states of feeling, but not 
 such 'as exist in the body, but in the soul. They are, in a 
 word, emotions of the mind QSmotions de Vdme'), in which both 
 natures are mingled, the mental and bodily. " One can 
 define them as perceptions or feelings or emotions of the 
 soul, which appertain to it peculiarly, and are caused, sus- 
 tained, and strengthened by the activity of the animal 
 spirits." 2 
 
 3. The Passions as Fundamental Phenomena of the Human 
 Soul. — From this it is evident what importance Descartes 
 ascribes to the fact of the passions. He regards them as 
 fundamental phenomena, as the third and most important, 
 
 1 Les passions, i. arts, xix., xxiii., xxiv. 
 
 2 lb., i. arts, xxv., xxvii.-xxix. 
 
412 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 besides thought (will) and motion. Understanding and will 
 are possible only in the mind ; motion, only in the body ; the 
 passions only in man, who unites mind and body, in himself. 
 Thought requires nothing but mind, motion nothing but 
 body : the passions, on the other hand, require the union of 
 both. The dual nature of man is the only real ground of the 
 passions : the passions are the only ground of the knowledge of 
 the dual nature of man, which is not so evident from the 
 fact of sensations and natural impulses. To understand why 
 Descartes allows this importance only to the passions, and 
 regards sense-perceptions and desires, on the other hand, 
 merely as bodily processes, we must bring before our minds 
 the foundation of his entire doctrine. From his stand-point, ^ 
 there is, so far as our knowledge extends, but one body which 
 is united with a mind, or animated with a soul ; and that is 
 the human body. All other bodies, even animals, are mere 
 machines, destitute of mind and soul. The soul is the mind ; 
 and the reality of the latter is evident onlj'- from its certainty 
 of itself, and coincides with that. Without self-consciousness, 
 there is no thought, no mind, no soul. Animals have no 
 self-consciousness, and, therefore, no souls: they are, hence, 
 nothing but moved bodies, or automata. But they have sen- 
 sations and impulses ; and, hence, these must be regarded as 
 bodily motions, governed by purely mechanical laws, by 
 which they must be explained. Animals feel, but they have 
 no souls: the former is an undeniable fact, and the latter a 
 necessary inference, in the system of Descartes. It is certain 
 that animals see and hear, hunger and thirst : it is just as 
 certain that they have no clear and distinct knowledge, no 
 self-consciousness, and, therefore, according to Descartes' 
 principles, neither mind nor soul. It only remains, accord- 
 ingly, to regard sensations and impulses in general, and, 
 therefore, even in man, as mechanical processes, having noth- 
 ing in common with psychical activities. Thus, Descartes 
 finds no fact which reveals to him the union of mind and 
 body except the passions. One can ask whether the passions 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 413 
 
 are not also of an animal nature, and whether sensations and 
 impulses are not also of a psychical nature ; one can dis- 
 pute the Cartesian theses, which deny both, and even doubt 
 whether the philosopher himself remained, and could remain 
 entirely, true to them ; but we have no right to question that 
 he taught them, and was obliged to teach them, in conse- 
 quence of his principles. The examination of this point is 
 not now our purpose. We have as yet to do only with the 
 exposition and proof of the system, and to follow the paths 
 which Descartes trod. When we estimate his doctrine, we 
 shall return to those questions, and then we shall examine 
 them carefully. ^ 
 
 n. THE UNION OF THE SOIJL AND BODY. 
 
 1. The Mechanism of Life. — So far as the life of man is 
 lil^e that of animals, it must be explained bj' purely mechan- 
 ical and physical causes, particularly motion and warmth. 
 It has been falsely supposed that the soul moves and Avarms 
 the body, and is, therefore, also the physical principle of life. 
 For every flame proves that it is not the soul which imparts 
 motion and warmth to the body. And if the human body 
 becomes stiff and cold after death, it suffers this change, not 
 because it ceases to be animated by a soul, or because the 
 soul has left it. The living body is not, as such, animated 
 with a soul ; for if so, animals would have souls, and this con- 
 flicts with the principles of Descartes' doctrine. Life does 
 not consist in the union of soul and body; death, not in 
 their separation. Life is not the product which produces 
 soul, but the presupposition under which the soul enters 
 into a union with body, the condition without which such 
 a union cannot take place. The truth of the matter is, 
 therefore, the direct reverse of the usual opinion. Not 
 because the body is animated with a soul is it, therefore, 
 alive, but, because it lives, it can be animated with a soul. 
 The body is not stiff and cold because the soul leaves it, but 
 the soul leaves it because it is dead. Death is the destrue- 
 
414 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion of life, and is a necessary result of physical causes. 
 Life is mechanism : death is the destruction of that mech- 
 anism, and results when the living body suffers such an 
 injury that the whole machine stops. To the error which 
 makes the soul the principle of life, Descartes opposes the 
 following explanation : " Death never enters because the 
 soul is absent, but because one of the important organs of 
 the body is destroyed. We can, therefore, decide that the 
 body of a living man differs from that of one who is dead, 
 exactly as does a watch (or an automaton of any kind ; 
 i.e., a machine moved by itself) which has in itself the 
 material principle of the motions which it is to perform, 
 along with all the conditions necessary to its activity, and, 
 when it is wound up, goes, — from one that is broken, in 
 which the moving principle ceases to be active." ^ 
 
 The soul can be united only with a living body. Since 
 it is of a mental nature, also, among finite beings so 
 far as they are kuowable by us, exclusively of a human 
 nature, this union can only take place with the body of 
 man. 
 
 The human body, like that of animals, is a machine. Its 
 principle of life is the fireplace in it which prepares the 
 warmth of life, and imparts it to the whole organism, — 
 fire, whose material is the blood, and whose place is the 
 heart. Harvey's great discovery of the motion of the blood 
 and heart of animals explained this fundamental princi- 
 ple in the mechanism of life, and made an epoch in the 
 history of biology. Descartes became acquainted with it 
 when he was finishing his " Cosmos," and absorbed in the 
 investigation of the human body, and had come by his own 
 path to a like conclusion. This doctrine appeared to him so 
 important, and so great and evident a triumph of the 
 mechanical physics and of the scientific method in general, 
 that he expounded it as an example of the latter in the 
 fifth part of his " Discours," and, referring to Harvey's fa- 
 
 1 Les passions, i. arts, iv.-vl. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 415 
 
 mous discovery, explained the motion of the heart and 
 the circulation of the blood through the arteries and 
 veins.' 
 
 According to these fundamental conditions, Descartes dis- 
 cusses the remaining parts and function of the machine of 
 the animal-human body. The organs of motion are the 
 muscles, those of feeling are the nerves. The heart is the 
 central organ of the blood and its motion, that of the nerves 
 is the brain. Descartes represents an organ as acting be- 
 tween the two, whose origin and activity he characterizes as 
 the most remarkable phenomenon of life. The finest, most 
 mobile, most fiery particles of the blood, which are produced 
 in the heart by a kind of distillation, ascend by mechanical 
 laws through the arteries into the brain, and are led from 
 thence to the nerves, and, through these, to the muscles. 
 They cause feeling and motion in those organs, and, there- 
 fore, administer the real functions of life ; and hence Des- 
 cartes calls them animal spirits (esprits animaux). "The 
 most remarkable fact in these things is the origin of animal 
 spirits, which are like a very fine wind, or, better, a very 
 pure and active flame, which constantly ascends in the great- 
 est abundance from the heart into the brain, and goes thence 
 through the nerves into the muscles, and imparts motion to 
 all the members. But why the most mobile and the finest 
 particles of blood, which, as such, make the best material for 
 the aniiflal spirits, go rather to the brain than elseAvhere, is 
 very simply explained by the fact that the arteries, which 
 carry them to the brain, ascend from the heart in the most 
 direct line ; and if several things are striving to move at the 
 same time in the same direction, while, as in the case of the 
 particles of the blood, which strive to go to the brain from 
 the left ventricle of the heart, there is not room enough for 
 all, it follows from the laws of mechanics, which are identical 
 with the laws of nature, that the weaker and less mobile must 
 
 1 Disc, de la m^th., part v. CEuvr., i. pp. 174-184. Lea passions, 1. art. vii. 
 See book i, chap. v. pp. 230. 
 
416 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 give place to those that are stronger, and that these alone 
 must make their way to the brain." ' 
 
 In like manner, all our involuntary motions, as in general 
 all the activities which we have in common with animals, 
 depend only upon the arrangement of our organs and the 
 motion of our animal spirits, which, excited by the warmth 
 of the heart, take their natural course into the brain, and 
 thence into the nerves and muscles, in the same manner 
 as the motion of a watch is produced only by the force of 
 its spring and the form of its wheels.^ 
 
 2. The Organ of the Soul. — The human body is a very 
 complicated machine, whose parts, as the heart, brain, stom- 
 ach, arteries, veins, muscles, nerves, etc., are in universal 
 interaction, mutually preserving each other, and constituting 
 a community in which each serves, and suffers with, the 
 other. This machine forms a whole, and each of its parts 
 is an organ of the whole ; its parts, therefore, are not merely 
 aggregated, but articulated ; the community or complex of 
 organs constitutes an organism, or articulated machine. An 
 organism is, therefore, a particular kind of machine. It is a 
 machine whose parts form themselves, and combine of their 
 own accord, and constitute, therefore, no mere aggregate, but 
 a unity or a whole. Descartes is so in earnest with this defi- 
 nition, the characteristic of the organism, that he says of the 
 living body directly, " It is one, and in a certain sense indi- 
 visible.'''' The soul, therefore, if it is to be united with the 
 human body, cannot merely dwell in one of its parts, but 
 must be present to the whole organism. For since every part 
 of the living body is connected with every other, none can 
 enter into an exclusive union with the soul ; and since this, 
 by reason of its nature, has nothing in common with exten- 
 sion and divisibility, it is impossible for it to enter into ex- 
 clusive union with one part of the organism.^ 
 
 But it can very well be especially united with one of the 
 
 1 Disc, de la mdth., part v. pp. 183, 184. Les passions, i. arts, x.-xiii. 
 
 2 Les passions, i. art. xvi. ' lb., i. art. xxx. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 417 
 
 organs : indeed, there must be — in view of that fundamental 
 difference of the two substances, which does not permit their 
 immediate union — a particular organ through which the soul 
 has intercourse with the whole organism. Since the princi- 
 pal question in relation to the two substances is how motions 
 in the organs are transformed into sensation and perception, 
 and sensation and perception into motion, it is easy to see 
 that it is the animal spirits, those agents of sensation and 
 motion, which are the medium of intercourse between soul 
 and body. In the motion of the animal spirits, there are 
 two centres, the heart and the brain ; in the former, they are 
 produced ; to the latter they ascend, and from thence act 
 upon the organs. If, therefore, the soul carries on its inter- 
 course with the organism by means of the animal spirits, it 
 must be especially connected with one of the two central 
 organs. The more precise answer of the question is self- 
 evident. Since the peculiar action of the animal spirits goes 
 out from the brain, this only can be the sfjecial organ ; and 
 in this, to use Descartes' expression, must the "seat of the 
 soul " be sought. 
 
 The place of the peculiar organ of the soul is in the central 
 organ of the nerves, itself also central and lying in the mid- 
 dle of the brain, where the animal spirits from the two parts 
 of the brain, the anterior and posterior cavities, commune 
 with each other, and where motion can be most easily caused 
 by them, and they themselves can move most easily. It is 
 the pineal gland, or conarion, which Descartes explains as the 
 real organ of the soul. He finds, besides, a particular reason 
 in support of his hypothesis. The impressions upon the 
 senses of sight and hearing are dual, like the organs by 
 means of which they are received ; while the object perceived, 
 like our presentation of it, is single, which would not be 
 possible unless a union of the double impressions was effected 
 in the central organ. It appears necessary, therefore, that 
 an organ should exist in the brain to receive the double im- 
 pressions, and that this organ should be single in its nature. 
 
418 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Descartes finds this organ in the pineal gland, which he, 
 therefore, regards as the principal seat (^principal siege) of 
 the soul, as that part of the human body with which it is 
 united most closely (Jtroitement'). The central position and 
 singleness of that part of the brain were the reasons which 
 persuaded the philosopher to localize there the psychical 
 activity so far as it receives and causes bodily impressions.^ 
 
 By the connection between soul and body, as that now is 
 obvious, the natural origin of the passions is explained. The 
 received impression is changed by the activity of the soul 
 into presentation and motive. If such an impression is ex- 
 perienced as something hurtful to our life, as, for example, 
 when we see a wild animal rushing upon us, there arises a 
 conception of danger along with the presentation of the 
 object. Without a conscious exercise of volition, the will 
 bestirs itself to protect the body, whether by attack or flight. 
 Involuntarily, accordingly, that organ of the soul is affected, 
 and that impulse is given to the course of the animal spirits, 
 which disposes the limbs either for a battle or flight. The 
 disposition to resist is courage, that to flee is fear. Courage 
 and fear are not sense-impressions, but impulses of the will : 
 they are not mere conceptions, but emotions of the mind, or 
 passions. The motion, which in such emotions is felt in the 
 heart, as little proves that the passions have their seat in 
 the heart, as a painful sensation in the foot proves that pain 
 is in the foot, or the sight of the stars in the vault of the 
 heavens points out their true place.^ 
 
 3. The Will and the Passions. — This explanation of the 
 passions by the mental-bodily nature of man is, by the as- 
 sumption which it makes, and the principle of its explanation, 
 very characteristic of the doctrine of Descartes. By the help 
 of the animal spirits and the organ of the soul, which is, he 
 maintains, the pineal gland, the philosopher seeks to prove 
 the origin of the passions in a purely mechanical way. In this 
 
 • Les passions, i. arts, xxxi., xxxii., xxxiv., xli, 
 2 lb., i. art. xxxiii., xxxv., xxxvi., xl. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 419 
 
 lies the central point and the novelty of his attempt ; and it 
 was this which Descartes had in mind, when, in the very 
 beginning of his work, he declared, that, in his doctrine of 
 the passions, he had been obliged to entirely leave the beaten 
 paths, and that he intended to discuss them, not as a preacher 
 or a philosopher, but merely as a physicist. The passions 
 had been previously considered merely as psychical processes, 
 and it had not been seen that they contain factors of a purely 
 bodily character. Now, since they master the soul, and de- 
 prive it of its freedom for the time being, and, therefore, 
 militate against its nature, the psychological explanation 
 knew not how to help itself except by a division of the soul 
 into higher and lower powers, into a higher and lower appe- 
 titive faculty, into a rational and irrational soul, to which 
 latter it ascribed the passions. Thus, the soul was divided 
 into different parts, and it was held to consist, as it were, of 
 different persons or souls: its unity and indivisibility were 
 abandoned, and thereby its nature completely denied. This 
 is the point which Descartes attacked and characterized as 
 the confusion in which all of the earlier theories of the soul 
 were involved. 
 
 It is true that reason fights with the passions, that it can 
 gain the victory or be overcome in this conflict, that in 
 human nature two powers fall into a struggle, the stronger 
 of which gains the victory. But it is a false explanation of 
 this fact to say that that fight takes place in the mental 
 nature of man, and that this rises against itself as it were. 
 In truth, the conflict takes place between two motions of 
 opposite direction, which are communicated to the organ of 
 the soul, — the one from the side of the body by the animal 
 spirits, the other from the side of the soul by the will. That 
 is involuntary, and is determined by bodily impressions alone : 
 this is voluntary, and is motived by the intention which the 
 will decides. Those bodily impressions which stir up the 
 moving animal spirits in the organ of the soul, and through 
 this in the soul itself, are here transformed into presenta- 
 
420 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tions of sense, which either leave the will at rest, as is the 
 case in the usual perception of objects, or, by their immedi- 
 ate relation to our existence, disturb and move the will. 
 Presentations of the first kind are passionless, and there is 
 no reason for opposing them. Those of the second class, on 
 the other hand, necessarily excite passion, since they rush 
 violently upon the will, and provoke its counter-action. The 
 attack upon the will follows from bodily causes : it neces- 
 sarily results from natural and mechanical laws, and in its 
 strength consists the power of the passions. The re-action 
 of the will is free : it acts with mental power, in itself desti- 
 tute of passion, and is, therefore, able to oppose and master 
 the passions. In this strength consists the power over 
 the passions. Assaulted by the impressions of the animal 
 spirits, the soul can suffer fear, and, strengthened by its own 
 will, have courage, and master the fear with which passion 
 at first filled it. It can give the organ of the soul, and 
 thereby the animal spirits, the opposite direction, by reason 
 of which the limbs move to battle, though fear urges them 
 to flight. It is now clear what powers fight with each other 
 in the passions. What has been regarded as a conflict 
 between the higher and lower nature of the soul, between 
 reason and desire, between the thinking and sensitive soul, 
 is in truth a conflict between the body and the soul, between 
 passion and will, between natural necessity and the freedom 
 of the will, between nature (matter) and mind.' Even the 
 weakest minds can, by their influence upon the organ of the 
 soul, become luaster of and direct the motion of the animal 
 spirits, and through them the progress of the passions, in 
 such a way that they are able to control them completely .^ 
 
 The mechanical origin of the passions does not prevent, 
 but is rather the basis of, their moral results. The freedom 
 of the mind requires to be won by a hard struggle, and this 
 can only happen through the subjection of the opposing 
 powers. These opposing powers are the passions, and are, 
 
 1 Les passions, i. art. xlvii. ^ lb., i. art. 1. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 421 
 
 therefore, necessary conditions of the freeing of the human 
 mind. Therein consists their importance and worth. They 
 •would not be the opposing powers of the will if they did not 
 have their origin in a nature opposed to the mind, and hence 
 the necessity of their mechanical origin. They would not 
 be opposing powers if they were not powerful, i.e., if they 
 could not affect the will ; and that is possible only when body 
 and mind are united as in human nature. Hence, this is 
 regarded as the necessary and only basis for explaining the 
 passions. The foundation is now perfectly clear upon which, 
 within the Cartesian system, the doctrine of the passions 
 rests. The next question is. In what do they consist ? 
 
 III. KINDS OP PASSION. 
 
 1. Fundamental Forms. — We have already distinguished 
 those presentations of sense which are destitute of passion 
 from those of an impassioned character. The ground of an 
 impassioned feeling does not lie in the object as such, but 
 in the interest which our will takes in its existence, or in 
 the way in which the object is related to our existence, and 
 in which we are sensible of this relation. The nature of the 
 latter is infinitely variable, because of the difference of indi- 
 viduals and of the states of our souls at different times. 
 What one regards with fear, another views with contempt, 
 and yet another with indifference. And in the change of 
 our states of life and of our temper of mind, the same object 
 makes upon the same person an impression, now of joy, now 
 of sadness, and now no impression whatever. There is, 
 therefore, an endless variety of passions. Yet from the 
 nature of passionate excitement in general, we can deduce 
 certain simple and necessary forms, which are related to the 
 rest as fundamental forms to their modifications, or as ele- 
 ments (given in the calculations of combinations) to their 
 variations. The fundamental forms, Descartes calls primary 
 or '•'■primitive ; " those derived from, or combined of, them, the 
 special or '■^particular" passions. From this point of view, 
 
422 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 our passions can be distinguished and arranged. What we 
 are emotionally sensible of are not things, but their worth ; 
 i.e., the advantages or injuries which we receive from them, 
 or imagine we receive. It appears that the third case, in 
 which the object is experienced neither as useful nor hurtful, 
 excludes all value, and therefore every excitation of passion. 
 This is not so. There are objects which, merely by their 
 power and novelty, take hold of the mind with irresistible 
 force, without in the least exciting our desires. An impas- 
 sioned excitation is also united with presentations of this 
 kind on account of their involuntary and powerful effect, 
 and this Descartes calls wonder. We see at a glance that 
 this feeling is full of passion, and has neither the usual 
 character of desire, nor, still less, that of indifference. 
 
 What we conceive as useful or beneficial to us appears as 
 something worthy of desire, or as a good ; the opposite of it 
 as an evil^ the destruction of which is desired. We wish to 
 possess the good, and to get rid of the evil. In the first case 
 we wish to possess the object, in the second to be free from 
 it, while we merely look at the admired object, wishing 
 neither to possess nor be rid of it. There are, accordingly, 
 in the first place, two fundamental forms of passion to be 
 distinguished, — wonder and desire. Desire sustains either a 
 positive or negative relation to its object: it wishes to have 
 and preserve the good, and to be rid of and destroy the evil. 
 In the former case it is love, in the latter hate. Now, 
 desired objects are either future or present. The good which 
 is near at hand allures, the imminent evil threatens. In 
 both cases, desire is eager, and consists in the expectant hope 
 or longing for the attainment of a good, and the avoidance 
 of an evil. Since, now, in both cases the opposite can be 
 realized, — since we may fail to attain the good and to avoid 
 the evil, — desire is affected both by hope and fear; i.e., it is 
 positive and negative at the same time. If the objects which 
 excite our desire are present, we either find that we possess 
 the desired good, or that an evil has befallen us. In the 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 423 
 
 first case we are filled with the feeling of joy, in the second 
 with that of sadness. Accordingly, there are the following 
 primitive passions, which lie at the foundation of all the rest, 
 — wonder, love and hate, desire, joy and sadness. Wonder is 
 the only passion which is neither positive nor negative ; the 
 longing for an object is the only desire that is both at the 
 same time ; all the remaining passions are desires either of 
 the one or the other character.^ 
 
 2. Derived or Combined Forms. — We will first consider the 
 desires. We propose to call attention to the most important 
 forms of these particular passions, and to show that they are 
 either combined of some of the given elements, or that they 
 are species of them. 
 
 The fundamental values of the objects which we have 
 characterized as utilities and injuries are infinitely different 
 in degree. There is a measure for determining the strength 
 or greatness of our desires, and for distinguishing certain 
 principal gradations. We love or hate what seems useful 
 or hurtful to us. Our self-love is, accordingly, the measure 
 by means of which our desires for things are to be compared, 
 and the intensity of them estimated. We may love other 
 beings either less than, or as much as, or more than, we do 
 ourselves: our love for an object may be less than, or equal to, 
 or greater than, our self-love. In the first case, it is inclination 
 (^affection} ; in the second, friendship (amitiS') ; in the third, 
 devotion (dSvotion'). What we love in the highest degree, i.e., 
 self-sacrificingly, are the powers upon whom our existence de- 
 pends, and by whom it is conditioned, as God, our country, 
 humanity, etc. Among the objects which excite love and 
 hate in our soul are to be particularly emphasized the beauti- 
 ful and ugly as objects of sensitive delight and repulsion : 
 the love of the beautiful is delight (agriment), the opposite 
 feeling is disgust (horreur). Both passions, because they 
 excite the senses, are the strongest .kinds of love and hate, 
 but also the most deceptive. 
 
 I Les passions, ii. art. Ixix. 
 
424 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Longing (yerlangeri) is desire (begierde), eager to possess 
 the good which is near at hand, and to avoid the imminent 
 evil; passionate and still uncertain hope. This expecta- 
 tion is either hope (espirance') or fear (crainte'), according 
 to the degree of its uncertainty. The highest degree of 
 hope is assurance (sScurite), the highest degree of fear is 
 despair (dSsespoir). Descartes incidentally calls jealousy a 
 species of fear. When the hoped or feared result depends 
 not on external circumstances, but merely on ourselves 
 and our own activity; when we can gain the good, and 
 avoid the evil, merely by our own power, and must choose 
 the means for doing so, perform certain actions, and, there- 
 with, contend with certain difficulties, — hope and fear are 
 modified accordingly. The fear of making a mistake in 
 the choice of means reaches no decision because of the 
 multitude of doubts and questions, and becomes irresolvr 
 Hon. The energetic hope of being able to oppose and over- 
 come the difficulties that lie in the way of the realization of 
 one's plans, is courage (courage^ and daring (Jiardiesse~) ; the 
 opposite feeling, afraid of difficulties, and trembling before 
 them, is cowardice (IdchetS^ and terror (^Spouvante) } 
 
 The presentation of existing goods or evils excites in us 
 the feeling of joy (^joie') or sorrow (tristesse'). If those goods 
 or evils do not relate to us, but to others, it is the happiness 
 or unhappiness of another that rejoices or saddens us. Joy 
 and sorrow, love and hate, are modified accordingly. The 
 rejoicing in the joy of others is good will, sympathy with 
 their misfortunes is pity (^pitii'). When the prosperity of 
 others disturbs us, we experience envy (^envie) ; when we re- 
 joice in their misfortunes, malice. Descartes made these 
 feelings dependent on a moral condition, which ought not to 
 be considered in a physical explanation of the passions. He 
 considers the prosperity and misfortunes of others as de- 
 served or undeserved, the persons in question as worthy or 
 unworthy of them, so that what they experience of good or 
 
 1 Les passions, ii. arts. lyii., lix. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 425 
 
 evil happens to them justly. We have, then, before our eyes, 
 not so much the happy and unhappy, as the deserved, states 
 of others, and rejoice in the just course of things. Only 
 the deserved prosperity of others excites our good will, as the 
 undeserved our envy : only the deserved misfortunes of others 
 excite our malice, as the undeserved our pity. These emo- 
 tions of the mind now appear as right, as so many kinds of 
 our natural feeling of right, whose satisfaction is a source of 
 joy, and whose wounding is painful. Envy and pity belong 
 to the class of sorrowful feelings, good will and pleasure in 
 the misfortunes of others to the feelings of joy. But the two 
 latter are claimed to be different in this, that joy on account 
 of deserved success is serious, while scorn and ridicule (mo- 
 querie) are mingled in the joy on account of deserved misfor- 
 tune.i It is at once evident, that, in the explanation of these 
 passions, Descartes has not kept physical and moral causes 
 enough apart. Right feeling can strengthen our good will 
 and pity, but it has nothing to do with malice and envy. The 
 philosopher has here missed the physical explanation which 
 he promised, and not spoken of the passions " as physicist." 
 
 The good and bad deeds of men are particular classes of 
 useful and hurtful objects, and therefore give rise to partic- 
 ular feelings of joy and sorrow, which take different forms 
 according as we ourselves or others are the authors of those 
 deeds, and the actions of others affect us or not. Joy, on 
 account of our own good, is self-contentedness (satisfaction de 
 soi-mSme') : the opposite feeling is repentance (repentir). The 
 consideration that we gain in the opinion of others through 
 our merits, is fame (gloire') : the opposite thereof is disgrace 
 Qionte). The merits of others awake in us 2k friendly feeling 
 {faveur'), and, if our own well-being is promoted thereby, 
 gratitude (reconnaissance) ; while an evil-doer excites our in- 
 dignation (indignation), and, if he adds injury to ourselves, 
 our anger (colere). The goods and evils which fall to our 
 share are of longer or shorter duration. Long habit dulls 
 
 1 Les passions, ii. arts. Ixi., Ixii. 
 
426 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 feeling, and changes satisfied joy into satiety (dSgoiK), while 
 it gradually diminishes our sadness on account of our losses 
 and injuries. The good and bad times which we experience 
 pass by : we see those vanish with regret (regret), and per- 
 ceive with gladness (allSgresse') the termination of these.^ 
 
 Among the primitive passions, Descartes characterized 
 wonder as the first, and as elevated above the contrariety of 
 the others. We must now enter somewhat more particularly 
 into the nature, and the particular kinds and characteristics, 
 of this passion. It is always called forth by a new and un- 
 usual, a rare and extraordinary, object, the impression of 
 which lays hold of our mind, and is experienced as a surprise. 
 Its power does not gradually increase, but is at once active 
 in all its strength, because it arrests all our habitual impres- 
 sions. Wonder is, therefore, the strongest of all our passions, 
 and, like every surprise, has the character of a sudden eflFect. 
 In all the emotions of the mind, we are involuntarily seized 
 by an object ; but nowhere is this seizure so pure and perfect 
 as in wonder, whose essence it constitutes. Therefore, in a 
 certain manner, somewhat of this mode of feeling is present 
 in all the passions. It may be so powerful as to exclude all 
 opposition, and not merely move the mind, but so chain it 
 that all the animal spirits in the brain rush to the place of 
 the impression, and concentre here, while all the rest of the 
 body is motionless, and we become petrified, as it were, as 
 we gaze at the object. Then wonder passes into amazement 
 (Stonnement'), and degenerates through excess.^ 
 
 So long as we are affected only by the power of the new 
 and unusual impression, we have no consciousness of the 
 usefulness or hurtfulness of the object — which constitutes 
 the fundamental theme of the rest of the passions. Wonder 
 is, therefore, prior to these : it is the first of the passions, and 
 has not, like the others, an opposite. Its real opposite would 
 consist in a state of mind which permits itself to be affected 
 
 ■■ Les passions, ii. arts. Ixiii., Ixvii. 
 " lb., ii. arts. Ixx., Ixxii., Ixxiii. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 427 
 
 by nothing whatever, a state of mind completely passionless 
 in its lack of receptivity to impressions. There is, therefore, 
 no passion opposed to wonder; i.e., it has no opposite. But 
 there are, indeed, differences in, or kinds of, wonder, depend- 
 ent upon the object whose unusualness surprises us, varying 
 according as its extraordinary character consists in its large- 
 ness or its smallness, or as we or other free beings are its 
 object. Descartes calls the two fundamental forms of wonder, 
 esteem (estime) and contempt (mSpris^ ; the corresponding 
 estimate of one's self is either magnanimity (magnanimite) 
 (self-respect) and pride (orgueiV), or humility (liumilitS') 
 and abjectness of disposition (hassesse) (false humility) ; while 
 the surprising impression produced by the greatness or little- 
 ness of others excites our reverence (vSnSration) or contempt 
 (dSdain)} 
 
 Among these kinds of wonder, our estimates of ourselves 
 are the most deserving of notice. Nothing stamps itself 
 more distinctly in the demeanor of a man, in the expression 
 of his countenance, in his gestures and gait, than an extraor- 
 dinarily high or low estimate of himself. In our estimate of 
 ourselves, there is a true and false exaltation of our worth, 
 as there is a true and false disparagement of it. Descartes 
 calls true self-esteem mag^ianimity (niagnanimitJ^, not haugh- 
 tiness, but generosity (gSnSrosite^ : pride, on the other hand, 
 is false self-esteem. Genuine humility he calls humility 
 (humilitS vertueuse} : false humility, on the other hand, is 
 ^^bassesse." Now the criterion is to be determined for dis- 
 tinguishing the true from the false in the intensity and 
 direction of our self-esteem. In general we may remark, that 
 only free beings can be objects of esteem and contempt. 
 Only one object is in truth worthy of esteem, as its opposite 
 is contemptible, — our freedom of the will, by virtue of which 
 reason rules in our nature, and the passions serve. In this 
 free and rational mastery of self, all the moral worth of man 
 consists. It is the only good that no favor of fortune can 
 
 1 Lea pas3ion3, ii. arts, liii.-lv. 
 
428 HISTORY OF MODEKN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 give, but which can be earned only by labor and discipline 
 of the will which each one practises in himself. He who has 
 gained the mastery over himself, possesses that greatness of 
 soul from which that truly high and alone justifiable self- 
 esteem proceeds, that magnanimous disposition which Des- 
 cartes calls gSnSrositS. Nothing is more valuable than this 
 good ; but nothing is more difficult to attain, since one must, 
 in comparison with it, regard the usual goods of life as of 
 no worth, and lift himself high above the weaknesses of 
 human nature. If one struggles earnestly to overcome his 
 own weaknesses, and to divest his freedom of them, he ap- 
 prehends for the first time how numerous they are, and how 
 frail human nature is. Its littleness and covetousness are 
 therefore experienced in the same proportion as greatness of 
 soul is striven for and obtained. True self-esteem goes hand 
 in hand, therefore, with true humility. Only self-esteem that 
 ■does not proceed from the feeling of the greatness and free- 
 dom of one's own will, is false and perverted, as also is any 
 humility that is not based on the feeling of one's own weak- 
 ness of will. Perverted self-esteem is haughtiness or pride, 
 as perverted humility is self-abasement and abjectness of dis- 
 position. As genuine humility is not merely compatible, but 
 necessarily connected, with generosity, so is pride with crin- 
 ging. " Pride is so unreasonable and absurd, that I should 
 scarcely be able to believe that men could stoop to it if so 
 much unmerited praise were not bestowed; but flattery is 
 so general, that every man, however faulty, finds himself 
 praised, not only without any merit, but even for his mean- 
 nesses, and that is why the most ignorant and stupid are 
 proud." " Men of the most abject disposition are frequently 
 the most arrogant and haughty, as great souls are the most 
 modest and humble. These preserve their equanimity in 
 prosperity and misfortune ; while little and base souls depend 
 upon the caprices of fortune, and are puffed up by prosperity, 
 exactly as they are cast down by adversity. We often see, 
 indeed, that these people humble themselves in a disgraceful 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 429 
 
 manner before others who can serve or injure them, and, at 
 the same time, conduct themselves in the most insolent 
 manner towards those from whom they have nothing to 
 hope or to fear." Every energetic or free being can deserve 
 esteem. No man, therefore, is contemptible as such, and 
 least of all because he lacks certain external advantages 
 and gifts of fortune, as talent, beauty, honor, riches, etc. 
 If a man earns our esteem, we are sensible of respect or 
 reverence, which is composed of awe and admiration, while 
 another who deserves our contempt, seems so far below us, 
 that his baseness certainly excites our wonder, but not the 
 least fear.^ 
 
 rv. THE MORAL AIM OF LDi^. 
 
 1. Worth and UnwortJiiness of the Passions. — At this point 
 the doctrine of the soul passes over into the doctrine of morals, 
 and completely illuminates the theme of the latter. To be 
 free is every thing. The freedom of the will, our highest 
 faculty, points out the direction and the goal. The exalta- 
 tion of our spiritual nature above the senses, the freedom of 
 the will, which has in subjection our desires and passions, is 
 the purpose of human life, the highest good, the possession 
 of which alone constitutes our happiness, the only moral 
 worth, the single ground of our self-esteem. Descartes did 
 not expound his doctrine of morals in a special work, but 
 only discussed its principal points, in part in his work on the 
 passions, in part in the letters which he wrote to the Prin- 
 cess Elizabeth on the happy life (criticising and correcting 
 Seneca), and in those designed for the Queen of Sweden on 
 love and the highest good. We have seen the direct connec- 
 tion between those letters and the origin and completion of 
 the work on the passions of the soul.^ 
 
 If the highest good consists in the freedom which masters 
 
 ' Les passions, iii. arts, cxlix.-clxiii. 
 
 2 See book ii. chap. iv. p. 218; chap. viii. pp. 284-291. The letters to Eliza- 
 beth on " beate vivre " are in CEuvves, t. ix. pp. 210-249. 
 
430 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the passions, it cannot be won without a conflict with the 
 latter, and is, therefore, inconceivable without them. If 
 the highest good is of all things the most worthy of desire, it 
 must, in a certain sense, be an object of desire, and there 
 must be a passion which of itself has a moral tendency. It 
 is at these two points in the explanation of the emotions of 
 the mind, that the doctrine of the soul and that of morals 
 interpenetrate. 
 
 All our passions can be reduced to those six primitive 
 ones whose simplest forms are wonder and desire. Even 
 wonder, so far as it desires the conception or consideration 
 of its object, is a desire. In the last analysis, therefore, all 
 our passions are desires, and, as such, the natural motives of 
 our actions. All human action is conditioned by the fact 
 that something is wished or desired, and right action consists 
 in right desiring. If we can determine the latter, we have 
 found the fundamental rule which constitutes the theme of 
 the whole of morals. This fundamental rule is very simple 
 and evident. The possession of all desirable goods is either 
 entirely, or in part, or not at all, dependent upon ourselves ; 
 i.e., upon our own powers. What we cannot acquire by our 
 own activity, we cannot even really possess, and, therefore, 
 also cannot reasonably desire. "We, therefore, desire unrea- 
 sonably what our power is not sufficient to enable us to ac- 
 quire or appropriate, but which, on the contrary, depends 
 upon conditions which lie wholly or in part beyond our power. 
 Our wishes are unreasonable if it is impossible to realize 
 them ; and it is, strictly speaking, impossible when the ne- 
 cessary conditions do not lie within our power. So unrea- 
 sonable are the general wishes of men: they desire most 
 passionately what least depends upon their own energy, the 
 external goods of life, beauty, honor, riches, etc. The rule 
 of knowledge says. Think clearly and distinctly : only that 
 which is clearly and distinctly apprehended is true. The 
 maxim of the will says. Desire clearly and' distinctly : only 
 that which is so desired is good. Wish nothing that thou 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 431 
 
 canst not obtain by thyself alone. Thy highest faculty is 
 freedom. It cannot make thee beautiful, rich, respected, 
 powerful, successful, in the eyes of the world, but only free : 
 it makes thee, not a master of things, but only of thyself. 
 Wish not to be more ! Let the only good which thou desirest 
 be this mastery over thyself: let it be the only goal of thy 
 efforts, the single object of thy admiration ! All other wishes 
 are vain ! ^ 
 
 2. The Worth of Wonder. — Right action, accordingly, is 
 dependent upon a true knowledge of our strength and weak- 
 ness. From the knowledge of the first springs the feeling of 
 our true and attainable nobility ; from that of the second, 
 genuine humility. Nothing is more conducive to the latter 
 than the consideration of the immeasurable universe, in 
 which man is not the centre and purpose of things, but a 
 vanishing point, too weak to alter the course of things 
 according to his wishes. " Because the passions impel us to 
 action only through the desires which they excite, our desires 
 must be regulated ; and therein consists the most important 
 use of morality." "We have two resources against idle 
 wishes: the first is a lofty and true estimate of one's self 
 (c/enSrositS'), of which I shall speak later; the other, the 
 thought upon which we ought often to meditate. Divine 
 providence has determined the course of things from eternity 
 like a destiny or an unchangeable necessity, which latter is to 
 be opposed to blind fate, in order to destroy this phantom of 
 the imagination. For we can only wish what, in our opinion, 
 somehow lies within the realm of possibility. What, on the 
 other hand, is independent of our power, we can only regard 
 as possible by conceiving it as depending upon that blind fate, 
 and by believing that the like has already happened before. 
 We believe in chance because we do not know the real 
 causes of things. If an event, which in our opinion depends 
 upon chance, does not happen, it is clear that one of its causes 
 
 1 Les passions, ii. arts, cxliv.-cxlvi. Cf. letter to Elizabetll, (Euvres, ix. pp. 
 211-214. 
 
432 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is absent, and that, therefore, it could not happen, and that the 
 like never has happened ; namely, something without a cause. 
 If we had previously had this necessary course of things 
 clearly before our eyes, we should never have regarded the 
 matter as possible, and, therefore, never desired it." ^ All 
 vain wishes are errors, while correct wishes are a necessary 
 consequence of a true self-respect and the greatness of mind 
 (c/SnSrositS} that is based upon it. Descartes, therefore, calls 
 this latter " the key, as it were, to all other virtues, and the 
 chief means for overcoming the passions." ^ 
 
 Self-esteem is a kind of wonder. This is the emotion of 
 the mind which of itself takes the moral direction, and points 
 the way to all the others. For wonder is a desire that sat- 
 isfies itself, not with the possession, but with the conception 
 or contemplation, of things, and, therefore, moves the mind 
 in a direction which precedes, and makes ready for, knowl- 
 edge. When we are affected by a surprising impression, by 
 a new, unusual, rare object, we are lost, as it were, in the 
 contemplation of it. Nothing is now more natural than 
 the wish to complete this contemplation, or to make it plain 
 by a more thorough examination. Knowledge consists in this 
 explanation. From the desire to contemplation, the desire 
 for knowledge naturally follows. Of all our passions, none 
 is of so theoretical a nature, and so favorably disposed to 
 knowledge, as wonder. It is on the way to knowledge : it 
 stands at the beginning of the course. That saying of Aris- 
 totle, that philosophy begins with wonder, is valid also with 
 Descartes, without conflicting with his characteristic decla- 
 ration that philosophy begins with doubt. The desire for 
 knowledge is one thing, the certainty of it another: the 
 former has its source in wonder, the latter in doubt. We 
 know what importance Descartes ascribes to the will in his 
 theory of error. Wonder involuntarily gives to the will a 
 theoretic direction, and makes it disposed to knowledge: 
 hence Descartes regards it not merely as the first among the 
 
 1 Les passions, ii. arts, cxliv., cxlv. " lb., lil. art. clxl. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 433 
 
 primitive passions, but as the most important of the passions 
 in general. 
 
 We are speaking of natural and healthy wonder, which 
 agitates the mind, but does not enchain it ; which calls forth 
 the desire for knowledge, but does not stifle it. Here Des- 
 cartes distinguishes the two defective extremes, which Aris- 
 totle had done in reference to the natural impulses in general, 
 the too much and the too little, defect and excess, dulness and 
 the inability to resist the power of the impression, the inca- 
 pacity to wonder and the inordinate desire of wonder. The 
 first temper of mind consists in a determined equanimity, 
 that allows itself to be affected by nothing ; the second in a 
 blind curiosity, that catches at new impressions, and yields 
 itself to every one without an impulse towards investigation. 
 This kind of wonder is not really an emotion of the mind, 
 but a cessation of mental action ; not really wonder, but, as 
 Descartes had already said before, amazement. Exactly in 
 this consists the value of wonder, that it is not most sensible 
 of the useful or hurtful, but of the rare and extraordinary, 
 character of impressions, and stamps it upon the mind in 
 such a manner that it insures the continued activity of the 
 mind, and excites our reflections. " The other passions can 
 only serve to make useful or hurtful objects noticeable : won- 
 der alone observes the exceptional. And we see that people 
 without any natural inclination to this emotion are usually 
 very ignorant." 
 
 " But much more frequently we find the opposite, that men 
 abandon themselves too much to wonder, and are amazed at 
 things that are either very little, or not at all, worthy of 
 attention. And thus the theoretic value of this passion is 
 either completely cancelled or perverted into its opposite. 
 Intentional and special attention is of avail against a defi- 
 ciency in wonder, and to this our will can always oblige the 
 understanding as soon as we see that the observation of 
 the object is worth the pains. But against excessive wonder, 
 there is no other resource but to learn to know many things, 
 
434 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and to distinguish the rarest and most unusual. Although 
 only dumb and stupid men are by nature incapable of won- 
 der, the capacity for it is not always proportioned to great- 
 ness of mental endowments. But it is especially a character- 
 istic of such minds as have a good natural understanding, 
 and who, without imagining themselves therefore great, are 
 quick. Certainly the impulse to wonder diminishes in con- 
 sequence of habit. The more rare objects any one has seen 
 and wondered at, the more he forms the habit of not wonder- 
 ing at them any longer, and of regarding all succeeding ones 
 as usual. But when the impulse to wonder exceeds all 
 proper proportion, and fastens its attention ever only on the 
 first impression of the object before it, without striving for 
 a further knowledge of it, the habit thence arises of con- 
 stantly catching at new impressions. And this is the reason 
 which makes the disease of blind curiosity chronic : one then 
 seeks out exceptional things merely to wonder at them, not 
 in order to understand them ; and people gradually become so 
 fond of wonder (admiratifi), that they are attracted as much 
 by trifling as by the most important things." 
 
 3. Freedom of Mind. — Without passions, the soul would 
 take no part in its bodily life ; without them, there would be 
 for human nature neither goods nor evils in the world ; they 
 alone are the source of our joyful and sorrowful existence. 
 The more powerfully they move and affect us, the more re- 
 ceptive are we to the joys and sorrows of life, the sweeter its 
 joys, and the bitterer its sorrows. And certainly its sorrows 
 are so much the more painful, the less we are able to control 
 our passions, and the more disagreeable our external circum- 
 stances. But there is a means of mastering our passions, and 
 moderating them to such an extent, that their evils become 
 very endurable, and all transform themselves into a source of 
 joy. This single means is wisdom. With this declaration 
 Descartes concludes his work on the passions of the soul.^ 
 
 Wonder gives the natural impulse to enter the path that 
 
 1 Les passions, iii. art. ccxil. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 435 
 
 leads to wisdom. Wisdom releases the impulse to knowl- 
 edge which cannot content itself without our self-knowledge, 
 without the perception of our self-delusion, without the fun- 
 damental doubt which leads to certainty, to a true self-knowl- 
 edge, and, therefore, to a true estimation of ourselves, upon 
 which that enlightened self-respect, that genuine feeling of 
 freedom, is based, which coincides with true knowledge, and 
 determines moral worth. Thus, from the impulse to wonder 
 s'prings the impulse towards knowledge, and from this result 
 doubt and the certainty of self, and thence in the light of rea- 
 son that wonder whose object is the greatest and most ex- 
 alted of our faculties, the freedom of the will. Here arises 
 that affection of the mind which Descartes called magnani- 
 mous temper (magnanimity or gSnSrositS^ (self-respect), and 
 which holds the reins of our moral life in its hands. 
 
 Before this knowledge vanish the imaginary worth of 
 things, the illusive goods of the world, the desires blinded 
 by such appearances, the power of all the passions whose ob- 
 ject is this kind of desire or selfishness. So long as the soul 
 abandons itself to the control of these passions, it is driven 
 by them hither and thither : it can repress one while it fol- 
 lows its opposite, and thus exchange one master for another. 
 Such a triumph is merely apparent : it is not the soul, but one 
 of its passions, that triumphs, while it itself remains a slave. 
 But when by its own energy and freedom, acting upon its 
 clear and distinct knowledge, it lifts itself above the level of 
 the passions, then first does it conquer " with its own weap- 
 ons,'" and, therefore, in reality. This victory is the triumph 
 of the freedom of the mind. " What I call its own weapons 
 (ses propres armes') are the firm and certain judgments con- 
 cerning good and evil according to which the soul is resolved 
 to act. Those are the weakest of all souls whose will, with- 
 out the aid of knowledge, allows itself to be moved by the 
 passions of the moment, now in this direction, now in that : 
 these passions turn the will against itself, and bring the soul 
 into the most miserable condition into which it can fall. 
 
436 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thus, on the one hand, fear represents death as the greatest 
 of all evils, which is only to be escaped by flight ; while on 
 the other, honor represents this disgraceful flight as an evil 
 which is still worse than death. The two passions drive the 
 will in different directions ; and this, mastered now by one, 
 and now by the other, is continually at war with itself, and 
 thus makes the condition of the soul slavish and miser- 
 able." 1 
 
 Here the system of Descartes concludes, returning to its 
 deepest foundations. What lay at the foundation of doubt 
 was the will, which sought to break through self-delusion, 
 and penetrate to certainty. Certainty consisted in the clear 
 and distinct knowledge of self and of God: from thence 
 followed the clear and distinct knowledge of things without 
 us. In the light of reason, we saw the absolute opposition 
 of soul and body. Our passions now prove the union of the 
 two, for only in such a union could they have their source : 
 they deny what clear knowledge affirms. Thus arises a con- 
 tradiction between the perceptions of our free reason, and 
 the involuntary affections of our mind. The problem con- 
 tained in this contradiction is solved when we understand 
 the passions, see through the imaginary worth of their objects, 
 and destroy their power. That opposition of soul and body 
 does not prevent their union in human nature, and this union 
 does not prevent the opposition of the two. Rather in the 
 exaltation of the soul over the bodily existence, in the free- 
 ing from the passions and desires, in a word, in the freedom 
 of the soul, this opposition first finds its true and energetic 
 expression. Our passions are related to our thinking nature 
 as obscure conceptions to those which are clear, and in their 
 obscurity lies their weakness. If the will, by virtue of 
 doubt, could break through self-delusion, and, by the help of 
 thought, could attain to clear and distinct knowledge, it can 
 by clear and distinct knowledge also master the power of the 
 passions ; for desires also are self-delusions which blind us by 
 
 1 Les passions, i. art. xlviii. 
 
UNION OF SOUL AND BODY, ETC. 437 
 
 tte illusory worth of things, and keep us imprisoned therein. 
 Doubt meets and overcomes each of our self-delusions, even 
 the power of the passions and the freedom of the soul ; i.e., 
 the will, enlightened by knowledge, gains the victory over the 
 passions also. 
 
438 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST. — OBJECTIONS AND EBPLIES. 
 I. OBJECTIOlSrS. 
 
 1. Stand-points and Tendencies of their Authors. 
 
 WE have expounded the philosophy of Descartes in the 
 connection of its essential parts, and now turn to 
 examine it. And here we meet at once those objections to 
 the " Meditations," objections which the philosopher himself 
 invited, and to which he replied, and which he published 
 along with his replies. It was the first test which the new 
 system had to stand before its author and the world. Des- 
 cartes wished to put his doctrine to such a test in its very 
 first appearance before the world, and as the one who was 
 best acquainted with it, to be also its first interpreter and 
 defender. These critical discussions are therefore historically 
 notable.^ 
 
 If the objections are mingled with the exposition of the 
 doctrine, and arbitrarily scattered in different places, as 
 usually happens, their impression, as a whole, is completely 
 lost, while that of the system is unnecessarily interrupted. 
 There is no source from which we can better learn the first 
 effect of the new doctrine on the philosophical minds of the 
 time than these objections validly made from such different 
 points of view by critics with and without reputation while 
 the impression of the work, as yet in manuscript, was still 
 fresh in their minds. We find here together the prevailing 
 tendencies of the philosophical consciousness of the time, 
 
 1 See book i. chap. v. pp. 245-247. 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 439 
 
 some of them in their most renowned representatives. It is, 
 therefore, worth while to carefully consider this group of 
 Descartes' first critics. 
 
 Not taking into account the reports of objections collected 
 by Mersenne in the second and sixth places, Descartes re- 
 ceived, and replied to, the objections of Caterus, Hobbes, 
 Arnauld, Gassendi, and Bourdin, in the order in which we 
 have just mentioned their authors. The later ones, which 
 we may call the eighth . and ninth, and which it was impos- 
 sible to include in the edition of the "Meditations," were 
 discussed by letters. To these belong the objections under 
 the name of Hyperaspistes, and those of the English philo- 
 sopher, Henry More. The former are scarcely worthy of 
 notice, since they repeat what had already been said : the 
 latter again attacked Descartes from the theosophical stand- 
 point, disputing the mere materiality of extension, and main- 
 taining an immaterial space, valid for spiritual being, and 
 explaining the presence of God in the world as well as that 
 of the soul in the body.^ 
 
 The second and sixth objections, which express the doubts 
 of different philosophers, and in which Mersenne indeed also 
 found a place for his own, are in the manner of dilettantes. 
 They are not, therefore, contemptible; for in an age as active 
 in philosophy as Descartes', the desultory co-operation of 
 dilettantes is no unimportant power. Caterus' objections 
 relate only to the concept of God, particularly to the onto- 
 logical proof, and, therefore, do not touch the fundamental 
 principle and trend of the new doctrine. 
 
 To understand the chief objections, we must bring before 
 our minds the fundamental thoughts on which the whole 
 Cartesian system rests. The methodical knowledge of things 
 in the natural light of reason or of thought was the problem 
 and the universal theme of Descartes. So far as the light 
 of knowledge is, and must be, natural (les lumieres naturelles'), 
 
 1 The letters bet-ween H. More and Descartes were written from December, 
 1648, to October, 1649. CEuvres, t. x. pp. 178-196. 
 
440 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 his system is naturalistic. So far as this natural light is, and 
 requires to be, reason, or pure (clear and distinct) thought, 
 this naturalism is rationalistic. Method consists in the mode 
 in which that light is discovered, and so produced in thought 
 that it illuminates things. These are the fundamental 
 thoughts. He who attacks these, attacks the foundations 
 of the new doctrine. This fundamental attack can be made 
 in three points. We can defend the natural light of knowl- 
 edge, but deny that it arises and shines in thought, holding 
 that it must be sought not in reason, but in the senses. Such 
 a view denies not the naturalism, but the rationalism, of Des- 
 cartes ; not the philosophical (natural), but the metaphysical 
 (rational), knowledge of things : this view is empiricism or 
 sensualism. This sensualism is as ancient as the atomic 
 mode of thought, and as modern as the Baconian philosophy. 
 The Renaissance had again animated the old doctrine of 
 Democritus, which Epicurus, and after him Lucretius, had 
 revived, even in antiquity. Gassendi, whom we can regard 
 as a late product of the Renaissance, took this position against 
 Descartes, being a disciple of Epicurus. From the revival 
 of philosophy by Bacon, who had founded empiricism, a 
 sensualistic school necessarily resulted, and this already in- 
 volved materialism. Hobhes opposed Descartes from this 
 point of view. We have before us that antithesis which, 
 at the first glance at the course of the development of mod- 
 ern philosophy, we saw arising within it.^ It is the first of 
 the indicated oppositions. 
 
 But even the natural light of knowledge does not remain 
 undisputed. The supernatural light of faith and of revela- 
 tion, which illuminates the kingdom of grace and the Church, 
 is the adversary of naturalism : theology and, more particu- 
 larly, Augustinianism, which the Reformation had revived 
 against the Romish Church, and which Jansenism sought to 
 support within Catholicism — Jansenism, which appeared at 
 the same time with the doctrine of Descartes, and can be re- 
 
 1 See introduction, chap. vii. pp. 159-162. 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 441 
 
 garded as the most powerful expression of the religious con- 
 sciousness of the time. Arnauld, who was imbued with 
 Augustinianism, and was one of the most important theolo- 
 gians then living in France, and afterwards the leader of the 
 Jansenists, opposed the new philosophy from this point of 
 view. 
 
 There is an ecclesiastical rationalism which Scholasticism 
 had developed, and whose problem was not to discover new 
 truths, but to prove those dogmatically asserted. There can 
 be no greater opposition than between the methods of Carte- 
 sianism and "Scholasticism ; between thought, making no pre- 
 suppositions and purified by doubt, and thought trained in 
 and bound by dogmatism ; between sj-nthetic deduction 
 and the unfruitful doctrine of the syllogism, parading its 
 " harbara " and " celarent." The Jesuits, the neo-scholastics 
 of the time, were adepts in the dialectic arts of the schools ; 
 and through them, Descartes had become acquainted with 
 this method at an early age, and thoroughly despised it. 
 The Jesuit Bourdin, the author of the objections in the 
 seventh place, concentrated his attack upon Descartes' 
 method, seeking therewith to overthrow the new doctrine 
 itself. That this method was attacked by a Jesuit, and the 
 mode of his attack, were as characteristic as his polemic was 
 unimportant. 
 
 2. Points of Agreement and Disagreement. — Among the 
 tendencies of thought which found themselves in conflict 
 with the doctrine of Descartes, there is no greater contrast 
 than that between the Augustinian theology and the sensu- 
 alistic (materialistic) philosophy, — Arnauld and Hobbes ! 
 Both attacked the new system — namelj'', the rational knowl- 
 edge of God and of things — at the same time. They attacked 
 from opposite sides, the metaphysical foundations of the sys- 
 tem, the principles, which claim to be discovered by methodi- 
 cal thought, and to be not merely more certain than any of 
 those hitherto accepted, but absolutely certain and indubita- 
 ble. Theology rejects these principles, because it acknowl- 
 
442 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 edges none but the facts of religion and revelation ; sensual- 
 ism, because it concedes to human knowledge no other 
 foundation than the facts of the sensible world and experi- 
 ence. These attacks upon the doctrine of Descartes were 
 unavoidable. They turn a blaze of light upon the funda- 
 mental features of the entire system in its naturalistic and 
 rationalistic character. And, therefore, we may regard the 
 objections of Hobbes, Gassendi, and Arnauld as the most 
 worthy of notice and instructive. Hobbes, although abler 
 and more modern than Gassendi, treated the matter somewhat 
 superficially, and was less accurate and searching in his criti- 
 cisms than Gassendi. Descartes, therefore, broke off the con- 
 troversy with the former, while he carried it to the end with 
 the latter. For this reason we may regard Arnauld and 
 Gassendi, both countrymen of the philosopher, as the most 
 important opponents against whom he attempted to defend 
 his doctrine. 
 
 Not less significant than the points of disagreement are 
 the points of agreement between the philosophy of Descartes 
 and the Augustinian theology, between Cartesianism and the 
 materialistic sensualism. As soon as we turn away from the 
 metaphysical (rational) basis of the system, the resemblances 
 on both sides are perfectly evident. The sensualistic philoso- 
 phy is, from its entire foundation and nature, inclined to a 
 materialistic and mechanical explanation of nature. Des- 
 cartes also gave this explanation : it could not be stricter. 
 Hobbes, who at first noted only this phase of the new doc- 
 trine, thought that it completely coincided with his own. 
 But the Cartesian explanation of nature is a necessary con- 
 sequence of those dualistic principles with which we are now 
 acquainted : its purely materialistic and mechanical tendency 
 proceeds from an entirely different stand-point from that of 
 the sensualistic philosophers. They thought that because 
 nature is material, the mind is also. Because nature can be 
 explained only by mechanical laws, the activities of the mind 
 are also to be explained in the same manner. Descartes' 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 443 
 
 conception on the other hand is precisely the reverse of this. 
 Because the mind is not at all material, the world of bodies 
 is only material : because the phenomena of mind cannot at 
 all be derived from material conditions, the phenomena of 
 the body can only be explained by such conditions. Because 
 the mind is the opposite of body, the body is also the oppo- 
 site of mind. This was the point about which the contro- 
 versy arose between our pliilosopher on the one side, and 
 Hobbes and Gassendi on the other. 
 
 In the opposition of the nature of mind to that of body, in 
 this pronounced dualism, lay the central point of the new 
 system. And just here where it was attacked by the sensu- 
 alists, it exercised an involuntary attraction upon those 
 Augustinian theologians. Descartes himself felt himself 
 more closely related to these than to his philosophical oppo- 
 nents. He saw that Arnauld understood him far better than 
 Hobbes and Gassendi, whose entire mode of thought repelled 
 him ; and he regarded the objections which the former made 
 as the most important of all. We are acquainted with his 
 profound investigation of the concept of God, and the de- 
 cided importance of its results upon his entire system. 
 When the philosopher declared, that, by this phase of his 
 doctrine, he wished also to promote and strengthen the 
 cause of religion, it was not an idle remark, or a merely 
 cautious and conservative way of speaking. He was sin- 
 cerely interested in the cause of religion, and Arnauld sym- 
 pathized with him in this respect. Along with this, there 
 was a verbal agreement with Augustine, which must have 
 been welcome to the theologian, and must have seemed so 
 much the more significant as it appeared in the very point 
 which Descartes had called the fulcrum of Archimedes ; viz., 
 in the proposition of certainty. To prove the existence of 
 God, Augustine took the certainty of self as his starting-point 
 in his work on the freedom of the will. He puts these words 
 in the mouth of Alypius as he addresses Euodius : " I will 
 begin with the most certain truth. I ask you, therefore, 
 
444 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 whether you yourself are, and whether you are afraid of a 
 delusion in your answer to this question, although no sort of 
 error is possible here, for if you did not exist, you could not 
 even be deceived." Exactly so had Descartes spoken in his 
 "Meditations," without knowing that in his '■'■ cogito, ergo 
 sum,^' he had had a predecessor in Augustine. When he 
 learned this fact from Arnauld, he thanked him for the 
 delightful surprise. 
 
 But similar starting-points as little prove a real and thor- 
 ough agreement as similar conclusions. Trends of thought 
 which set out from opposed principles may coincide in 
 certain points, as, for example, the Cartesian and sensual- 
 istic doctrines in reference to the mechanical explanation of 
 nature ; and even so, trends of thought may start from a 
 common point, and diverge widely in their course. Thus 
 it is in a certain respect with the Cartesian and Augustinian 
 doctrines. If we follow them in their course, and compare 
 their historical developments, we discover a contrast, a 
 greater than which cannot be conceived. From the system 
 of Augustine follows the ecclesiastical consciousness of the 
 Middle Ages and the dominion of scholasticism ; from the 
 system of Descartes, that of Spinoza. But such an opposi- 
 tion was still far from the consciousness of our philosopher. 
 So far as the tendency of his philosophy was clear to his 
 own mind, he could deceive himself concerning the funda- 
 mental opposition between his doctrine and the Augustinian 
 theology, and regard the essential agreement of the two as 
 certain. The existence of things, the knowledge of minds, 
 the motion of bodies, as the creative work of God, were still 
 valid for him. The human mind would be veiled in impen- 
 etrable darkness if the idea of God, and, therefore, God 
 himself, did not illuminate it. The material world would 
 be motionless and lifeless if God himself did not move it. 
 Things could neither exist nor endure if God had not created 
 them, and if he did not conserve them. Human knowledge 
 is thus in its final ground illumination ; the existence of the 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 445 
 
 world, creation; its duration, continual creation. All this 
 Augustine also taught, but on supernatural grounds, resting 
 on the fact of faith in the Christian revelation ; while Des- 
 cartes sought to prove it by the natural light of reason, 
 whose original source he saw in God himself. The guiding 
 principle of the Augustinian system is the Christian faith 
 and the absolutely supernatural fact of redemption : the 
 guiding principle of the Cartesian is only the natural light 
 of reason — clear and distinct thought. Therein consists the 
 absolute opposition of the two. Arnauld felt this opposition. 
 His doubts were excited by the rationalistic mode of thought 
 and its necessary consequences. The truth of the ecclesias- 
 tical doctrine of faith is not consistent with the method of 
 clear and distinct thought. We know clearly and distinctly 
 that modes cannot exist without substances, and properties 
 not without the subject to which they belong. It is impossi- 
 ble for properties to exist, when the thing to which they 
 belong no longer exists; for those to remain while this is 
 transformed, for bread and wine to be transubstantiated into 
 flesh and blood, and yet preserve their properties of form, 
 color, taste, etc. It is impossible for substance and modes to 
 be separated from each other : divine omnipotence itself can- 
 not effect such a separation, for it would then act contrary to 
 clear and distinct thought. Descartes denies this possibility, 
 while faith in the transubstantiation of the elements affirms 
 it. Arnauld and the authors of the objections in the sixth 
 place urged these objections against the philosopher. We 
 know clearljr and distinctly that substances are independent 
 of each other, and, therefore, can never constitute one being. 
 Now, persons are substances ; and the unity of three persons, 
 as it is taught in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, appears 
 unthinkable. With the position that substance and modes 
 are inseparably united, the doctrine of the Lord's Supper is 
 at strife; with the position that substances are necessarily 
 separate, the doctrine of the Trinity.^ Arnauld remarked 
 
 1 Obj., iv. (t. ii. p. 35). lb., vi. (t. ii. pp. 327-320). 
 
446 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that the principle of certainty should be limited to philoso- 
 phical knowledge, and not applied to morals and religion. 
 Descartes, in agreement with Augustine, should stop at the 
 boundary between faith and knowledge, as this rests on 
 reasons, while the basis of that is authority. Descartes had 
 no difficulty in agreeing with Arnauld, since that limitation 
 was in harmony with his feelings, and the guiding principle 
 of his life. But the problems of philosophy are more power- 
 ful than the inclinations and rules of life of philosophers. 
 The limitation which Descartes thought proper to impose 
 upon himself, the spirit of his doctrine could not continually 
 endure. 
 
 3. The Points of Attack. — We shall best find our attitude 
 with reference to the contents of the objections and their 
 points of attack by recalling the cardinal points of the sj's- 
 tem so far as they are contained in the " Meditations." The 
 salient points are methodical doubt, the principle of certainty, 
 the idea, existence and truthfulness, of God, the reality of 
 the sensible world, the cause of error, and the difference of 
 essence between mind and body. The objections concentre 
 about these important points, and can be arranged accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 The new method and its sceptical vindication found its 
 principal opponent in the scholastic, who felt himself strong 
 and at home in the old doctrine of the syllogism and the 
 sorites. The principle of certainty by means of pure 
 thought, and the thereon based doctrine of the absolute inde- 
 pendence of the mind, so far as the body is concerned, was 
 attacked by the sensualistic philosophers, assisted by their 
 sensualistic mode of thought, by which the consciousness of 
 most men is dominated. Against this point, therefore, there 
 are the greatest multitude of objections: here unite with 
 Hobbes and Gassendi those " different theologians and phi- 
 losophers," from whom the objections in the second and sixth 
 places proceed. A multitude of objections are urged against 
 the proofs of the existence and veracity of God, particularly 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 447 
 
 against the inference that God cannot deceive us, in which 
 the anonymous theologians vie with Caterus and Ai-nauld. 
 Only that Arnauld, who had penetrated the spirit of the new 
 doctrine more deeply, first saw that Descartes' ontological 
 proof was different from the scholastic. 
 
 1. It is a universal characteristic of the philosophers of 
 modern times, no matter what their point of view, that they 
 thoroughly despise the old school, particularly the art of 
 disputation, which had earned its triumphs in the lecturers' 
 chairs of the Middle Ages. Their right to do so can best be 
 judged from a concrete case, — when one sees before liis eyes 
 how a polemic of the old dialectic couches his lance against 
 the founder of a new and synthetic method. In this respect, 
 the objections of Bourdin are characteristic, and not without 
 interest for the historian of culture. He seelis to prove, 
 according to the rules of the syllogism, that Descartes' 
 method is impossible ; that it can neither begin nor advance, 
 nor prove any thing whatever except pure nothing; that it. is 
 both absurd and nihilistic in the sense of complete nullity. 
 
 The proposition of certainty, with which methodical knowl- 
 edge begins, rests on that absolute doubt which denies all 
 certainty. The first proposition is, " Nothing is certain ; " 
 and then by means of it, it is proved that "something is 
 certain." From a universal negative, a particular affirma- 
 tive is affirmed, which, according to the rules of the syllogism, 
 is impossible : so impossible is the proposition of certainty, 
 the pretended beginning of all knowledge. 
 
 The same is true of the proposition of doubt. Because 
 we have been deceived in some cases, the possibility of de- 
 ception is asserted of all cases ; because one thing is uncer- 
 tain, therefore all things are uncertain, or nothing is certain. 
 This inference is impossible, because we cannot deduce a 
 universal from a particular judgment: so impossible is the 
 proposition of doubt, the pretended beginning of philosophy. 
 If the proposition of doubt is really valid, it must have a re- 
 actionary effect, and destroy itself; if nothing is certain, it is 
 
448 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not even certain that any thing is uncertain : so impossible 
 is not merely the inference, but also the beginning of 
 doubt.i 
 
 The entire Cartesian philosophy, according to Bourdin, 
 is wrecked on the impossibility of basing a universal judg- 
 ment on a particular one — even the dualism between mind 
 and matter, even the physics that rests on the doctrine that 
 body is merely extended. If some bodies are extended, it 
 does not follow that this is a property of all bodies, still less 
 that it constitutes the essence of bodies, and that, therefore, 
 the soul, because it is indivisible (unextended), can never 
 be of a bodily nature. By such reasoning, one could prove 
 to a peasant that the properties with which he is acquainted 
 in his domestic animals are all essential to an animal ; that, 
 therefore, the wolf is not an animal.'^ 
 
 As impossible as is every attempt to make a beginning of 
 knowledge according to Descartes' method, so impossible is 
 every attempt at progress. It sinks at every step into a 
 bottomless abyss, into pure nothing. It is only necessary 
 to judge the course of this method according to the rules 
 of the syllogism, to state its attempts at progress in the 
 regular forms of " celarent," " cesare" etc., in order to see 
 whither it leads. Every being whose existence is doubtful 
 is not actual ; the existence of body is doubtful, therefore 
 body is not actual, and no actual being is body ; I am real, 
 therefore I am no body. Now, according to Descartes, 
 every thing is doubtful, consequently mind also. Mind, 
 therefore, has as little reality as body ; and, therefore, we 
 ourselves are neither mind nor body, hence nothing. Since, 
 now, every thing must be either mind or body, and can be 
 neither of the two, there is nothing at all. It is thus evident, 
 that, according to the new method of knowledge, we can 
 neither make a beginning, nor advance, nor reach any goal 
 whatever of knowledge. We must, therefore, return to the 
 old method of the schools, from the nihilistic to the syllogis- 
 
 J Obj., vii. (t. u. pp. 893, 404, 412-415). a lb., vii. pp. 441-443. 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 449 
 
 tic, from the sceptical to the dogmatic, from Cartesianism to 
 scholasticism.^ 
 
 2. The objections of Hobbes, Gassendi, and Arnauld to 
 the Cartesian doubt are, of course, of a different character. 
 Hobbes discussed the matter with a somewhat lofty air : he 
 impugns the novelty of the doubt and its validity in refer- 
 ence to sensible knowledge. Even among the ancient philos- 
 ophers, both before and after Plato, there had been sceptics 
 by profession ; and Plato himself had said much of the un- 
 certainty of the perceptions of sense. Descartes would have 
 done better to leave this stuff alone : it is not modern, but 
 belongs to the whims of antiquity. Gassendi is ready to 
 agree to a moderate scepticism, after the fashion of the people 
 of the world, but he finds the Cartesian excessive : it throws 
 away the good along with the bad, and puts a new error in 
 the place of the old. Whoever imagines or persuades him- 
 self that he has a doubt that deprives him of all certainty, 
 deceives himself; and however much he protests that he 
 regards nothing as certain, there are things enough which 
 he cannot doubt, but which he regards as perfectly certain. 
 The doubt of Descartes is, therefore, largely self-delusion. 
 Arnauld, on the other hand, felt that this doubt shook the 
 intellectual self-righteousness of man, and affirmed its vali- 
 dity so far as it was confined to natural knowledge, and 
 avoided entering the territory of faith and morals on 
 principle.^ 
 
 3. The principle of certainty is contained in the " cogito, 
 ergo sum" " I think, therefore I am : I am a thinking being 
 (mind)." We must carefully separate the numerous objec- 
 tions which were urged against this particular point. As 
 short as it is, it includes a series of important and definite 
 assertions, which Descartes deduces from it. The " cogito ergo 
 sum" therefore, offers more than one point of attack. From 
 the " I think," taken strictly, follow two inferences : (1) / 
 
 ^ Obj., vii. pp. 444-455, 461-463, 489-504. 
 
 2 lb., iii. (t. i. pp. 466, 467). lb., iy. (t. ii. p. 30). lb., v. (t. ii. pp. 91, 92). 
 
450 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 am, or I exist; (2) I am thinldng, or I am mind. The nature 
 of the inference is to be carefully considered in three points : 
 (1) the certainty of one's own existence follows only from 
 thought, from no other activity; (2) from thought follows 
 immediately only the certainty of one's own thinking nature, 
 nothing else ; (3) this certainty follows from thought (not 
 mediately, but) immediately. It is not a conclusion, but an 
 immediate or intuitive certainty. 
 
 From thence result the following points of attack and 
 objections : (1) From the " I think " follows, to be sure, the 
 " I am, or exist," but not " I am mind." (2) The " I am " 
 by no means follows only from my thought, but just as validly 
 from all my other activities. (3) The " I think, therefore 
 I am," is an inference, and presupposes what it seeks to 
 prove so long as its major premise is not proved. It is a 
 petitio principii, and, as such, has no certainty. Hobbes, 
 under his own name, advances the first objection ; Gassendi 
 the second ; Descartes examines and refutes the third in 
 considering the objections in the second place. 
 
 From the " I think," it unquestionably follows that I am, 
 and that to my activities or properties those of thought 
 belong. We can, therefore, without doubt, conclude, I am 
 thinking, or, I am a thinking being, but not, I am mind, or, 
 my nature consists in thought : that is converting a property 
 of a thing into the thing itself. The first proposition is true ; 
 the second absurd. Thought is as little a for-itself-existing 
 being as talcing a walk is. One can just as well say, " I go 
 a-walking : there my nature consists in walking." ^ It is a 
 reasonable inference from the "I think," that I am a think- 
 ing being ; i.e., a subject to whom, among other properties 
 or activities, those of thought belong. Plainly the activity 
 cannot also be the subject of the activity : thought cannot 
 also be the subject of thought. I can, indeed, say, I think 
 that I have thought ; i.e., I remember what a particular 
 kind of thought is. But it is nonsense to say, " Thought 
 
 1 Obj., iii. (t. i. pp. 4C8, 4G9). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 451 
 
 thinks ; " or, " I think that I think ; " for this would lead to 
 an endless regress, and make all thought impossible, since 
 the subject of the thought would never attain to existence. 
 Nothing is more evident than the distinction between sub- 
 ject and activity, thing and property. As the subject of 
 thought, therefore, I am a being different from thought ; i.e., 
 I am a hody ivhich thinks. According to this conclusion, 
 Cartesianism is overthrown, and sensualistic materialism en- 
 throned in its stead.' Mind consists in the thinking activity 
 of body ; thought, in the union of words which denote con- 
 ceptions or imaginations ; and these are produced by the 
 motion of, and impressions upon, the organs of the body. 
 All ideas, therefore, have their origin in sense, and mind is 
 nothing independent of body. Clear and obscure concep- 
 tions are nothing else than clear and obscure impressions. 
 We see a near object distinctly ; a distant one, indistinctly. 
 Assisted by instruments, we see clearly what appears either 
 indistinct or not at all to the unaided eye. The astronomical 
 conception of the heavenly bodies sustains the same relation 
 to the ordinary conception that telescopic vision does to un- 
 assisted vision, that distinct impressions do to indistinct. 
 Both kinds of conception are sensible : all our conceptions 
 are only sensible. So-called universal concepts are abstracted 
 from our impressions, and have no real, but only a nominal, 
 existence. What we perceive by the senses are not things 
 themselves, but their properties. The concept of substance 
 is, therefore, a conception without an object. We receive all 
 our impressions from without : therefore, there are no innate 
 ideas, no special dowry of the mind, which man has in com- 
 parison with the other beings of the world. Therefore he is 
 different from animals only in degree, but not in kind.^ 
 
 4. My thought is not the only activity from which the cer- 
 tainty follows that I am. To be sure, this certainty follows 
 from the activity of my thought, but not because this ac- 
 
 1 Obj., Hi. (t. i. pp. 469, 470, 475). Cf. Obj., vi. (t. ii. pp. 318, 319). 
 
 2 lb., iii. (t. i. pp. 476, 477, 483, 485-487). C£. Obj., vi. (t. ii. pp. 320, 321). 
 
452 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tivity is thought, but because this thought is my activity. 
 The sentence, "I go a-walking, therefore I am," is just as 
 certain as the " cogito ergo sum." * If my being consisted in 
 thought, I could not be without thought a moment : I should 
 be thinking even in the embryonic state and in lethargic 
 sleep. We cannot think, without consciousness, but we can 
 indeed exist without it : therefore our being and our thought 
 are in no way identical.^ 
 
 Moreover, according to Gassendi, the proposition of cer- 
 tainty does not give us what we had a right to expect in 
 view of the promises of Descartes ; viz., the most accurate 
 and profound knowledge of our own nature. What new and 
 particular thing do we learn when we ascertain that we are 
 thinking beings ? We learn what we have known for a long 
 time. If we are promised fundamental instruction concern- 
 ing the nature of wine, we expect an accurate chemical 
 analysis of its constituents, but not the declaration that it 
 is a fluid. We have the property of thought, as wine has 
 that of fluidity. What further? Such a commonplace is 
 the Cartesian proposition of certainty.^ 
 
 5. But this proposition is not even certain ; for, (1) accord- 
 ing to the philosopher's own declaration, it depends upon 
 our certainty of the existence of God, and is, therefore, ex- 
 posed to all the doubts of the validity of the proofs of his 
 existence (an objection which is repeated at different times) ; 
 and (2) it is a conclusion which depends upon an unproved 
 assumption. The complete syllogism is, "All thinking beings 
 are, or exist : I think, therefore I am." Now, to prove the 
 major premise, the truth of the conclusion must be assumed. 
 This syllogism, therefore, is not merely a petitio principii, 
 but also a eirculus vitiosus, as the logicians say. These objec- 
 tions would be pertinent if the proposition of certainty were 
 a syllogism. We await Descartes' reply.* 
 
 1 Obj., V. (t. ii. p. 93. Cf. p. 248; t. i. pp. 451, 452). 
 
 2 lb., V. (t. ii. pp. 101, 102). a lb., v. (t. ii. pp. 122, 123). 
 * lb., ii. (t. i. pp. 403, 404). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 453 
 
 6. The final ground of all certainty and knowledge, accord- 
 ing to Descartes, is the idea of God in us, whose cause can 
 only be God himself. That, in brief, is the ontological argu- 
 ment whose profound basis, in the system of Descartes, we 
 have become acquainted with in detail, and which none of 
 his opponents knew how to appreciate. Here the objections 
 are massed. To separate the points of attack, we must dis- 
 tinguish the points which the proof includes. It requires 
 (1) that the pruiciple of causality be applicable also to 
 ideas; (2) that, in particular, the idea of God requires a 
 real cause ; (3) that this idea be innate ; (4) that from this 
 innate idea the reality of God be immediately evident ; (5) 
 that God be the cause of himself, and, therefore, infinite. 
 Each of these propositions offers a point of attack. 
 
 Ideas are thought-things which have only a nominal exist- 
 ence. They require, therefore, no real or active causes, and, 
 least of all, such as contain more "objective reality" than 
 they themselves. Caterus laid special emphasis upon this 
 objection to Cartesianism.^ 
 
 The idea of God is not innate ; for if it were, it would 
 be always present, even in sleep. But many do not have 
 it at all, none always. The cause of it, therefore, cannot be 
 God. We are its cause : the idea of God is our creation ; 
 the work of the human understanding, which forms the 
 conception of a perfect and infinite being by increasing the 
 perfections with which it is acquainted, widening the limits, 
 and abstracting from the imperfections. It is not true that 
 the conception of an infinite being must be caused by this 
 being. The infinite universe is not also the cause of our 
 conception of it; but we attain to this idea by gradually 
 enlarging our at first limited idea of the world, and at last 
 extending it to the immeasurable.^ 
 
 Our idea of God, therefore, contains nothing of the reality 
 
 1 Oh]., i. (t. i. pp. 355, 356). 
 
 2 lb., ii. (t. i. pp. 400-402). lb., iii. (t. i. pp. 479, 480). lb., v. (t. ii. pp. 
 139, 140). 
 
454 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of God. Nor can the existence of God be proved by the 
 existence of things, since the assumption of a last or first 
 cause is groundless ; for the causal nexus is infinite, and we 
 are not justified in setting limits to it. But even granting 
 that there is a being which is cause of itself, its infinitude 
 would in no way follow from this uuconditionedness (aseity).i 
 
 The existence of God does not follow from the idea of 
 God, still less, clearly and distinctly. For in that case the 
 idea must, first of all, be clear and distinct. But it is the 
 opposite, even according to Descartes' own doctrine ; for we 
 are finite and imperfect beings, while God is infinite and per- 
 fect. If the idea of God were the ground of all certainty, 
 the fact that atheists regard their mathematical knowledge 
 as indubitable would be incomprehensible.^ 
 
 The idea of God is neither innate, nor is it clear and dis- 
 tinct. Hobbes went farther, and even disputed its possibility, 
 maintaining that we have no faculty with which to form such 
 an idea, and that it has no origin or object. Since it is not 
 innate, it must have been abstracted from things. Now, it 
 cannot be abstracted from bodies, also not from the presen- 
 tation of the soul, since we have no definite presentation of 
 the soul. The object of the idea of God must be an infinite 
 substance, which excels all others in reality ; but of sub- 
 stance in general we have no conception, and a thing that 
 is more a thing than all others is unthinkable. All thought 
 consists in inferring and deducing: the unconditioned is, 
 therefore, inconceivable, and all investigations concerning it 
 are useless. Now, the entire cogency of the Cartesian argu- 
 ments rests upon the idea of God in us. If God did not in 
 truth exist, the idea of God could not be in us. The exist- 
 ence of this idea, says Hobbes, is unproved, unprovable, 
 and, in my opinion, impossible. Descartes, therefore, has 
 not proved the existence of God, and, still less, the creation.^ 
 
 1 Obj., i. (t. i. pp. 359, 360). lb., v. (t. ii. pp. 139-142). 
 
 2 lb., V. (t. ii. pp. 174, 175). lb., vi. (t. ii. pp. 321, 322). 
 8 lb., iii. (t. i. pp. 484, 493). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 455 
 
 7. If there is no rational linowledge whatever of God, we 
 cannot base upon it the possibility of a knowledge of things. 
 Descartes bases the knowledge of things upon the veracity of 
 God, upon the impossibility of deception by God. Now, 
 granting the knowledge of God, this inference is false, both 
 in the light of revelation and in that of reason. Either the 
 Bible contains that which is unworthy of belief, or there are 
 deceptions which God has willed. He blinded Pharaoh, and 
 caused the prophets to foretell things which did not come to 
 pass : both the Old and New Testament teach that we wan- 
 der in darkness. Further, on rational grounds it is impossi- 
 ble to see why deception is incompatible with the nature of 
 God, or why it is unworthy of him. There are wliolesome 
 deceptions made with the best and wisest intention. Thus, 
 parents deceive their children, and physicians the sick.^ 
 
 That God cannot be the cause of our errors is accordingly 
 to be rejected. Descartes explained error by the freedom of 
 the will, and regarded it as the fault of the will. It was to 
 be expected that theologians would raise objections against 
 this fault, and sensualists against this freedom. If every 
 act of belief on confused grounds is a fault, a perversion and 
 misuse of the will, the conversions to Christianity have taken 
 place on indefensible grounds, very few of which have re- 
 sulted from the clearest and most certain conviction, and the 
 mission of the Church is gone. Descartes regards the indif- 
 ference of the will, i.e., completely indeterminate choice, as 
 the lowest degree of freedom, while the highest is the will 
 illuminated or determined by the perceptions of reason. Ar- 
 bitrariness is incompatible with wisdom that is absolutely 
 free : this is bound by the necessity of thought and the laws 
 of reason, and there is in God no arbitrariness in opposition 
 to it, — a doctrine very characteristic of the Cartesian stand- 
 point, but very questionable from that of theology .^ 
 
 1 Ob]"., 11. (t. 1. pp. 404-406). lb., vi. (t. 11. pp. 322-324). lb., ill. (t. 1. pp. 601, 
 502). 
 
 s lb., ii. (t. i. p. 406). lb., vi. (t. 11. pp. 324, 325). 
 
456 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Sensualists cannot admit a faculty independent of all phys- 
 ical conditions, and, therefore, they dispute the freedom of 
 the will. It has always been combated, never proved, and, 
 by the most strictly orthodox Calvinists, completely denied. 
 Even Hobbes appealed in this case to the Calvinists. Free- 
 dom is not merely unproved, but unprovable, like every other 
 unconditioned. It is, on physical grounds, impossible. To 
 deduce error from the freedom of the will is to explain the 
 known by the unknown and the unknowable, the natural by 
 the impossible. Error is rather the natural and easily to be 
 comprehended consequence of our limited faculty of knowl- 
 edge.i 
 
 8. The Cartesian dualism follows from the certainty of 
 self illuminated by the idea of God; the perception that 
 mind and body are substances, and, indeed, completely 
 opposed to each other. From thence is evident the inde- 
 pendence of the mind of the body. All his opponents, how- 
 ever they differ in their other opinions, attack this point. 
 The sensualists and theologians contest this doctrine in 
 common : their arguments are similar, though their motives 
 are different. Sensualists wish to maintain the dependence 
 of the mind upon the body, because they wish to make the 
 body supreme. Theologians are interested in opposing the 
 freedom and independence of the mind, because, with them, 
 the absolute dependence of human beings is of the utmost 
 importance. The weakness of body is evident enough. If 
 our mental nature is united with that of the body, and de- 
 pends upon it, the frailty and weakness of man are made out 
 as the system of theology requires. By their participation in 
 the nature of bodies, finite spirits are distinguislied from God. 
 According to the opinion of the Church Fathers and the 
 Platonists, even spirits of a higher order have bodies ; and ac- 
 cordingly the Lateran Council permitted angels to be repre- 
 •sented by paintings. So much the less has the human mind 
 a right to imagine that it is independent of body. But even 
 
 1 Obj., iii. (t. i. pp. 494, 495). lb., v. (t. ii. pp. 186-192). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 457 
 
 if the difference of the two substances were sufBciently 
 proved, the immortality of the soul is not yet proved. For, 
 if the soul is immaterial, it can be destroyed by the divine 
 omnipotence. Besides, such an argument would prove too 
 much. For the souls of animals, since they are likewise 
 different from body, would have to be immortal according 
 to that reasoning, which it occurs to no one to maintain. 
 To be sure, Descartes denies that animals have souls, declar- 
 ing that they are nothing but machines ; but this opinion is 
 so utterly at variance with experience, that it is difficult to 
 convince any one of it.^ 
 
 Moreover, according to Arnauld, the proof that is said to 
 be evident from the opposition between body and mind will 
 not stand the test of a careful examination. What can be 
 thought without the concept of another being, is held to be 
 able to exist without the existence of that being, and, there- 
 fore, to be independent of it : thus it is with the concept of 
 mind in relation to that of body, and conversely. This infer- 
 ence from idea to existence is incorrect, since it proves too 
 much. I can conceive a right-angled triangle without knowl- 
 edge of the Pythagorean proposition : I can conceive length 
 without breadth, and this without depth. Nevertheless, there 
 are no right-angled triangles without the properties which 
 Pythagoras proved, and there is in reality no one dimension 
 without the rest. That we can form the concept of mind 
 clearly and distinctly without that of body, is therefore no 
 proof of the immaterial existence of mind. Further, the op- 
 position of substances cannot be inferred from that of their 
 attributes (thought and extension), the concepts of which 
 must necessarily be separated. What is true of thought is not 
 for that reason just as true of mind ; for, if it were, the nature 
 of the latter would be identical with the conscious activity 
 of thought, and all obscure and unconscious states of mind, 
 as in embryonic life and sleep, would be impossible. Expe- 
 
 1 Obj., vi. (t. ii. pp. 319, 320). lb., ii. (t. i. pp. 408, 409). lb., iv. (t. ii. pp. 
 16-16). 
 
458 HISTORY OF MODEKN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rience teaches us that the life of our souls is influenced by 
 our bodily states, that our mental development goes hand in 
 hand with that of the body, and that sound mental activity 
 is hindered by the obstruction of physical causes. The mind 
 slumbers in childhood: it is lost in madness. Facts like 
 these bear testimony against the purely spiritual nature of 
 man, and one does not need to be a materialist to find them 
 worthy of attention.' 
 
 No more detailed account is necessary to show how sen- 
 sualists, on the ground of these and similar facts, affirm the 
 complete dependence of the mind upon the body, reject the 
 dualism of Descartes, and admit only a difference of degree 
 between man and the rest of the animal creation. 
 
 II. DESCARTES' REPLIES. 
 
 Since we have had in mind, and given due consideration 
 to, Descartes' replies to these objections, in our exposition of 
 his system, it is not to be expected that we shall now begin 
 to have a new perception of the purport and meaning of his 
 doctrine. If even the philosopher himself in most cases 
 could do nothing else in opposing the objections than return 
 to the " Meditations," and since the work was so mature and 
 thoroughly thought out that he found nothing to correct, his 
 explanations were fundamentally only circumlocutions and 
 repetitions of what he had already said. To avoid such 
 repetitions, we shall here proceed more briefly than in the 
 objections, noticing only those cardinal points of the system 
 which have always been subject to misunderstandings, though 
 they certainly have not justified them. They all relate to 
 the principle of certainty. This is completely misunderstood 
 when it is attempted to interpret it syllogistically, to construe 
 it materialistically, to prove it sensualistically, to nullify it 
 sceptically. As in all these cases, especially the three latter, 
 the misunderstandings, however gross, have a plausibility 
 that can easily deceive, we will hear how Descartes defends 
 
 1 Obj. Iv. (t. ii. pp. 11-15, 30). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 459 
 
 the immediate certainty of his principle, whose first and 
 immediate object is only our mental existence, whose ground 
 is only the activity of our thought, and whose discovery pro- 
 ceeds from the certainty of doubt (not from its uncertainty). 
 
 1. Reply to the Objection that the Proof is Syllogistic. — The 
 principle of the whole doctrine consists in our certainty of 
 ourselves and of God, in our certainty of self illuminated by 
 the idea of God, or, if one prefers this way of stating it, in 
 the proof of our mental existence and that of God. We 
 have shown in detail how closely and directly these two cer- 
 tainties are connected, and express the same thing in different 
 relations.' What, therefore, is true of one, is true, also, of 
 the other. Either they are both immediately, or both me- 
 diately, certain : in the latter case they are syllogistically 
 proved ; i.e., they remain unproved, and therefore invalid. 
 When the Cartesian proof of God, especiaiUy the ontological 
 form of it, is understood syllogistically, it is identical with 
 the scholastic one, and is exposed to all the objections which 
 the latter properly calls forth. Descartes corrects this mis- 
 understanding in his reply to the objections of Caterus, show- 
 ing in what his ontological argument differs from that of 
 Thomas (he should have said Anselm) ; that his proof is not 
 an inference, but an immediate certainty, since in the idea of 
 God his existence is clearly and distinctly apprehended with- 
 out middle terms. The same is true of the certainty of our- 
 selves, which in like manner is not reached syllogistically or 
 through middle terms, but is immediately or intuitively evi- 
 dent. Descartes makes that declaration in his reply to the 
 second objections. "If any one says, 'I think, therefore 
 I am or exist,' he does not infer existence from thought 
 by means of a syllogism, but apprehends it as something 
 immediately certain through the simple intuition of the 
 mind." 1 
 
 If one understands the doctrine of Descartes, the above- 
 
 ' See book ii. chap. iv. pp. 354-359. 
 
 a E^p. aux Obj., i. (t. i. pp. 388-395). lb., ii. (p. 427). 
 
460 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mentioned misconceptions seem so unintelligible as to be 
 ridiculous. The Cartesian certainty of self rests not on this 
 or that theorem, but on the consciousness of our intellectual 
 imperfection, which must be evident by means of the idea of 
 intellectual perfection. This idea, since it precedes and con- 
 ditions our consciousness, is necessarily independent of the 
 latter, and of an original character ; i.e., it is not merely an 
 idea, but God. If I am completely confused in myself and 
 in all my thoughts, and declare my uncertainty with perfect 
 conviction, one ought not to expect that any one will inquire 
 upon what syllogism my conviction rests. He who does, 
 knows not of what I speak. He knows neither the uncer- 
 tainty in which I find myself, nor still less my incontestable 
 certainty. The above objections to the doctrine of Descartes 
 are based upon this kind of utter ignorance. 
 
 2. Reply to the Materialistic and Sensualistic Ohjections. — 
 From the truth of self-certainty, the origin and depth of 
 which Hobbes utterly failed to see, he deduced materialism. 
 If I am a thinking being, I distinguish myself from thought 
 as the subject from its property or activity : I am, therefore, 
 a being different from thought; i.e., a body which thinks. 
 Thought, therefore, is a bodily activity, or a kind of motion. 
 The facts of experience prove that it is so. These every- 
 where show that the so-called mental life depends upon the 
 states, impressions, and processes of the bodily nature ; is, 
 therefore, nothing except a phenomenon and effect of the 
 body. 
 
 Descartes discusses these thoroughly superficial and grossly 
 sophistical objections, which were unworthy of a Hobbes, as 
 lightly and as slightingly as they deserved. Nothing is easier 
 than to bring any two things into the relation of subject and 
 predicate, and to declare that that must be different from 
 this. We can then reverse the proposition, and prove the 
 contrary. We can thus make the heavens the earth, and the 
 earth the heavens ; the mind the body, and, just as validly, 
 the body the mind. Such a mode of proof has no validity at 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 461 
 
 all, and is opposed to all sound logic and to the common use 
 of language.' 
 
 Gassendi attempted to lessen the value of Descartes' cer- 
 tainty of self by maintaining that it can be proved sensualis- 
 tically. That we are, is evident, not merely from our thought, 
 but just as clearly from any other of our activities. '■'■Amhulo 
 ergo sum " must be accepted with the same right as " cogito ergo 
 sum." The proposition, " I go a-walking, therefore I am," 
 is, according to Gassendi, just as certain as " I think, there- 
 fore I am." Descartes himself uses this example, in order to 
 illustrate Gassendi's objection. Of all objections, this, to the 
 common consciousness, is most plausible; and if it is well 
 taken, the Cartesian principle of certainty is lost. 
 
 From every activity which I conceive, it follows, with 
 indubitable certainty, that I am. The more particular de- 
 terminations of the activity are completely incidental and 
 indifferent. That / conceive them is the important matter, 
 and the only ground upon which that certainty is evident. 
 To conceive an activity, or be conscious of it, is to think. 
 From every activity, so far as I conceive or think it, it fol^ 
 lows that I am. If I do not conceive it, nothing at all follows 
 for my consciousness. The taking a walk is a state of motion 
 of the human body. It does not follow from thence that I 
 am. Not till I conceive this body, and its state of motion as 
 mine, can I say, " I take a walk." It is possible that this 
 motion does not really exist ; that it exists only in imagina- 
 tion or in dreams ; that I do not take a walk ; but it is im- 
 possible that T, who have this imagination, am not. The 
 certainty, therefore, of my own existence does not follow 
 from my motion, but only from my conception of it; i.e., 
 from my thought. It makes no difference what I conceive, 
 whether the object which I conceive is my own walking or 
 that of another. It may be imaginary in both cases ; but that 
 I conceive them is certain, and from thence alone follows 
 the certainty of my existence. " I think, therefore I am," is, 
 
 1 R«p. aux Ob]., lii. (t. i. pp. 472-474, 476-478). 
 
462 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 therefore, indisputable. Gassendi, in opposing this proposi- 
 tion, was laboring under a twofold misconception, and in- 
 volved in a double error. He did not see, that, abstracting 
 from my conception and my consciousness, there is no ac- 
 tivity at all which I could denote as mine. Still less did he 
 see that it may be the activity of any other, or any object 
 whatever, from the conception of which in me the certainty of 
 my existence is immediately evident ; that, therefore, in all 
 cases, my conception or thought is the only ground of cer- 
 tainty.i 
 
 3. Hefly to the Objection that Doubt is Nihilistic. — The 
 proposition of self-certainty was exposed to a threefold attack. 
 Some regarded it as syllogistic, and therefore unproved. 
 Hobbes admitted its validity, but only of our bodily exist- 
 ence ; Gassendi also, but on the ground of all our ac- 
 tivities without distinction. All these objections to the 
 foundations of Descartes' doctrine are unsupported. We 
 have still to consider Bourdin's objection, who declared the 
 inference of certainty completely invalid and impossible, 
 since it depends on doubt. 
 
 We have already noticed those cheap dialectic arts by 
 means of which the author of the seventh objections at- 
 tempted to disprove the doctrine of Descartes, by a reductio 
 ad absurdum, to prevent each of its steps, and, finally, as its 
 logical result, to deduce the proposition that nothing what- 
 ever is. Let us leave its scholastic buffoonery and capi-ioles 
 unnoticed, and attend merely to the principle with which the 
 controversial man sought to break down and overthrow 
 the new doctrine. The strength of the whole polemic lies in 
 this proposition : If the reality of all things is doubted, their 
 non-reality must be asserted ; or, to speak more in Bourdin's 
 manner, If all things are doubtful, nothing exists in reality. 
 Two misconceptions, which, in opposition to the doctrine of 
 Descartes, we must characterize as a crude lack of under- 
 standing, lie at the foundation of this conception. The 
 
 1 R6p. aux Obj., v. (t. ii. pp. 247, 248). 
 
THE FIRST CRITICAL TEST, ETC. 46S 
 
 opponent regards " to be doubtful " and " to be unreal " (1) 
 as identical in meaning and (2) a state of things ! In his 
 understanding, therefore, the Cartesian assertion, "I doubt 
 all things," is changed into, "There are no real things at 
 all." 
 
 To be doubtful, so far as it relates to an object, is possibly 
 not to be. When we doubt an object, or the reality of a 
 thing, -we do not deny it, but leave it' an open question 
 whether the thing is, or not, whether it is so, or otherwise. 
 "To be doubtful" is not a predicate which belongs to an 
 object in the same manner as extension, motion, rest, to 
 body. "Something is doubtful" means "It is doubtful to 
 me : " I doubt or am uncertain whether the thing is, or 
 not, whether it is so, or otherwise." " To be doubtful " 
 is, therefore, not a state of things, but merely of our 
 thought: it is the state of our uncertainty. The oppo- 
 site of it is my certainty, and this exists only in my imagi- 
 nation or in truth. In the former case, it is self-delusion; 
 in the latter, knowledge. The path to truth leads not 
 through our self-delusion, but through our knowledge of it ; 
 i.e., through the doubt of our own pretended or imaginary 
 certainty. This path Descartes trod, and therein consists his 
 doubt and its method. Either we must deny that we are 
 involved in self-delusion, which would be the height of self- 
 blindness, or we must be aware of this state, and fall into the 
 very same doubt which Descartes experienced and made typi- 
 cal. This doubt is the only protection against self-delusion, 
 and is unavoidable. It is as old as the experience tliat we 
 are involved in delusion, and it becomes new as often as this 
 experience is repeated ; and this is the case in every man who 
 earnestly desires truth. Hobbes's objection, therefore, that 
 doubt is no modern discovery, did not make the- least impres- 
 sion on our philosopher. New, or not, replied Descartes, it is 
 necessary, since I desire truth.' Least of all could Bourdin, 
 in his confident self-sufficiency, conceive the earnestness and 
 
 1 E^p. aux Obj., iii. (t. i. p. 467). 
 
464 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 depth of the Cartesian doubt. Nothing follows more clearly 
 and evidently from this doubt than self-certainty, because 
 it is already contained in it. It is not asserted that things 
 are unreal or non-existent, but their existence and proper- 
 ties are uncertain or doubtful. It is not asserted that things 
 are doubtful or uncertain, but that / am uncertain, and 
 indeed in all things. From " I am uncertain " follows im- 
 mediately " I am," since it is contained in it.^ 
 
 The necessity of doubt, the truth of self-certainty, the 
 grounding of the latter by our doubt or thought, — the only 
 and immediate validity of this ground, therefore the axiom- 
 atic certainty of our mental existence, — these foundations of 
 the doctrine of Descartes stand firm and sure, in opposition 
 to the objections. All of them attack it, but none of them 
 make the least impression upon it. 
 
 How is it with the system itself that rests on these founda- 
 tions? This question leads us to the last inquiry, to the 
 examination of the system. 
 
 1 Obj., vli. Remarque de Descartes (t. ii. pp. 385-387, 405-412). 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMIKATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 465 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A CEITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM. -UNSOLVED 
 AND NEW PROBLEMS. 
 
 1. OBJECT AND METHOD OF THE INQUIRY. 
 
 rr^HE criticisms which we have expounded in the fore- 
 -*- going chapter are not only worthy of note historically, 
 hut are also significant for the examination of the system to- 
 day. They represent the doctrine of Descartes in the light 
 in which it should be considered and estimated. That both 
 theologians and naturalists opposed the principles of our 
 philosopher, is, of itself, a proof that his system is neither 
 theological nor naturalistic in the opinion of his antagonists. 
 From opposite points of view they attacked the doctrine of 
 rational principles or its metaphysical foundations. The 
 natural light of clear and distinct thought appeared to the 
 theological antagonists doubtful in relation to the ecclesias- 
 tical doctrines of faith ; to the sensualistic, in relation to the 
 empirical doctrine of nature. Those missed the supernatural 
 light of revelation; these, the natural light of the senses. 
 The light of reason (la lumiere naturelle) which Descartes 
 followed, falls not down from heaven, and does not jwoceed 
 from the senses. Theologians regard it as merely natural, 
 and, therefore, as something foreign to their modes of think- 
 ing ; and sensualists, on the other hand, as not natural, and 
 therefore as something equally foreign to their sensualistic 
 modes of thought. To those, the new doctrine is too natu- 
 ralistic: to these, it is not naturalistic enough. The one 
 party fears that theology will become naturalized, and thus 
 become disloyal to the Church; the other, that the doc- 
 
466 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 trine of nature will become rationalized, and thus become 
 alienated from experience. 
 
 Thus, in spite of their own opposition, the theological 
 mode of thought which proceeds from Augustine and the 
 scholastics, and the sensualistic, which in Gassendi started 
 from Epicurus, and in Hobbes from Bacon, united against 
 Descartes. At the same time, each of the two trends found 
 a congenial side in the new doctrine ; and it is a fact well 
 worthy of remark, that, particularly between Descartes and 
 Arnauld, there were points of agreement which both felt as a 
 mental kinship. To none of the authors of the objections 
 did Descartes feel so near : upon the agreement of none did 
 he lay a greater emphasis. He hoped to have so united the 
 theological and naturalistic systems in his doctrine, that they 
 could enter into an alliance in which neither — least of all 
 the theological — should be the loser. It is also true that 
 both are contained in the new system, and not merely exter- 
 nally and artificially joined with each other, but thought to- 
 gether, in the mind of our philosopher. Now the question 
 here arises, whether in Descartes' doctrine those tendencies 
 are really united and are compatible which are in conflict 
 with each other outside of the system, and meet in the 
 polemic against it? 
 
 We cannot correctly, and from its own point of view, esti- 
 mate a system by applying to it the measure of foreign opin- 
 ions, and determining its value accordingly. Those objections 
 with which we have become acquainted furnished an example 
 of such a subjective estimation. Every thoroughly thought- 
 out system, as it comes from the miild of a great philosopher, 
 is in its kind a whole that requires to be apprehended and 
 examined as such. It is, therefore, to be inquired whether it 
 has really solved the problem which determines its funda- 
 mental thoughts. As necessary as is the problem, so neces- 
 sary must be the conditions without which the solution can- 
 not be given. These conditions are the principles of the 
 system: the solution of the problem consists in their com- 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 467 
 
 plete and logical development. To examine a system from 
 its own point of view is, therefore, nothing else than to 
 compare its solution with its problem, its results with its 
 principles, its derivative propositions with those which are 
 fundamental, and see whether it has performed what it in- 
 tended. If the doctrine of a philosopher is completed and 
 without defect, nothing remains but to recognize and dif- 
 fuse it, — the task of disciples who regard the work of the 
 master as perfect. To apprehend defects is the business of a 
 searching and progressive examination, which at first assumes 
 neither the correctness of the consequences, still less that of 
 the principles, but only inquires whether all the inferences 
 which could be deduced from those principles have actually 
 been drawn. If not, the system is to be completed. Therein 
 consists its completion, and this constitutes the proper and 
 first business of a school. The second inquiry penetrates 
 deeper : it relates to the correctness of the consequences ; to 
 the harmony of the derivative propositions with those from 
 which they are deduced; to the application of the principles, 
 whose validity is accepted without question : in a word, the 
 question is as to the logicalness of the solution. If there are 
 defects in this respect, the consequences must be so changed 
 and corrected as to bring them in perfect harmony with the 
 principles. In this consists the critical advance of the doc- 
 trine, — a work of the progressive school. When the system 
 has been completed and corrected in the sense just explained, 
 no more can be done while the principles remain undisputed. 
 But if, in spite of it, the problem is not yet solved, the fault 
 lies in the principles, — in the incongruity between the prob- 
 lem and the principles ; in their lack of comprehensiveness. 
 It is evident that the problems the system attempts to solve 
 cannot be solved by means of its principles. To this the 
 third inquiry leads, penetrating to the heart of the matter. It 
 no longer concerns the completeness and correctness of the 
 derivative principles, but that of those from which they are 
 derived : it makes the really critical test which determines 
 
468 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 •whether the calculation is correct or not. Defects in infer- 
 ences are secondary: those in fundamental principles, on 
 the other hand, are primary. If the calculation is not cor- 
 rect, defects of a fundamental character are discovered in the 
 system. The principles must now be changed, corrected, and 
 made conformable to the problem to be solved. In this con- 
 sists the transformation of the system, and this transcends 
 the sphere of the school in the narrower sense. 
 
 Progressive stages can be distinguished, even in the trans- 
 formation of a system; and we will now call attention to 
 the most important of them. In the first, which makes the 
 beginning, the fundamental principles are partly transformed, 
 in order to be brought into harmony with the system. The 
 extremest limits of the school are then reached, and it may 
 be questioned whether this advance belongs to the school. 
 If now, in spite of this change in the principles of the system, 
 the problem cannot be solved, we must advance to the sec- 
 ond stage, to the entire transformation of the system; and 
 there is now no longer a question that the old school is com- 
 pletely abandoned. If the required goal is not reached on 
 the new road, it is evident that the fault, the error as it were, 
 in the calculation, must be sought not merely in the princi- 
 ples, but in the problem itself, in the mode in which it is put, 
 in the terms of the calculation as it were. The problem 
 must then be made soluble by a complete rectification, by a 
 change in the fundamental question. This transformation is 
 a revolution or epoch. 
 
 The rightly progressive examination of a great and epoch- 
 making system, from its own point of view, accordingly con- 
 sists in the views which are immediately deduced from the 
 system, which take its direction, — first developing, then 
 correcting, and finally transforming it. While the problem 
 continues to be conceived in the form in which it has been 
 entertained up to this time, the principles are transformed, 
 at first partly, then completely. Finally, the problem itself 
 is transformed, the authority of the whole of the philosophy 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 469 
 
 of the past is overthrown, and a new epoch created. With 
 this method of examining a system from its own point of 
 view, progressing from question to question, coincides, as we 
 see, the course of the historical development of philosophy 
 itself. 
 
 The doctrine of Descartes is such a great and epoch-mak- 
 ing system, to which all those stages of criticism and of pro- 
 gressing historical development can be referred. "We touch 
 upon them here by way of illustration, since they are ex- 
 pounded in detail hereafter. Thus, the first disciples of Des- 
 cartes, men like Reneri and Regius (the latter in his earli- 
 est period), carefully unfold the principles. Geulincx and 
 Malebranche make further developments. Spinoza affects 
 their partial, and Leibnitz their total, transformation ; while 
 Kant completely demolishes them, and lays the foundations 
 of a new epoch. 
 
 II. PRINCIPAL CRITICAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 In the light of reason, or of clear and distinct thought, 
 Descartes had apprehended the reality of God as well as that 
 of minds and bodies, their dependence upon God as well as 
 their independence of each other. " Precisely in this consists 
 the nature of substances, that they exclude each other." God 
 is the infinite substance, minds and bodies are finite : those 
 are thinking, these are extended, substances. There exists, 
 accordingly, in our system a double and radical dualism : (1) 
 the opposition between God and the world, and (2) within 
 the world, between mind and bodies, from which that be- 
 tween men and animals necessarily follows. 
 
 This doctrine affirms the substantiality of God in distinc- 
 tion from the world, the substantiality of the world in dis- 
 tinction from God. In the first affirmation consists its theo- 
 logical character ; in the second, its naturalistic. That God, 
 according to Descartes, is the absolute, powerful Will, who 
 illuminated minds, moved bodies, created and preserved all 
 things, won the approval of the theologians, while the natu- 
 
470 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ral light of reason and the thereby evident substantiality 
 of things was an object of their doubts. The nature of 
 things was divided in the opposition between minds and 
 bodies. If our system admitted nothing but the nature of 
 things as real, it would be exclusively naturalistic. It would 
 be materialistic if it affirmed only the substantiality of body. 
 But its naturalism is limited by the validity which it concedes 
 to the concept of God, since it regards things as depending 
 upon the will of God, and limits materialism by the validity 
 it concedes to the concept of mind, since it opposes mind to, 
 and declares it independent of, matter. The materialists are, 
 therefore, limited and repelled on two sides, and agree with 
 Descartes only in this, that he affirms, also, the substantiality 
 of matter, and, in consequence of it, explains the world by 
 purely mechanical laws. 
 
 The same principle which forms the central point of the 
 whole doctrine decides its twofold dualism. It advances 
 through doubt to self-certainty, and thence to the knowledge 
 of God and of body. From our self-certainty is immediately 
 evident the independence or substantiality of mind, its dif- 
 ference of essence from God and bodies, therefore the opposi- 
 tion, both between finite and infinite, and between thinking 
 and extended being. The dualistic character of the system 
 is required by its principle, and is, therefore, fundamental. 
 We must now inquire whether these dualistic principles are 
 in harmony with the problem, whether all derivative proposi- 
 tions are consistent with those principles; i.e., whether the 
 system itself does not teach that which opposes the dualism 
 between God and the world, mind and body, man and 
 animal? These questions relate to the principal critical 
 points. 
 
 1. The Dualistic System of Knowledge. — Since, according 
 to Descartes, substances mutally exclude, and are completely 
 independent of, each other, there exists between them neither 
 mutual nor one-sided dependence, neither reciprocal action 
 nor causality, therefore no kind of community or conneo- 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 471 
 
 tion. The problem of knowledge requires the universal 
 connection of things, dualism their separation. Dualism, 
 therefore, is in conflict with the problem which it claimed 
 to solve, or that dualistic system of knowledge is involved 
 in a contradiction with itself. The method of Descartes 
 aimed to be (it is his own figure) the thread of Ariadne, 
 the guiding principle, to lead knowledge step by step by a 
 continuous and sure path through the labyrinth of the 
 universe. Now, in more than one place the path of knowl- 
 edge is severed by the yawing chasm of dualism. From 
 this it is evident that the doctrine of Descartes cannot 
 solve its problem by means of its principles, that the range 
 of the problem of knowledge extends farther than that of 
 the system. 
 
 2. Dualism between Cfod and the World. — Were God in 
 truth separate from things, and separated as the concept of 
 substance and the dualistic doctrine demand, there could 
 be no kind of connection between them, and there would be 
 no possibility of the idea of God in minds, nor of motion 
 and rest in bodies: those could not be illuminated, these 
 could not be moved, by God. Our idea of God is according 
 to the philosopher's own and necessary declaration, the 
 effect, activity, existence of God in us. In like manner, 
 the original state of motion and rest in the world of bodies 
 is the act of the divine Will. Minds and bodies, accordingly, 
 and, therefore, finite things in general, are dependent upon 
 God, hence not substances in the strict sense of the word. 
 
 Descartes himself says it. The substantiality of God is 
 one thing, that of things another: strictly speaking, only 
 the first is to be accepted, not the second. Things are not 
 substances in reference to God. Without God, minds are 
 in darkness, so unilluminated that they are not even aware 
 of their own imperfection, for only the idea of the perfect 
 illuminates the imperfect : without the idea of God (without 
 God), there is in minds no doubt, therefore no certainty of 
 self, from which alone our substantiality is evident. With- 
 
472 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 out God, there is in bodies neither motion nor rest. With- 
 out him, therefore, both minds and bodies, therefore finite 
 things in general, are as good as non-existent. They are 
 not merely dependent upon God, but even exist only through 
 him: they are his effects, he their cause. The more em- 
 phatically the substantiality of God is affirmed, so much 
 the less can it be predicated of things, so much the more 
 does the independence of the world lose in importance, 
 until at last it has none at all. To the absolute independ- 
 ence of God correspond only the absolute dependence and 
 non-reality of things. They are creatures of God : the 
 concept of substance is transformed into that of creature. 
 To say both at the same time, Descartes calls things " created 
 substances" — which does not reconcile, or even conceal, the 
 contradiction, but openly declares it. The concejDt of a 
 created substance is a contradictio in adjecto ; since by sub- 
 stance, according to the philosopher's own declaration, a 
 thing must be understood, that requires no other for its 
 existence, while the word creature denotes a being that can 
 neither exist nor be thought without the will of God. 
 And not merely for their existence, but also for their con- 
 servation, are things held to require the will and creative 
 power of God. Because they are not in and of themselves, 
 they also cannot be preserved by their own power. Des- 
 cartes, therefore, with Augustine calls the conservation of 
 the world a continual creation {creatio continua). Finite 
 substances are, therefore, not merely in certain respects 
 dependent, and lacking in substantiality, they are in every 
 respect. Accurately speaking, there are no longer three 
 substances, but in truth but one : God is the only substance. 
 Descartes himself draws this inference, which is irreconcila- 
 ble with his dualistic system of knowledge. " By substance 
 is only to be understood such a being as requires no other 
 for its existence. This independence can be conceived of 
 but one being; that is, of God. All other things we can 
 conceive to exist only under the concoursg of God. There 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 473 
 
 is no meaning of this word which can be understood of God 
 and his creatures in common." • 
 
 Here, now, is the point in which that principal critical 
 question is decided: does the doctrine of Descartes so 
 unite the theological and naturalistic systems, that each of 
 the two has its rights? The question must at iirst sight 
 be answered in the negative. The substantiality of things 
 (the world) cannot maintain itself against the substantiality 
 of God. The latter not merely preponderates, but has all 
 of the weight, and finite substances finally lose all inde- 
 pendence in comparison with the infinite. In the place 
 of nature, the concepts of creation, of continual creation, 
 step in ; and these permit to things no independence of 
 their own whatever. In the doctrine of Descartes, there- 
 fore, the theological element seems to gain such absolute 
 supremacy, that Augustinianism in his system appears to 
 gain the victory over naturalism. 
 
 But let us not be deceived by appearances. In truth, tlie 
 God of Augustine is very unlike that of our philosopher. 
 One thing is the ground of the knowledge of the God of 
 Augustine ; another, of that of Descartes'. That is evident 
 from the fact of redemption, this from the fact of human 
 self-certainty. The God of Augustine elects the one to 
 happiness, the other to damnation; he enlightens the one, 
 and strikes the other with blindness ; he saves whom he 
 will, and has mercy on whom he will ; he is absolute 
 sovereign power, and irrational arbitrary will.^ But in the 
 doctrine of Descartes, God is the cause (real ground) of 
 our self-certainty, which constitutes the principle of knowl- 
 edge according to the guiding principle of clear and distinct 
 thought. This thought is the natural light within us which 
 never deceives us, the source of which is God. To this God, 
 therefore, deception is impossible. If there could be such . 
 a deception, human knowledge would be impossible, and the 
 
 1 Pi-ino. Phil., i. sec. 51. 
 
 2 See Introduction, chap. iii. p. 61. 
 
474 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fundamental principle shattered on whicli knowledge rests 
 in absolute security. Let us fix this point accurately in our 
 minds. There is something which according to the doc- 
 trine of our philosopher is impossible, and therefore limits 
 the divine arbitrary will in the most significant manner. 
 That is impossible in God which would destroy knowledge 
 in us, and transform our natural light into a Will-o'-the- 
 wisp. Descartes expressly says, " The first attribute of God 
 consists in this, that he is absolutely truthful, and the giver of 
 all light. It is, therefore, unreasonable to suppose that he 
 can ever deceive us, or strictly and positively can be the cause 
 of the errors to which, as experience shows, we are subject. 
 To be able to deceive can perhaps by us human beings be 
 regarded as a mark of mind : to will to deceive is always 
 an indubitable consequence of wickedness, fear, or weak- 
 ness, and can, therefore, never be asserted of God."^ 
 
 Human knowledge is possible only if it is impossible for 
 God to deceive us. But the less God wills and can will 
 our error, the less he is able to act according to arbitrary 
 will, but only according to the necessity which is in harmony 
 with law, and is one with his nature and will. If he were 
 arbitrary will acting without grounds, as he is absolute 
 omnipotence, why should he not will to deceive us according 
 to his inscrutable determination, and how could we be sure 
 that he never will ? How are we able so to know the incom- 
 prehensible will of God as to perceive with absolute cer- 
 tainty that there is one thing he can never will, and that 
 is to deceive us? In that case, we see likewise one thing 
 that he always desires, and that is our knowledge. The 
 divine Will is, therefore, knowable, and it would not be if 
 it were arbitrary will acting without reasons. It is not 
 that, since it cannot just as well will our error as our knowl- 
 edge. He desires only the latter: his will is, therefore, not 
 indifferent, but always illuminated by the most distinct 
 knowledge. The divine Will is not different from the divine 
 
 1 Prino. Phil., i. sec. 29. 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OP THE SYSTEM, ETC. 475 
 
 light : the natural light, because it is infallible, is identical 
 with the divine. Now, in what is the being of God dis- 
 tinguished from that of nature ? In one of his most note- 
 worthy sentences, Descartes says, " It is certain that there 
 must be truth in every thing which nature teaches us. 
 For hy nature, in general, I understand nothing other than 
 Crod himself or the world-order established hij God, and by my 
 own nature in particular nothing more than the assemblage 
 of all the powers God has lent to me." ^ 
 
 We now see the bearing of the doctrine that God is the 
 only substance in the teachings of Descartes. The more 
 the naturalistic element steps into the background, and 
 vanishes in the presence of the theological, the more the 
 independence of things is absorbed by the independence of 
 God : by so much the more in the theological element itself 
 the naturalistic again appears, by so much the more does the 
 Cartesian God cease to be a supernatural being, by so much 
 the more is this concept of God naturalized and alienated 
 to the extremest opposition to the Augustinian. From the 
 dualistic declaration, " God and nature," already arises the 
 monistic " God or nature " (Deus sive natura}. Decartes 
 hints at it: Spinoza elevates it to sovereign authority. 
 While Descartes seems to approach Augustine, he really 
 draws near Spinoza, and goes so far to meet him that he 
 actually pronounces the formula which contains Spinozism. 
 While in his personal inclinations, he feels drawn to the 
 Fathers of the Church, and to those theologians who were 
 imbued with Augustinianism, and rejoices in the agreement 
 which was remarked between his doctrine and Augustinian- 
 ism, the spirit of his doctrine prepares a trend of thought 
 which will complete naturalism, and oppose the theological 
 system in the sharpest manner. The destiny of philosophy 
 is mightier than the persons through whom it speaks and 
 works. Descartes is on the road which leads to Spinoza, 
 while he supposes that he is laying the foundations of the 
 
 1 Med., vi. (t. i. p. 335). 
 
476 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 doctrines of faith more deeply, and calls the doctors of 
 Sorbonne to witness that he has completed a work benefi- 
 cial to the Church. He is seized by the powers of whom it 
 is snid nolentem trahunt ! The fundamental direction of his 
 system which pierces through, and takes possession of, the 
 theological, is the naturalistic. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the doctrine of Descartes, the concept of 
 God as the onli/ substance in no way attains to sovereign 
 authority. Dualism protects itself against monism. In the 
 nature of things, something remains behind which belongs 
 peculiarly to them, and constitutes their unassailable funda- 
 mental essence. God moves bodies, which of themselves 
 are only movable since they are only extended. Now, 
 extension or matter, according to Descartes' own declaration, 
 cannot be understood by means of that which is immaterial ; 
 and since God is not material, matter cannot come from God. 
 It is, therefore, inconsistent with clear and distinct thought, 
 hence also with the nature of God, to treat matter as 
 Descartes does, as something created. We note here the 
 characteristic contradiction which arises : body cannot be a 
 substance in comparison with God ; extension cannot be 
 created. The fact that God is the only substance is again 
 put in question, since along with God, extension, the essence 
 of body, comes to be considered as independent of God. 
 God illuminates minds : in this illumination, the natural 
 light of reason, they cannot err. Nevertheless, they do err ; 
 and the ground of their error can be no other than they 
 themselves, than their will. By virtue of this will they 
 are beings with powers of their own, beings independent of 
 God. 
 
 Two powers accordingly arise in the nature of things 
 which lay claim to independent reality in opposition to the 
 assertion that God is the only substance, — extension hora the 
 side of body, will from that of mind. But as soon as tliere 
 is something that is independent of God or substantial, 
 the proposition that God is the only substance can no longer 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 477 
 
 be affirmed. Thus, we see in' the doctrine of Descartes a 
 series of unsolved problems which have necessarily arisen 
 before us. The dualistic system of knowledge is in conflict 
 with the problem of knowledge, with the solubility of this 
 problem. The dualism between God and the world is in 
 conflict with itself when the substantiality of one is denied. 
 Substantiality is put in question on both sides : things are 
 held to be creatures, and God the only substance ; but the 
 nature of things is in conflict with this concept through 
 the independence both of extension and will. 
 
 3. Dualism between Mind and Body. — If the dualism 
 between God and the world in the system of the philoso- 
 pher falls into uncertainty, the cleft in the nature of things, 
 on the other hand, the opposition between mind and body, 
 appears in the most decided and certain form. From our 
 self-certainty it followed that we are independent and con- 
 scious beings ; i.e., thinking substances (minds). As soon as 
 our doubt that there are things without us was removed, 
 these had to be conceived as beings independent of us, in 
 their way self-dependent, i.e., also as substances which can 
 have nothing in common with mind, are, therefore, com- 
 pletely opposed to the latter, or, which is the same thing, as 
 merely extended substances (bodies). Thus, the opposition 
 between mind and body stepped into the full light of clear 
 and distinct thought. Nothing that thinks is extended, 
 nothing that is extended thinks. Thought and extension 
 are different " toto genere^'' as Descartes says in replying to 
 Hobbes. But if only the opposition or separation between 
 mind and body can be thought clearly and distinctly, the 
 union of the two must appear unthinkable or impossible in 
 the natural light of reason ; and if there is actually such a 
 union, it is in conflict with the foundations of the system, 
 and its explanation puts the doctrine of Descartes to the 
 severest test. We have now to inquire whether the philoso- 
 pher stands this test without denying his principles. 
 
 No objections to a system of knowledge are stronger than 
 
478 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the undeniable facts of nature itself. The negative instance 
 to the dualism of mind and body is man, since he is both 
 in one. In him mind and body are united, and indeed so 
 closely, that, according to Descartes' own declaration, they 
 constitute in a certain manner one being.i What becomes 
 of this fact when brought face to face with that clearly and 
 distinctly apprehended opposition of the two substances? 
 The philosopher declares, "In truth, mind and body are 
 completely separated: in the light of reason I see that 
 there is no community between the two." Human nature 
 proves the contrary, since it is such a community. Accord- 
 ing to dualism, natural things are either minds or bodies. 
 Man is a living proof of the contrary, a natural being who 
 is both at the same time. The voice of his self-certainty 
 calls to him, " Thou art mind : " the voice of his natural 
 impulses and desires calls just as distinctly, "Thou art 
 body." 
 
 After the Princess Elizabeth, Descartes' most receptive 
 disciple, had studied the "Meditations," the first question, 
 which she wished Descartes to answer b}'' letter, was, How 
 is it with the union of soul and bod}'? Descartes replied 
 that no question was more proper, but his answer to it 
 was not a sufficient explanation. He did not solve the 
 problem, but only changed it, and left it unanswered. 
 Clearly and distinctly one apprehends, he said, merely the 
 opposition of soul and body, not their union; that the 
 essence of the mind consists in thought and will, that of 
 body in extension and its modifications is an object of the 
 most distinct knowledge, while the union of the two and 
 their mutual influence is only perceived by means of the 
 senses. " The human mind is not capable of distinctly 
 conceiving the difference of essence between soul and body, 
 and, at the same time, their union, for it would then be 
 necessary to conceive both as a single being, and at the 
 same time as two different things, which is a contradic- 
 
 1 Uii., vi. (t. i. p. 336). 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OP THE SYSTEM, ETC. 479 
 
 tion.^ " This confessed contradiction shows that the solution 
 of the anthropological problem conflicts with the dualism of 
 the principles. 
 
 There is no doubt that the complete nature of man con- 
 sists in a union of mind and body ; that, therefore, neither of 
 the two substances, compared with human nature, has the 
 character of completeness. The different relations in which 
 mind and body require to be considered, must be carefully 
 compared, that we may see whether the dualistic principles 
 hold their own. Mind and body are finite substances, beings 
 opposed to each other, constituents of human nature. They 
 are finite in distinction from God, opposed in reference to 
 each other, constituents which mutually complete each other 
 in reference to man. In each of these three relations, the 
 character of their substantiality is modified. 
 
 In the first relation, mind and body, as has already been 
 shown, are not really substances, but creatures (^substanfAce 
 creatoe). But if they are not substances at all, they cannot 
 be opposed : their dualism is here wrecked on the concept 
 of God, which cancels or invalidates the independence of 
 things. In the second relation, they are complete substances 
 (^substantim completce^, since they ai-e opposed to, and mutu- 
 ally exclude, each other. But their mutual exclusion is also 
 reciprocity, therefore a kind of community. If two natures 
 are so related to each other, that each must be conceived as 
 the contrary of the other, neither can be conceived ivithout 
 the other. Both are bound together by the character of 
 opposition, which constitutes their essence. The nature of 
 body consists in nothing but extension, because it must con- 
 sist in the complete opposite of thought. Thus, the dualism 
 between mind and body is wrecked on the concept of sub- 
 stance itself, which excludes every relation of substances, 
 therefore even opposition. In the third relation, i.e., in ref- 
 erence to human nature, mind and body are incomplete sub- 
 
 1 Of. the first two letters to Elizabeth in the spring of 1643 (t. ix. pp. 
 123-135). See book i. chap. iv. p. 220. 
 
480 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 stances (suistantice incompletce) : each requires the other for 
 its completion, and is, taken by itself, as little a whole as the 
 hand is the whole human body. Descartes himself uses this 
 comparison. If substance, according to the philosopher's 
 own and often repeated declaration, must be a being requir- 
 ing no other for its existence, an incomplete being, requiring 
 completion, is no substance. Here the substantiality of 
 mental and bodily nature, and therewith their dualism, are 
 wrecked on the concept and fact of man. The contradic- 
 tion is so apparent that the philosopher himself admits it. 
 
 With the doctrine of Descartes', that minds and bodies are 
 independent of and completely separated from each other, the 
 system itself is accordingly in conflict, since it maintains that 
 both are creatures of God, that they are necessarily opposed 
 in the world, and united in man. We must now examine 
 more closely Descartes' solution of his anthropological prob- 
 lem, in the light of this contradiction of concepts. 
 
 Man is one being, consisting of two natures. How is this 
 problem solved? This is the anthropological question from 
 the point of view of Cartesianism. We cannot apprehend 
 and affirm, both at the same time, wrote Descartes to his 
 pupil. If, then, we affirm the one, we must deny the other. 
 And there are passages in which this fundamental dualist, in 
 involuntary acknowledgment of the individuality of oiu" 
 being, affirms the unity of human nature, in such a way that 
 he denotes the union of soul and body in man as a substan- 
 tial unity (unio suhstantialis), and denies the duality of their 
 natures in such a way, that he transfers the fundamental 
 property of the one to the other, at one time making the 
 soul extended, at another the human body indivisible^ and 
 thus expunges the contradiction of attributes.^ 
 
 Nevertheless, the fundamental doctrine of dualism remains 
 the guiding point of view from which the union of the soul 
 and body in man requires to be so explained, that the duality 
 of natures may suffer no injury. They form not in truth, 
 
 1 Les passions, i. art. 30. 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 481 
 
 but only " in a certain manner," one being. Out of relation 
 to man, they are in no way incomplete, since each is sufficient 
 for itself, and neither requires the other ; but human nature 
 is first complete when they are both united in it, and, there- 
 fore, only in this relation has the connotation of incomplete 
 substances validity, as Descartes emphasizes in his reply to 
 the fourth objections. What nature has fundamentally sepa- 
 rated, remains separated even in union. Fundamentally dif- 
 ferent substances cannot, therefore, be united, but only 
 placed together : their union is not unity of nature, but of 
 composition, not " unitas naturce" but " unitas compositionis.'' 
 Man is a compound of mind and body. In this conception, 
 both the opposition and union of substances are valid, and 
 only from this point of view can the anthropological ques- 
 tion be put. The dualistic system has no other. 
 
 The question now arises whether these anthropological 
 principles are really consistent with the metaphysical, 
 whether soul and body, as constituents of a compounded 
 being, still remain those fundamentally different substances 
 which they are according to the dualistic principles of the 
 doctrine. Every compounded being is divisible, and, since 
 only extension can be divided, necessarily extended, there- 
 fore bodily or material ; and the same holds of each of its 
 parts. The parts which, through external combination, con- 
 stitute a whole, preserve their independence with reference 
 to each other, and remain substances; but only such sub- 
 stances can be brought into composition with each other as 
 are of the same kind, extended, material. Between the ex- 
 tended and the non-extended, the material and the immate- 
 rial, the bodily and the bodiless, substance, no kind of 
 composition is possible. If man is a compound of soul and 
 body, the fundamental difference of substances is gone. The 
 soul must touch the body with which it enters into the 
 closest union. The point where it touches it, or is con- 
 nected with it, must be spatial, in a place, bodily : the soul 
 is now localized, and becomes, in this respect, itself spatial. 
 
482 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 It is impossible to see in what respect it remains unspatial 
 or immaterial. Extension is aggressive ; if the soul, to 
 speak figuratively, gives it the little finger, it takes the whole 
 hand : if the thinking substance only has its seat anywhere, 
 its independence of, and difference from, the body are lost, 
 not merely in this, but in every, respect. If the soul is 
 localized, even thereby is it also materialized, and made sub- 
 ject to mechanical laws. To these inferences Descartes is 
 necessarily forced, and we have seen how he makes them 
 in his work on the "Passions." He places the soul in the 
 middle of the brain, in the conariou, where it both receives 
 and causes the motion of the animal spirits. There it 
 moves, and is moved by, body. Elsewhere he maintains 
 that only bodies are movable, and, leaving out of considera- 
 tion the first moving cause, that they are only moved by 
 bodies. If this is true, the soul, since it is movable and 
 moves bodies, must itself be bodily. It has become a mate- 
 rial thing, however earnestly we have been assured that it is 
 a thinking substance fundamentally different from body. 
 That duality of natures which dualism asserts, and which is 
 held to remain preserved in composition, is by this very posi- 
 tion completely destroyed. That mechanical influence and 
 connection which are said to exist only between bodies, are 
 now asserted between soul and body. The composition of 
 two substances, as the Princess Elizabeth aptly remarked, 
 cannot be thought without the extension and materiality of 
 the soul. The Cartesian anthropology is in conflict, not 
 merely with the dualistic principles of metaphysics, but also 
 with the mechanical laws of natural philosophy. That the 
 quantity of motion in the world remains constant, that 
 action and re-action are equal, — all these fundamental prop- 
 ositions of the doctrine of motion cease to be valid as 
 soon as motions are produced in bodies by immaterial 
 causes. 
 
 However the union of the two substances in human 
 nature is thought, whether as unity or composition, in each 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 483 
 
 conception it is in conflict with the fundamental dualism of 
 the system, and necessarily results in the opposite. 
 
 4. Dualism between Men and Animals. — The union of the 
 two substances is asserted only of human nature : only in this 
 respect did Descartes regard them as incomplete beings, as 
 only in relation to God created substances, therefore, in the 
 strict sense of the term, not substances at all. Everywhere 
 else dualism preserves its complete, unimpaired significance. 
 Of all finite beings, man is the only one who consists of 
 soul and body: among all living bodies, his is the only one 
 that is animated with a soul. All other things (so far as our 
 knowledge extends) are either minds or bodies : all other 
 bodies, even animals, are soulless, mechanically arranged 
 and moved masses, nothing but machines. This is the dif- 
 ference of essence between men and animals ; and it neces- 
 sarily results from the fundamental dualism of Descartes' 
 doctrine, and is by no means a paradoxical fancy of the 
 philosopher. Soul is mind: the mark by which mind is 
 known is its self-certainty; this forms the single ground 
 of the knowledge of our mental existence. Where self-con- 
 sciousness is wanting, both mind and soul are wanting. 
 Animals, therefore, are without souls, since they have no 
 self-consciousness; while man, by reason of his self-con- 
 sciousness, is of a mental nature. The opposition between 
 man and animal is accordingly related to that between 
 mind and body as a particular case to a universal proposition 
 which includes it, or as an inference to its ground. And the 
 proposition that animals are automata, follows from the 
 difference of essence between man and animals. 
 
 We have now to inquire whether these inferences are in 
 harmony with the principles, whether that particular case of 
 dualism in the doctrine of Descartes can maintain itself as 
 the system necessarily requires, and how the philosopher 
 comes to terms with the facts which conflict with his doc- 
 trine from the side both of human and animal nature. We 
 are now at the point which we have already spoken of, 
 
484 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 where we must inquire more closely into this critical ques- 
 tion.^ Its central point lies in the explanation of those phe- 
 nomena of life which man has in common with animals, as 
 sensations and impulses. If Descartes denies passions to 
 animals because passions are emotions of the mind, still he 
 cannot deny that they have sensations. How are these to 
 be explained? Are they mental or bodily, psychical or 
 mechanical, modes of thought or of motion ? In the answer 
 to this question, Descartes falls into a series of unavoidable 
 contradictions. 
 
 1. All true knowledge, according to the principle of cer- 
 tainty, consists in clear and distinct thought. If our thought 
 were only clear and distinct, there would be no error : the 
 wiU is guilty of error, because it affirms false judgments ; 
 these arise when we regard our presentations of sense (sensa- 
 tions) as properties of things. Sensations do not make the 
 error, but, without them, there would be no material out of 
 which the will could make them. If error consists in false 
 judgments, sensations consist in presentations of sense, 
 and these form the matter of judgment. Presentations are 
 only in mind : they are modes of thought. Sensations, 
 accordingly, are psychical. Among our different ideas are 
 also the presentations of body. Descartes at first leaves it 
 an open question, whether we ourselves, or things without 
 us, cause these ideas ; but he leaves no doubt that our sensa- 
 tions are presentations ; he accordingly relates sensations 
 merely to mind.^ 
 
 2. Involuntarily we relate our sensations to bodies without 
 us as their cause. If there were no such bodies, our presen- 
 tation of the world of the senses would be a natural delu- 
 sion, one, therefore, in the last analysis willed by God 
 himself; and this, according to Descartes, is impossible. 
 Therefore, our presentations of the sensations are also caused 
 by bodies ; i.e., they are at the same time bodily motions and 
 
 1 See book ii. chap. ix. pp. 412, 413. 
 
 2 Med., iii. (t. i. pp. 277-279). 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 485 
 
 impressions, and can only exist in a mind which is united in 
 the closest manner with a body. Now, Descartes relates sen- 
 sations, not merely to mind, but to man as a being composed 
 of soul and body.^ 
 
 3. The share which the body demands in sensations be- 
 comes constantly greater and greater, and at last it is so 
 great that the mind loses its part, and they become the com- 
 plete property of the body. Since man has them in common 
 with animals, they are also processes in the nature of ani- 
 mals, and, as such, merely mechanical, only impressions 
 and motions, without conception or perception. Therewith 
 sensation ceases to be what it is. From the position that 
 animals are nothing but machines, followed the inference 
 that they have no sensations, by means of which, in all seri- 
 ousness, Cartesians attempted to justify vivisection. As soon 
 as we consider sensations as phenomena of animal-human life, 
 they can be referred only to body. We observe that the 
 doctrine of Descartes is vacillating in reference to sensations, 
 and is impelled in three different directions by means of its 
 dualistic and anthropological principles. The first of the 
 "Meditations" treats sensations and sense-perceptions as 
 psychical facts, and relates them merely to the mind : the last 
 regards them as anthropological, and relates them to the com- 
 pound of mind and body. The work on the passions admits 
 nothing but the passions as bodily-psychical events, and 
 relates the sensations and impulses merely to body.^ Thence 
 results a twofold antinomy, — (1) thesis : sensations as unclear 
 conceptions are modifications of thought, therefore psychi- 
 cal; antithesis: sensations as presentations of sense are not 
 merely psychical, but at the same time bodily ; (2) thesis : 
 sensations as human processes are not merely bodily; an- 
 tithesis: sensations as animal processes are merely bodily 
 and mechanical. 
 
 4. If sensation is only mechanical, there can be no talk of 
 
 1 Med., vi. (t. i. pp. 336-340). 
 
 2 Lea passions, i. arts, xxiii., xxiv. 
 
486 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 perception and feeling, since there are none whatever. What 
 is asserted of animals must be asserted also of men, for the 
 living body in both cases is nothing but a machine, incapa- 
 ble, therefore, of sensation, and that, too, in each of its 
 parts, therefore in the brain. But if there are no sensations 
 whatever in the true meaning of the word, then also no 
 presentations of sense, no unclear thoughts, no errors are 
 possible. Thus, the doctrine of Descartes inevitably comes 
 into this characteristic position : it must both affirm and 
 deny the fact of sensations and at the same time ; it is unable 
 to do either. The attempt to explain them becomes in- 
 volved, therefore, in an antinomy as well as a dilemma. If 
 sensation is affirmed, it must also be affirmed in animals, and 
 they can no longer be regarded as without souls : thus, the 
 difference of essence between man and animal, mind and 
 body, disappears. If sensation is denied, the conceptions of 
 sense, obscure thought, human error, the state of our intel- 
 lectual perfection, therefore our self-delusion, our doubt, our 
 certainty of self, must also be denied. It is, therefore, as 
 impossible to affirm them as to deny them. In a word, from 
 the stand-point of Descartes' doctrine, the fact of sensation is 
 unexplained and inexplicable. 
 
 in. NEW PEOBLEMS AND THEHl SOLUTION. 
 
 1. Oocagionalism. — These contradictions, which we have 
 discovered and proved in the doctrine of Descartes, are prob- 
 lems which require to be solved, and which condition the his- 
 torical development of the system. At first the correction 
 of Cartesianism does not forsake its dualistic principles, but 
 follows their guidance, and determines logical consequences 
 accordingly. If mind and body are by nature opposed to 
 each other, a natural union of the two as it takes place in 
 men cannot be comprehended. It is, therefore, logical to 
 declare it incomprehensible. As a matter of fact, it exists. 
 Since it cannot result from natural causes, it is an effect of 
 supernatural causes — can only be the product of divine 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 487 
 
 power. Two facts proclaim that soul and body are united in 
 men, — the fact of our mental-bodily life and our perception 
 and knowledge of the material world. In both cases, accord- 
 ing to the dualistic principles, we must declare that the 
 union is possible neither through the mind, nor the body, 
 nor both together, but only through God. The soul does 
 not move the body by means of its will, nor does the body 
 cause a presentation by means of its impression ; but God 
 brings it to pass, that the corresponding motion in our organs 
 follows upon our volition, and the corresponding presenta- 
 tion in our mind, upon the impressions of our senses. Our 
 will and its volition are not the cause, but only the occasion, 
 in connection with which, and by reason of the divine activ- 
 ity, the motion that executes our designs takes place in our 
 bodily organs. The same is true of our impressions of sense 
 in relation to ideas. The occasion is not the producing, but 
 merely the occasional, cause (causa occasionalis') : the efficient 
 cause (causa efficiens') is, in both cases, God alone. This 
 stand-point of Occasionalism, which Geulincx applied to the 
 anthropological problem, is the first and logical development 
 of Cartesianism. If the dualistic principles are valid, the 
 union of the two substances which takes place in our per- 
 ception and knowledge of the material world is likewise 
 incomprehensible. If mind and body, thought and exten- 
 sion, are completely separated, how comes the idea of exten- 
 sion in our minds ? This idea can be only in God : therefore 
 our knowledge of bodies, or our perception of things, is pos- 
 sible only in God. To this explanation Malebranche comes, 
 in the logical development of the principles of Descartes 
 which he affirms and maintains. 
 
 The problem of man and of human knowledge is not 
 solved by Occasionalism : on the contrary, every appearance 
 of a natural explanation is avoided, and the impossibility of 
 a rational solution maintained. So long as the opposition 
 of the two substances is regarded as fundamental, the ques- 
 tions of anthropology cannot be answered ; and the service, 
 
488 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as well as the advance, of Occasionalism consists in having 
 illustrated this position of the anthropological problem. 
 
 2. Spinozism. — But a rational solution continues to be 
 demanded by the doctrine of Descartes, since its problem is 
 a universal knowledge of things. The union of soul and 
 body requires, therefore, to be considered in the light of 
 reason, and to be comprehended as a necessary effect of 
 natural causes. Now, since the fundamental dualism of the 
 Cartesian doctrine makes such an explanation impossible, all 
 further advance depends upon a transformation which at 
 first takes place only partially. The opposition of sub- 
 stances is denied, that of their attributes admitted. If 
 thought and extension are the attributes of opposed sub- 
 stances, the union of soul and body is incomprehensible, and 
 equivalent to a miracle. Those two fundamental attributes 
 of tilings must be conceived as opposite attributes, not 
 of different substances, but of one. This one is the only 
 and divine substance : minds and bodies are not independ- 
 ent beings, but modes or effects of God, who, as the eternal 
 and inner cause of all things, is equal to nature. The phrase 
 " Beus sive natura " is now accepted as perfectly valid. 
 Since the one divine Substance comprises in itself the 
 opposite attributes of thought and extension, the two forces 
 act as independently of each other as they are necessarily 
 united : all things are effects both of thought and extension ; 
 i.e., they are both minds and bodies. These do not become 
 united, they have been from eternity. They are not united 
 only in men, but in every thing, since of every natural 
 effect must be true what is true of the nature of the 
 universe and its activity ; viz., it is thinking and extended. 
 As effects of the same univei'se, all things are bodies 
 animated with souls, therefore alike in nature, and different 
 only in the degree of their power. Therewitli the dualism of 
 substances, which Descartes had maintained, is annulled, — 
 the difference of essence between God and the world, mind 
 and bod}?, man and animal. Monism has supplanted dualism ; 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 489 
 
 and thus the naturalistic trend is completed, and raised to 
 universal validity. Spinoza develops this trend, logically 
 carrying out the fundamental thought of Descartes' doctrine, 
 and transforming the principles accordingly. This funda- 
 mental thought was the logical requirement of a method of 
 thought advancing along an unbroken path to the universal 
 dominion of nature, and the logical outcome of the proposi- 
 tion that there is in truth but one substance. That there is 
 but one substance, and that its attributes are of opposite 
 natures, is the fundamental concept of Spinozism. 
 
 3. Monadology. — The opposition of attributes was still 
 maintained, — the dualism between thought and extension. 
 The transformation of the Cartesian doctrine by Spinoza 
 was, therefore, only partial. In spite of its monistic char- 
 acter, the foundations of Spinozism still remain partly 
 involved in the dualistic system of his master, and are, 
 therefore, still dependent upon him. The next step in the 
 historical development of philosophy must consist in the 
 denial of that opposition of attributes also, and in the entire 
 transformation of the principles of Descartes without chan- 
 ging the problem of knowledge. 
 
 If there is in truth but one substance, as Descartes had 
 declared, and Spinoza had sought to establish, things are 
 merely modifications of it, therefore absolutely dependent 
 in their nature: no single and finite thing is independent — 
 not even minds, not even the human mind. The self-cer- 
 tainty of the latter is, therefore, fallacious and impossible, 
 since it is the expression and ground of its supposed sub- 
 stantiality. Without independence, there is also no self- 
 certainty; without this, no certainty at all, and no possibility 
 of knowledge. This is the point to which the doctrine of 
 Descartes is immovably anchored. Upon it monism is 
 wrecked ; and in order to develop philosophy further, it is 
 first necessary to return to the starting-point of the Cartesian 
 doctrine, and to attempt so to advance from it as to avoid 
 dualism, and fundamentally overcome it. Exactly therein 
 
490 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 consists the entire transformation or reformation of philoso- 
 phy. Substance must be so conceived that the self-certainty 
 of the human mind is compatible with it — that the inde- 
 pendence of individuals is not thereby annulled, but rather 
 confirmed. Hence the conception of the substantiality of 
 individual beings : there is not one substance, but an infinite 
 number. If these substances are again to be opposed to each 
 other, and to be divided into the two classes of minds and 
 bodies, we have returned to Cartesianism, and must a second 
 time make our way through occasionalism to the monism of 
 Spinoza. The concept of substance is, therefore, so to be 
 transformed, that the opposition of thought and extension, 
 that remnant of dualism, may be obliterated. We cannot 
 get rid of this opposition so long as mind and self-certainty, 
 thought (conception) and self-conscious activity, are regarded 
 as identical, and the possibility of unconscious activity of 
 mind or unconscious conceptions is not evident. If there 
 are obscure conceptions, or if there is an unconscious life of 
 the soul, the territory and nature of mind are no longer limited 
 to self-consciousness, and bodies, because they are uncon- 
 scious, are not, therefore, soulless, and the opposition between 
 mind and body (man and animal) grows less, and is resolved 
 into differences of degree, into gradations in the power of 
 conception, into degrees of development of beings animated 
 with souls, each of whom constitutes a self-active being or 
 individuality, determined by the degree of its power. The 
 concept of substance is transformed into that of individual 
 active beings or monads, the world appears as an ascending 
 series of such monads, as a system of development similar 
 to that which Aristotle had taught. The new system of 
 knowledge dissolved the dualism between thought and exten- 
 sion, mind and body, and thus removed also the opposition 
 between Descartes and Aristotle, between modern and 
 ancient philosophy. It so transformed the former that it 
 restored the latter. This is the stand-point of Leibnitz in 
 his doctrine of monads, a doctrine which dominates the 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 491 
 
 metaphysics of the eighteenth century, particularly German 
 philosophy and the Aufklarung. 
 
 Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz are the three greatest 
 philosophers of modern times before Kant. One can satisfy 
 himself of their importance without any scholarly examina- 
 tion of their works. There are certain fundamental truths 
 which are incontestably evident to every reflecting person 
 from the consideration of his own mind and of the nature 
 of things. There is no opposition in the world greater than 
 that between self-conscious and unconscious beings. This 
 opposition exists, and at first sight it makes no difference 
 whether it is mediate or immediate. When. we compare the 
 dark world of body with the illuminated world of conscious- 
 ness, a chasm yawns before us. Just as evident as is this 
 opposition is the necessity of a universal, conformable to 
 nature, and continuous connection, in which each thing pro- 
 ceeds from causes, and these themselves in turn are necessary 
 consequences. The natural belonging-together of things de- 
 mands such an inseparable connection or causal nexus. We 
 must affirm and unite these fundamental truths: therein 
 consists the third. The contrast in the nature of things is 
 caused by their connection ; i.e., the chain of things forms a 
 development which rises from the lowest grades of unconscious 
 beings step by step to conscious beings, from the natural 
 woiid to the moral, from nature to culture, from the lower 
 grades of human culture to the higher. The three funda- 
 mental truths are accordingly those of the opposition, the 
 causal connection, and the development, in the nature of 
 things. The first animates the dualism of Descartes ; the 
 second, the monism of Spinoza ; the third, the harmonizing 
 (evolutionistic) system of our Leibnitz. 
 
 4. Sensualism. — We have marked the path along which, 
 in logical development of the principles of Descartes, phi- 
 losophy advanced through the dependent stand-point of the 
 school to a transformation of the metaphysical system. Let 
 us now turn to the opposite tendency of Empiricism, that 
 
492 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 we may compare it with Descartes, and see the paths which 
 lead in a straight line from him to his opponents. Thus we 
 shall ascertain the position of his system with reference to 
 the different territories of modern philosophy. 
 
 The opposite stand-point of sensualism can be reached by 
 a single step, as it were, from the doctrine of Descartes. If, 
 for example, the nature of mind consists in self-certainty, 
 whatever is in mind must appear in consciousness. Original 
 or innate ideas must, therefore, always be present in every 
 consciousness. But since, as a matter of fact, they are not, it 
 follows that there are no innate ideas, that, therefore, nothing 
 is innate to the mind, that it is on the contrary empty by 
 nature, like a tabula rosa, and receives all its ideas merely 
 through perception (outer and inner). In this way Locke 
 attempted to refute Descartes in his " Essay on the Human 
 Understanding," and to lay the foundations of sensualism. 
 From sensualism arise two completely antagonistic trends, 
 idealism and materialism. Let us compare both with our 
 philosopher. 
 
 5. Materialism and Idealism. — According to Descartes, 
 nothing can be accepted as true except that which is indubit- 
 ably certain : our self-certainty was the ground and type of 
 all knowledge. Now, we are immediately certain of nothing 
 but our conceptions or ideas : these, therefore, are the only 
 objects of our knowledge, our only certainties. Without us, 
 or independent of the conceiving mind, there is nothing 
 real ; no matter, as a thing independent of mind. All 
 objects are only mental, not substances, therefore, not self- 
 dependent beings existing for themselves, but phenomena. 
 Only perceiving or conceiving beings are substantial. There 
 are, therefore, only minds and ideas. This proposition is the 
 fundamental theme which Berkeley develops in his idealism. 
 We meet Berkeleyanism when we follow in a straight line 
 the direction pointed out by the Cartesian proposition of 
 self-certainty. 
 
 In order to maintain the dualism of thinking and ex- 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 493 
 
 tended substances, Descartes conceived the union of the two 
 in man as a compound of mind and body, from which the 
 position that the soul has a place and is material, inevitably 
 followed. There a broad street for materialism was opened 
 in his doctrine. If the soul has its seat in the brain, the 
 materialists can easily conclude that the soul is the brain, 
 thinking is feeling, feeling an activity of- the brain — nothing 
 more than a motion of the molecules of the brain. Not 
 merely animals, but men also, are machines, and nothing but 
 machines. We see a path before us which leads straight 
 from Descartes to La Mettrie, from the " coffito ergo sum " to 
 the " Vhomme machine," from the French metaphysician of 
 the seventeenth to the French materialism of the eighteenth 
 century. This materialism was indeed a development of 
 English sensualism, but in the Cartesian anthropology it 
 found a point of support which even La Mettrie did not 
 neglect. What is held of man is extended also to the uni- 
 verse. The universe is a machine. This sentence is the 
 theme of the gysteme de la nature. 
 
 6. Critical Philosophy. — But we have already seen how 
 weak is the support which Cartesianism offers to materialism. 
 There is no question, that from the principle of self-certainty, 
 on which the system of our philosopher rests, the logical 
 path leads not to materialism but to idealism. The real and 
 truly objective world can be no other than that which is per- 
 ceived. Now, we must carefully decide whether our concep- 
 tions are voluntary products or necessary results of the 
 intelligence. Even in his first " Meditation," Descartes had 
 declared that there are elementary conceptions which lie at 
 the foundation of all the rest, without which no kind of 
 conception of things is possible. He had laid special 
 emphasis upon space and time as examples of such funda- 
 mental concepts. On further reflection, time appeared as 
 a mere modus cogitandi, as a conception of a species which 
 our thought makes and erroneously regards as a property of 
 things themselves. Among the different ideas in our minds. 
 
494 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 there is but one, not taking into account our idea of God, 
 whose object Descartes proved, — the idea of things outside 
 of us or of body whose attribute consists in extension or in 
 space. Space constitutes the nature of bodies, which, inde- 
 pendently of our intelligence, exist as things in themselves. 
 Apart from our idea of God, space is the only one of our 
 fundamental conceptions which expresses the nature of a 
 substance independent of thought. If space were nothing 
 but our conception, the same would be true of matter and 
 the whole world of bodies, and we should then be as imme- 
 diately certain of external things as of our own existence. 
 Descartes affirms the reality of space because he regards 
 bodies as things in themselves, as the external causes of our 
 presentations of sense, as we are compelled to regard them 
 by the natural instinct of reason. It would be a work of 
 divine deception if it were otherwise. Descartes affirmed 
 that the idea of space is original. His only reason for deny- 
 ing the idealistic character of space is the veracity of God. 
 The same reason ought to have compelled him to accept the 
 sensible qualities of body as properties of things in them- 
 selves: yet he declared this opinion the most wanton self- 
 delusion, and insisted, that, in order to apprehend clearly and 
 distinctly what bodies are in themselves, we must strip from 
 the conception of them our modes of thought and sensation. 
 If we withdraAV from our conception of things certain con- 
 ceptions, it is impossible to see why any thing should remain 
 which is fundamentally different from thought. According 
 to Descartes, nothing remains except space or extension. 
 Space, then, must be that conception which we cannot re- 
 nounce, or which we cannot strip off from our act of conceiv- 
 ing ; i.e., the necessary act of our intelligence. If extension 
 and thought are completely opposed to each other, as Des- 
 cartes asserted, there cannot be in our thought any idea 
 of extension, as Malebranche rightly inferred from that 
 dualism. If there is in us the idea of extension, the funda- 
 
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SYSTEM, ETC. 495 
 
 mental conception of space, as Descartes emphatically 
 maintains, thought and extension are not opposed to each 
 other, but extension or space belongs to the nature of 
 thought, to the constitution of our reason : space and the 
 material world in it are, then, nothing but our conception. 
 Now the question no longer is, " How are mind and body as 
 opposite substances united?" but, " How does the mind attain 
 to the conception of space, or how are thought and (external) 
 intuition united?" To precisely this question did Kant Te- 
 duce the psychological problem of the doctrine of Descartes 
 after he had proved that space is nothing in itself, but is 
 merely our conception, the necessary intuition of our reason. 
 Kant discovered this truth by his critical investigation which 
 tests the natural light of the senses and of thought, but by 
 no means presupposes its infallibility. This is the turning- 
 point in which not merely the principle of philosophy, but 
 the problem itself, is transformed ; and the first inquiry is as 
 to the possibility and conditions of knowledge, and this 
 must be answered before one decides whether the nature of 
 things is knowable and in what it consists. When Des- 
 cartes appealed to the veracity of God and of natiu'e in 
 order to make the infallibility of our intelligence dependent 
 upon it, that light of reason in which bodies appeared as 
 things in themselves, he laid the foundations of dogmatic 
 philosophy. 
 
 Nevertheless, the problem of the critical pliilosophy is also 
 contained in his system, and in his first methodological work 
 is stated so clearly that Kant might have appropriated it 
 word for word : " What is the nature and what are the limits 
 of the human knowledge? is the most important of questions. 
 Every one who has the least love for truth must once in his 
 life have considered it, since its investigation includes the 
 whole of method, and, as it were, the true organon of 
 knowledge. Nothing seems to me more absurd than to con- 
 tend boldly and aimlessly concerning the secrets of nature. 
 
496 HISTORY OP MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the influences of the stars, and the hidden things of the 
 future, without having once inquired whether the human 
 mind is competent to such investigations." 
 
 With this view of Kant, for which the doctrine in the pas- 
 sage quoted offers a stand-point so favorable and to which it 
 is apparently so near, we conclude this book. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT AND MODIFICATION OF THE 
 DOCTRINE OF DESCARTES. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 DIFFUSION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARTESIAN 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 L CARTESIANISM IN THE ITETHEHLANDS. 
 
 1. TJie New Rationalism and its Opponents. 
 
 npHE second half of the seventeenth century was the period 
 -*- when the new doctrine was more and more widely dif- 
 fused and accepted: it spread from the Netherlands to 
 Germany, and from France to England and Italy. It was 
 first and most widely diffused and most generally accepted 
 in France and the Netherlands, the two homes of the philos- 
 opher. The state of culture in these two countries presented 
 the conditions favorable to its development, and influences 
 hostile to it, though the character of both in France differed 
 from that of those in Holland. 
 
 The independence of Spain, which the United Netherlands 
 had achieved by war ; their federation ; the republican and 
 Protestant spirit of the people ; the culture of powerful cities, 
 particularly a series of vigorous universities, some of them 
 recently invigorated, some of them recently founded, and 
 peculiar in their character, — offered to aspiring Cartesianism 
 free scope for the exertion of its powers. Some decades 
 after the first school began to be formed, the origin of which 
 Descartes himself had seen, there was no university in the 
 United Netherlands in which the new ideas had not gained 
 admission. Utrecht, Leyden, Groningen, and Franeker are 
 particularly to be mentioned. The new doctrine, began to 
 be taught in the University of Utrecht by Reneri and Regius : 
 
 499 
 
600 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in Leyden it reached the zenith of its academic influence, 
 both because of the number and the ability of its adherents ; 
 it not only controlled the departments of philosophy and 
 mathematics in those universities, but it strongly influenced 
 theology, physics, and medicine. The first labor of Des- 
 cartes' disciples consisted in commenting upon and explain- 
 ing his works, in paraphrasing the most important of them, 
 the contents of which were by some even stated in verse. 
 Then lacunae were found in the system itself, which required 
 to be filled up, and inferences which needed to be modified 
 and more precisely determined. Therewith began the modifi- 
 cation (^Fortbildung') of the system, the work of its later 
 disciples. 
 
 We have seen the attacks which the principles of the new 
 system provoked. They proceeded in part from the ecclesi- 
 astico-theological, in part from the pliilosophical, side — 
 from the old Aristotelian-scholastic and the new sensualistic- 
 materialistic tendencies. The object of the first disciples 
 of Descartes was to compose these differences, and particu- 
 larly to adapt the new doctrine to the requirements of the- 
 ology. They followed the example of Descartes in relation 
 to matters of faith. In his system of metaphysics, with its 
 proofs of the existence of God and the immortality of the 
 soul, he had indeed intended to renew the alliance between 
 theology and philosophy, faith and reason, and establish it 
 more firmly than ever before. He hoped to have accom- 
 plished what scholasticism had labored for in vain, the 
 rationalization of faith. But his demonstrations by no means 
 disposed of the matter. In open conflict with biblical and 
 ecclesiastical conceptions, he had taught the motion of the 
 earth and the infinity of the universe. It was not enough to 
 make theology rational, according to Descartes. The new 
 theology had to prove its harmony with the Bible; and this 
 could only be done by an artificial change in the interpreta- 
 tion of conflicting passages in the Bible, by an assumption 
 that in such cases the biblical language was to be taken fig- 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 601 
 
 iiratively, in a word, by an allegorical explanation — the expe- 
 dient which has always been resorted to whenever the 
 attempt has been made to justify a speculative religious doc- 
 trine by the records of revelation. The natural, philological, 
 historical interpretation had to give place to the so-called 
 philosophical, that it might not stand in the way of the har- 
 mony which was to be proved. The Cartesian theologians of 
 Leyden, Groningen, and Franeker developed and defended 
 this theory of allegorical interpretation. WitticTi (1625- 
 1688), who was professor in Leyden, the most celebrated 
 teacher in the university in his time, the leader of the new 
 rationalism in the Netherlands, and later an antagonist of 
 Spinoza, was the most distinguished expounder of this view. 
 In the year 1659, his work, " On the Harmony between the 
 Bible and Cartesianism," appeared. Amerpool, in Groningen, 
 in his " Cartesius Mozaizans " (1669), even sought to prove 
 that the Mosaic account of creation and the Cartesian cos- 
 mogony were in harmony by reading the hypothesis of vor- 
 tices into the first chapter of Genesis. The spirit of Philo 
 seemed to have taken possession of the Cartesians. Their 
 uncritical, extravagant mode of interpretation went so far 
 that Schotanus, who put the Cartesian metaphysics in rhyme, 
 compared the six Meditations with the six days of creation ! 
 Coccejus, a theologian who taught in Leyden at the same 
 time that Wittich was there, independently of the rational- 
 ists of the philosophical school, used the allegorical mode of 
 interpretation to show that the New Testament is contained 
 typologically in the Old. The Cartesians, and followers of 
 Coccejus, were, therefore, regarded as allies by their op- 
 ponents in the Netherlands, as the Cartesians and Jansenists 
 were in France. 
 
 With the greatest impetuosity the orthodox representa- 
 tives of the Church in the Netherlands attacked the new 
 school with its anti-biblical doctrines and its allegorical mode 
 of interpretation, which it charged with treating the founda- 
 tions of faith in an arbitrary manner, and seeking to subject 
 
502 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 theology to the claims of reason. They demanded the sepa- 
 ration of the two, the formal exclusion of Cartesianism from 
 pulpits and lecturers' chairs. Their leaders were the Voe- 
 tians, who so influenced the civil authorities, the academic 
 curators, and theological faculties, and excited them against 
 the new doctrine, that enemies appeared against it in 
 Utrecht and Leyden, even in the lifetime of the philosopher.^ 
 Soon after the death of Descartes the synod of Dort pro- 
 nounced a prohibition (1656) which \vas confirmed by the 
 decrees of Delft in the following year. 
 
 But these measures accomplished nothing of importance. 
 Their chief result was that those who diffused the doctrine 
 did not acknowledge that they were disciples of Descartes. 
 When Heerebord, professor of theology in Leyden, published 
 his " Philosophical Investigations " in the year the decrees 
 of Delft were enacted, he announced himself as an inde- 
 pendent thinker, who availed himself of the freedom of 
 faith and of thought in the Netherlands, to speak alike 
 impartially of Aristotle and Thomas, of Patricias, Ramus 
 and Descartes. He declared in the preface that he was 
 the slave of no philosopher, that he proposed to be neither 
 the scourge nor the martyr, neither the " Momus " nor the 
 " Mimus " of the authorities of the schools. Lambert Velt- 
 Jmysen, a private individual in Utrecht, and an advocate of 
 the Cartesian rationalism even in its application to the Bible, 
 later an opponent of Spinoza, defended the motion of the 
 earth, and said in the preface of his work that he was not 
 a theologian, but a free man in a free country.^ 
 
 2. Attempts to Compose Philosophical Differences. — Some 
 of the physiologists and doctors of the Cartesian school 
 sought to give a sensualistic interpretation to the system, 
 and to give a materialistic character to its explanation of 
 the relation between the soul and body. Regius in Utrecht, 
 
 1 Cf. book i. chap. vi. p. 250-267. 
 
 2 Francioque Bouillier : Histoire de la philosophie Cart&ienne, 3d ^d. 
 (Paris, 18C8) t. i. chap. xii. pp. 269-271 ; chap. xiii. pp. 283-291. 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CAETESIAN DOCTRINE. 503 
 
 and EoogUand in Leyden, who in his " Cogitationes " (1646) 
 so developed the fundamental doctrines of Descartes that 
 the only Cartesianism of his. work was the dedication, made 
 this attempt at the same time. Regius had been once 
 praised as a disciple, and Hooghland was the friend, of the 
 philosopher. Descartes regarded Regius as an apostate, and 
 publicly rejected him ; i Hooghland, as a well-disposed man 
 without a calling to philosophy, and without understanding 
 of his doctrine : he thought his work as immature, and he 
 expressed his disapprobation of it in a letter to the Princess 
 Elizabeth. Descartes would not enter into any kind of 
 compromise with these deserters to those enemies whom he 
 had so forcibly opposed in his replies to the objections of 
 Hobbes and Gassendi. He repudiated every attempt to 
 accommodate his doctrine to sensualism and materialism, 
 though he approved of the efforts to harmonize it with the 
 theology of the Church, and even with the physics of Aris- 
 totle. Every agreement between the opposing tendencies of 
 modern philosophy seemed to him the grossest caricature 
 of his own doctrine, though he regarded it as advantageous 
 to it to enter into an alliance with the old authorities long 
 familiar both in Church and the schools. There was no 
 Cartesian sensualism and materialism, but there was a Car- 
 tesian theology, and an Aristotelian-Cartesian philosophy 
 of nature ought to be possible. In this way his doctrine 
 increased in influence without losing any thing of its own 
 significance, since its disciples insisted on its principles, and 
 sought to reconcile opposing views to it by a change in 
 their interpretation. Thus, a Cartesian interpretation was 
 put upon the Bible, that Descartes' doctrine might appear 
 biblical ; and in like manner, a Cartesian interpretation was 
 given to Aristotle, that his stamp, as it were, might be put 
 upon the doctrine of Descartes, and the old school of physics 
 no longer take umbrage at his doctrine. The most impor- 
 tant representative of this trend was J. Raey, professor of 
 
 1 See book i. chap. vii. pp. 278-280. 
 
504 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 medicine in Leyden. He published in 1654 his " Clavis 
 philosophise naturalis seu introductio ad naturae contempla- 
 tionem Aristotelico-Cartesiana : " he sustained the same rela- 
 tion to Aristotle in the interests of theology, that Wittich 
 did to the Bible in the interests of physics. Descartes 
 himself declared that no one was better able to teach the 
 new doctrine than Raey. We shall hereafter have occasion 
 to mention Clauberg among the prominent men of the later 
 school: Raey was his teacher, Wittich his pupil. 
 
 The oppositions were too open and pronounced to be 
 tempered or denied. Descartes' theory of knowledge was 
 necessarily contested by the orthodox, and his doctrine of 
 mind by the materialists. According to the former, reason 
 is independent of authority : according to the latter, mind 
 is independent of matter. The Groniugen professor, ToUa» 
 Andrea (1604-1674), endeavored to maintain and defend 
 the system against its common enemies. 
 
 3. Opponents in Lyons. — Of course those artificial and 
 transparent attempts to change the interpretation of the old 
 doctrines were unable to deceive the disciples of the old school 
 — physicists as little as theologians. The more the new 
 doctrine disguised itself, the more dangerous it necessarily 
 appeared. Its opponents combined to attack their common 
 enemy. In Lyons, the university of Catholic Netherlands, 
 the physicist Plempius, with the approval of the theologians, 
 led the movement against advancing Cartesianism. The 
 papal nuncio in Brussels supported these zealots by admoni- 
 tions and prohibitions sent to the rector of the university. 
 The Jesuits took hold of the matter ; and the result was, 
 that on Nov. 20, 1663, the philosophical works of Descartes, 
 particularly the "Meditations," the declaration against 
 Regius, the letters to Dinet and Voetius, and the work 
 upon the passions, were placed upon the index of forbidden 
 books. That even the declaration against Regius' material- 
 istie interpretation of Cartesianism was mentioned in this pro- 
 hibition, is as remarkable as that Crassendis works were not 
 
DIFFUSION OP THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 505 
 
 prohibited. But in view of the objections of Bourdin and 
 the mode of thought of the Jesuits, it is not surprising that 
 they regarded sensualism as rather to be commended than 
 condemned, precisely because of its doctrine of the sensi- 
 bility. But little resulted from the Romish prohibition in 
 Lyons and Catholic Netherlands, but it was the more effec- 
 tive in France.^ 
 
 II. FRENCH CAETESIANISM. 
 
 1. Ecclesiastieo-Political Persecutions. — The condition of 
 public affairs in France, the natural home of Cartesianism, 
 was unfavorable to its diffusion. Both political and ecclesi- 
 astical power were centralized — the French king was the 
 most absolute of nionarchs, to whose command the institu- 
 tions of learning were subject, while he himself was under 
 the influence of the Jesuits. .These facts, along with the 
 popularity of Epicureanism which Gassendi and his disciples 
 liad revived, and which was promoted by the French spirit of 
 the time, were great obstacles to the progress of Descartes' 
 ideas. Three years after the Romish prohibition, the inter- 
 ment of Descartes' ashes in a church in Paris was forbidden ; 
 and after permission had been granted, the funeral ceremony 
 and the erection of a monument were forbidden (1667). 
 The king forbade tlie doctrine of Descartes to be taught in 
 the CollSge Royal (1669), in the University of Paris (16T1), 
 and that of Angers (1675). The new opinions were forbidden 
 to be diffused, " car tel est notre hon plaisir." The theological 
 faculty in Caen would not confer degrees upon Cartesians 
 (1667), and in the University of Paris the prohibition was 
 renewed twenty years after that royal command wMch had 
 come through the hands of the archbishop. That sufih a 
 repetition seemed necessary shows how little the officiial per- 
 secution, to which Descartes' doctrine was exposed! iii France 
 from 1670 to 1690, succeeded in accomplishing its iiitended 
 
 I Fr. Bouillier: Hist, de la phil. Cart., i. chap. xii. pp. 270-278 ; chap. xxli. 
 pp. 466, 467. 
 
506 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 purpose. Descartes' doctrine was too strong to be over- 
 thrown by those persecutions. 
 
 The desire to suppress Cartesianism and to persecute it so 
 violently came from the Church, and was intensified by the 
 ecclesiastico-poUtical spirit which then ruled in France. The 
 war against Jansenism had been going on for years, and had 
 already entered the stage which terminated in the complete 
 overthrow of the Port-Royalists when the persecution of 
 Cartesianism assumed its intolerant character. The new 
 philosophy was regarded as an ally of Jansenism ; and 
 Arnauld, the spokesman of the latter, was a Cartesian. If 
 the Jansenists were to be thoroughly overthrown, it would 
 not do to overlook the Cartesians, and the campaign against 
 Jansenism must be extended against Cartesianism also. No 
 centrifugal tendencies would be tolerated in the French 
 Church. From this ecclesiastico-political position, which 
 Louis XIV. occupied in union with the Jesuits, the disciples 
 of Descartes appeared in the ranks of the Jansenists, and 
 behind them the threatening Calvinists and Lutherans. 
 This was the real motive of all the Jesuitical polemics 
 against Cartesianism. Its positions were contested that its 
 connection with Jansenism might be deduced from its infer- 
 ences, and from its connection with Jansenism its hostility 
 to the Church. The sceptical foundation of the system, the 
 Cartesian doubt, seemed proof enough that in this point 
 the unconditional validity of the authority of the Church 
 was fundamentally denied. But the manifest contradiction 
 between the Cartesian metaphysics and the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation passed for the real ground of accusation. 
 If accidental validity only is conceded to forms, — not sub- 
 stantial, as with the scholastics, — if they are nothing but 
 modifications of substances, and are inseparably united with 
 them, it is absolutely impossible for the form and properties 
 of a thing to continue while the thing itself is changed, for 
 the body and blood of Christ to appear in the form and 
 among the properties of bread and wine — to illustrate the 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE 507 
 
 principle by the case of pre-eminent interest to the Church. 
 Descartes taught, that, under all conditions, substance contin- 
 ues and forms change : the Church teaches, that, in the sacra- 
 ment of the eucharist, forms continue while the substance 
 itself is changed. According to Descartes' principles, there is 
 indeed transformation, but no transubstantiation : according 
 to the Church, there is, in the sacrament of the eucharist, 
 transubstantiation, but no transformation. According to 
 Descartes, the essence of body consists in extension, and this 
 in space : it is, therefore, absolutely impossible for the same 
 body to exist in different spaces or places. The real or 
 bodily presence of Christ can, therefore, in no way exist in 
 the sacrament. Those fundamental positions concerning 
 substance and its modifications, substance and its attributes, 
 body and its extension, are accordingly absolutely anti-eucha- 
 ristic. Denying the substantiality of forms, and maintaining 
 that of extension, they are in fundamental conflict with ex- 
 actly that tenet of the Roman-Catholic Church in which 
 cultus and dogma are inseparably interwoven. All these 
 considerations were laid before the philosopher himself; and 
 in his reply to the objections of Arnauld, and in his letters to 
 the Jesuit Mesland, he vainly attempted to set them aside, 
 and to give to his sj^stem an orthodox interpretation. The 
 points in dispute related to metaphysical necessities ; i.e., to 
 such truths as are incapable of being changed, even by the 
 will of God. Had the question as to the position of a philo- 
 sophical system on the doctrine of transubstantiation been 
 of a merely academic character, it would be almost impossi- 
 ble to comprehend how such discussions in the golden age of 
 French literature should have played such an important part 
 in modern philosophy. But it was an ecdesiastico-poUtical 
 question of pre-eminent importance. We must realize, that, 
 in the conception and doctrine of the sacrament of the 
 eucharist, the ecclesiastical parties of the sixteenth century 
 were divided ; that at this point the great chasm arose which 
 tore Protestantism from Catholicism, and even separated the 
 
508 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Lutherans from the Reformed Church; that the Jesuitical 
 stress on cultus, and particularly their administration of the 
 Lord's Supper, the frequent and unspiritual confessing and 
 communing, insisted upon by the Jesuit fathers, was one of 
 the first objects which the French Jansenists, especially 
 Arnauld, violently attacked ; that in the age of Louis XIV., 
 the question was not merely as to a splendid modern litera- 
 ture, but as to the complete restoration of the unity of the 
 French Church, as to the repression of Jansenism and the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, — we must realize these 
 things before we can understand the significance of the 
 charge that Descartes' doctrine was anti-eucharistic. That 
 charge involved the charge of having Jansenistic, and at 
 bottom Calvinistic, tendencies; of being one of the most 
 dangerous opponents of the Romish Church, and the unity 
 of the Church in France. The question was not as to the 
 inclination and wishes of the philosopher, but as to the prin- 
 ciples of his doctrine. The Jesuit Valois epitomized the 
 objections which they urged against it in the following title : 
 "The Antagonism of the Doctrines of Descartes to the 
 Church, and their Harmony with Calvin " (1680).' 
 
 2. The Classic Period of French Literature and the Svr 
 premacy of Descartes' Philosophy. — But these antagonists 
 were completely mistaken — however correct their inferences 
 may have been — when they regarded the Cartesian philoso- 
 phy as a matter of an ecclesiastical party, and supposed that 
 its destiny was bound up with that of the Jansenists and- 
 Protestants in France. They had very much under-esti- 
 mated its importance when they looked upon it as a mere 
 theological revival. It was a new theory of the world, a 
 new system of knowledge and of nature, shaped and 
 illumined by the strictest and most consistent method of 
 thought, based on the most certain principles, and presented 
 so clearly and beautifully that it must have made a very 
 powerful impression upon the sensitive mind of the French, 
 
 1 Fr. BouUlier, i. chaps, xxi., xxii. See Intioduction, pp. 153-157. 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 609 
 
 and upon the Augustan age of their literature and poetry. 
 Against such a coalition of forces, the persecution of 
 ecclesiastical enemies, and even the powerful disfavor of 
 the court, could accomplish nothing permanent. Public 
 institutions of learning were closed to the Cartesian philoso- 
 phy : it was diffused in a surer and less public manner 
 through literature, by private scientific circles, by the 
 intellectual society of the metropolis — which set the fashion 
 for the rest of France. In the year 1635 Richelieu had 
 founded the French Academy for the guidance and develop- 
 ment of the language and literature. The next year 
 appeared " The Cid " of the great Corneille, in which the 
 character of high tragedy and the genius of the poet were 
 perfectly expressed : a year later Descartes published his first 
 works, the "Discours" and the "Essais." The epoch of 
 classic French literature had begun. When the ashes of the 
 philosopher were brought, a generation later, from Stock- 
 holm to Paris, the scientific circles and societies in the latter 
 city were permeated by his thoughts. The same year 
 (1666) Colbert founded the Academy of Sciences, and 
 supplemented the work of Richelieu, by establishing an 
 institute which was to sustain the same relation to mathe- 
 matics and physics that the Academy did to the French lan- 
 guage and literature. The latter reached its zenith in that 
 time. The tlu-ee stars of classic poetry shone at the same 
 time, — Corneille, already setting; Moliere, in his zenith; 
 Racine, the pupil of Port Royal, just climbing towards the 
 zenith: his "Andromache" appeared in 1667, a poem not 
 less characteristic of his genius than "The Cid" of the 
 genius of Corneille. 
 
 There are a peculiar affinity and harmony of spirit between 
 the great philosopher and the great tragic poets of this 
 period. The former set forth in his scientific works what 
 the latter embody in their dramas ; viz., the passions of the 
 soul. The theme of their poems is not the characteristics 
 of persons, but the portraiture of passions. To be able to 
 
510 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 express these as powerfully as possible, they seek the most 
 plastic materials, the event most in harmony with their pur- 
 pose, the most eloquent examples. The actions and charac- 
 ters which they bring before us in their correct works are 
 only the organs thi-ough which powerful emotions express 
 themselves forcibly and grandly. There was one passion 
 which Descartes distinguished from the rest, one which he 
 considered as suige7ieris, as the noblest and purest of all. He 
 called it "magnanimitS" and "gSnSrositS ;" the nobility of the 
 soul — self-esteem based on an heroic self-denial.^ This pas- 
 sion in manifold forms lives in the poems of Corneille, who 
 has been called the "great" because of this exalted charac- 
 teristic, which, with the rhetorical power that is characteristic 
 of the French, produces agreeable emotions. Of remaining 
 passions, none is more powerful than love, none more tor- 
 menting than jealousy. These passions were most pbwerfully 
 and eloquently expressed by the authors of "Andromache" 
 and " Phadra." If one wishes a personal illustration of that 
 emotion which Descartes extolled as ^'■magnanimitS" he need 
 only recall Corneille's Chim^ne in his " Cid," who, to avenge 
 the death of her father, did every thing in her power to sac- 
 rifice her lover, the idol of her heart ; and she saw in such 
 a denial of self, the perfection of strength of soul, and the 
 culmination of fame : " Je veux que la voix de la plus noire 
 envie Sieve au del ma gloire et plaigne mes enmis, sachant, que 
 je t'' adore et que je te poursuis." 
 
 In the life of our philosopher himself, and in his princi- 
 ples, which brought on a conflict with the great authorities 
 of the world, — venerable because of the power which they 
 have inherited from the past, — and which demanded 
 personal submission to them, we find a characteristic in 
 harmony with that exalted emotion portrayed in the poems 
 of Corneille. 
 
 The intellectual tendencies of the time, whether con- 
 sciously or not, were determined by the influence of Des- 
 
 1 See book ii. chap. ix. p. 431 and following. 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 511 
 
 cartes. A new species of poetry, which felt itself superior 
 to the Renaissance, and was filled with the consciousness of 
 its greatness and originality, associated itself with the new 
 philosophy. It would no longer imitate the ancients, but 
 would improve upon them, give itself rules, and methodi- 
 cally apply them, that it might produce works worthy of 
 acceptance as examples. The thoughts of philosophers and 
 the inventions of poets were controlled by a regular, care-' 
 fully considered art. Descartes was the first to discipline the 
 reason, to subject it to an art of thought, to realize the re- 
 quirement upon which he insisted, and to leave to his age a 
 luminous example in his works. His doctrine furnished the 
 foundation for a new work on logic, "L'art de penser," written, 
 in Port Royal by Arnauld and Nicole (1662) : Boileau wrote' 
 a book on the art of poetry, " L'art podtique," which has 
 been aptly called the "Discours de la m^thode " of poetry.' 
 Even in poetry nothing must please but reason and truth : 
 '■'■Aimez done la raison ; que toujours nos icrits empruntent d'elle 
 seule et leur lustre et leur prix." " Itieyi nest beau que le vrai ; 
 le vrai seul est aimalle ! " Even in poetry, brevity and clear- 
 ness, the avoidance of every thing superfluous and bombastic, 
 are required. The most evident coherence, and therefore 
 unity of place, time, and action, were made rigid laws for 
 dramatic works. All these rules are just such as Descartes 
 would have laid down if he had treated of the art of 
 poetry. They correspond to his doctrine which demands in 
 the works produced by men — no matter upon what material 
 they work, whether stones, ideas, or actions — ab.solute unity 
 and the closest coherence. Irregular and confused accumula- 
 tions from various ages were as repulsive to the author of 
 the "Discours de la m^thode " in the sciences as in houses 
 and cities. He would certainly have objected to similar ac- 
 cumulations in dramatic works. The tendency, which, in 
 the second half of the seventh century, controlled French 
 mind and taste in its greatness as well as in its limitations, 
 
 1 Bouillier, i. chap, xxiii. p. 491. 
 
512 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 manifesting itself in science and art, even in the gardens of 
 Versailles, was based on a certain mode of thought, the 
 principles of which are nowhere more distinctly and con- 
 sciously expressed than in the doctrine of Descartes. We 
 can, therefore, easily understand that Cartesianism in France 
 and Paris was a power far greater than the decrees of the 
 king whom it even made dependent upon itself, as it were, 
 incog7iito. It was a fashion of the time to which men in- 
 voluntarily paid homage. The tendency of the time was 
 Cartesian. 
 
 3. Fashionable Philosophy and Satire. — It is, therefore, no 
 wonder that the world of fashion and distinction and the 
 ladies of the time cultivated Cartesianism or made a profes- 
 sion of it. The Duchess du Maine was compared with 
 Queen Christina on account of her reverence for Descartes : 
 the scholarly Dupr^ was called, "Za CartSsienne." Out of 
 love to her daughter, Madame de Erignon, whose life was de- 
 voted to the study of the philosopher, Madame de S<)vign^ 
 was drawn to share her interests. Jestingly she called Des- 
 cartes, in her letters to her daughter, " votre pere," and the 
 latter, " ma chere petite CartSsienne." She visited in Brittany 
 a relative of the philosopher who bore his name, and wrote to 
 her daughter, " Je tiens un petit moreeau de ma fille." She 
 used the proverb of Cartesianism in order, with inimitable 
 grace, to express her maternal tenderness : " Je pense, done je 
 suis ; je pense a vous avec tendresse, dona je vous aime." She 
 gave her daughter an account of a philosophical discussion 
 after a dinner in which one of the guests had maintained 
 that thought depends upon the senses, and her son had de- 
 fended the contrary opinion according to Descartes. In one 
 of her letters she aptly and wittily reveals the hold of the 
 new philosophy upon the society of the time, and the nature 
 of her own interest in the matter which was the subject of 
 general interest, though it was frowned upon by the court ; 
 she regarded it as a modern and fashionable fancy, of which 
 one could not afford to be ignorant: "Corbinelli and 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 513 
 
 Lamousse have undertaken to instruct me in Cartesianism. 
 I wish to learn it like ombre, not in order to play, but to see 
 others play." ^ 
 
 As soon as a philosophical system becomes a fashion, it is 
 easy to make it ridiculous, especially if it collided with the 
 opinions of the world by apparently paradoxical positions, 
 and, nevertheless, is cultived by women, and affected by 
 many. It was inevitable, therefore, that in witty Paris and 
 in the time of MoliSre, Cartesianism, as the fashionable phi- 
 losophy, should be made an object of satire. There was a 
 harmony unsought between Descartes and the tragic poets 
 in their conception of human nature and the passions, and 
 the opposition between Descartes and MoliSre was just as 
 natural. The disciple of Gassendi ridiculed the female dis- 
 ciples of Descartes in his "Femmes savantes" (1672). In 
 the tragedies and comedies of the France of that time, in 
 Cornielle and MoliSre, we can see the reflection of the two 
 opposing currents of French philosophy, — the Cartesian 
 and Gassendish. But we must not conceive the matter 
 pedantically, and think of philosophical discipleship. If 
 Gassendi had not instructed Molidre, and if the latter had 
 not been acquainted with Lucretius, whose poem he trans- 
 lated, he would have been in sympathy with the sensualism 
 of the natural understanding, and opposed to the dualistic 
 and spiritualistic doctrine of Descartes. He needed no per- 
 sonal malice nor that of a school to induce him to make the 
 extravagances and affectations of Descartes' female disciples 
 ridiculous. The comic poet chose such subjects as though 
 he were called to do so. I shall not venture to decide 
 whether, in the character of Marphurius, in "Mariage 
 force," he was ridiculing the Cartesian doubt, and not rather 
 that universal scepticism found in every time. In "Femmes 
 savantes," he satirized, not exclusively, I admit, but in some 
 of the most effective passages, the follies to which the 
 fashion of Cartesianism had given rise in women. His char- 
 
 1 Bouillier, i. chap. xx. pp. 438-440. 
 
514 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 acters are not pronounced Cartesians, but women who 
 enthuse in an unintelligent manner over every thing that 
 smacks of learning. One praises Plato, another Epicurus, a 
 third finds " corpuscles " perfectly lovely, and " a void " too 
 hateful for any thing, and thinks herself subtile in preferring 
 " subtile matter : " "Je goutebien mieux la matiere subtile." 
 Now, these are Cartesianisms which are treated by women as 
 matters of taste exactly as though they were fashionable 
 articles. " J'aime ses tourbillons,'^ said Armande ; and his 
 mother continued, '■'■ Moi, ses mondes tourbants.'^ Moliere 
 portrays as most ridiculous the intense desii-e to regard the 
 body with its needs and impulses, the sensitive nature of 
 man, as contemptible stuff (guenille'), the association with 
 which the soul must regard as beneath its dignity. The mas- 
 ter of the house, Chrysole, is of a different opinion, and replies 
 to his wife entirely in the style of Gassendi : " Mon corps 
 est moi-mime, et fen veux prendre soin, guenille, si Von veut ; 
 ma guenille rnest cliere." Also the lover Clitandre wishes to 
 know nothing of the spiritualistic doctrine which separates 
 the mind from the senses : "2)e ces dStachements je ne connais 
 point Vart; le del rna dSnie cette philosophie." And B^lise, 
 the most ridiculous, and therefore the most successful, char- 
 acter of the comedy, bases on the Cartesian dualism her 
 theory of refined love, which belongs only to thinking sub- 
 stance, and has nothing in common with matter: " Mais nous 
 Stablissons une espece d^amour, qui doit Stre 4pure comme Vastre 
 du jour: la substance, qui pense y pent itre regue, mais nous 
 en bouissons la substance Stendue." ^ 
 
 That a satire of the fashion of Cartesianism appeared as 
 late as the year 1690, written by the Jesuit Daniel, and 
 entitled, " Voyage du monde de Descartes," proves how long- 
 lived the " Femmes savantes " were. The author takes com- 
 fort by considering past fashions. In his jests we recognize 
 the associate of Bourdin. The whole satire sprang from 
 that sensualistic temper in which the Jesuits were in har- 
 
 1 Femmes savantes, act ii. sc. 7; iii. 2; iv. 2; v. 3. 
 
DIFFUSION OF THE CARTESIAN DOCTRINE. 515 
 
 mony with Gassendi, particularly as opposed to Descartes. 
 What they attacked in Cartesianism by objections, accusa- 
 tions, satires, was its spiritualistic character. To make that 
 ridiculous, Daniel represented the philosopher as the magi- 
 cian of his doctrine, as it were, who had power to really 
 separate the soul from the body, to lay the latter aside like 
 a garment for a time, and to make journe5^s simply as a soul. 
 During such an absence of soul, the body of the philosopher 
 had been buried in Stockholm, and now the latter dwells in 
 the third heavens, engaged in constructing the universe out 
 of the subtile matter which he found there in store. He who 
 wishes to solve the riddle of the universe in the easiest way 
 must visit this architect of the world up there in his work- 
 shop ; it is only necessary for such an one to throw off his 
 body, and set out upon his journey as pure soul ; and this 
 can very easily be done by a well-trained Cartesian, since the 
 master had bestowed upon his disciples his own miraculous 
 powers. In this way, a disciple, eager for knowledge, made 
 his " Voyage du monde de Descartes." ^ 
 
 The spiritualism of Descartes' doctrine was a result of 
 its dualistic conception of the relation between the mind 
 and the body, and that contains the questions which gave 
 
 rise to the first attempt [to^criticailyVlevelop the system. 
 V '^' 
 
 1 Bouillier, i. chap. xx. p. 443; chap, xxvii. p. 576. 
 
516 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO CRITICALLY DEVELOP 
 CABTESIANISM. 
 
 I. THE FEENCH SCHOOL. 
 
 1. Rohault and RSgis. 
 
 AMONG the French Cartesians who were prominent in 
 the diffusion and development of Cartesianism, both 
 by their oral discussions and their writings, especial men- 
 tion should be made of Rohault of Amiens (1620-1672), 
 the son-in-law of Clerselier, and Sylvain RSgis of Angers 
 (1632-1707). The former was a man with a talent for 
 mechanical invention ; and by his lectures on physics, — 
 delivered in Paris on Wednesdays, — and the explanations 
 and disputations connected with them, he won a very large 
 audience, in which all classes of society were represented, 
 for the new doctrine, and by his work on physics (" Traitd de 
 physique ") he extended the influence of his instruction far 
 beyond Fraiace. A year before his death, his " Entretiens de 
 philosophic " appeared, in which he sought to reconcile the 
 Cartesian doctrine with the Aristotelian physics, and the 
 theology of the Church, in the manner with which we have 
 already become acquainted in the Netherlands. He was 
 the man who brought that testimonial from the Queen of 
 Sweden which opened the door of St. Genevieve for the 
 ashes of Descartes. R^gis was his pupil, and was sent by 
 the Cartesian society in Paris to the southern part of France 
 to teach the new doctrine there : in the years 1665-71 he 
 was thus engaged, first in Toulouse, then in Montpellier, 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM. 517 
 
 with the most extraordinary success. When he returned to 
 Paris to continue the lectures of his teacher, the persecution 
 of Cartesiauism with which we are acquainted had begun. 
 At the advice of the archbishop, R^gis felt obliged to dis- 
 continue his lectures, and was unable until 1690 to publish 
 his " System de philosophic," which contained in four parts 
 logic, metaphysics, physics, and morals. 
 
 What particularly attracts our attention in his works is 
 not so much the deviations from Descartes in his ethics and 
 politics in the direction of Hobbes, and in his doctrine of 
 ideas towards Gassendi, as his modification of Cartesianism 
 in reference to the relation between God and the world, 
 soul and body. In these points we find ideas in harmony 
 with Occasionalism, and particularly with Malebranche. If 
 God is, strictly speaking, the only substance, he is the only 
 real cause. We must, therefore, distinguish between the 
 primary causality of God and the secondary causality of 
 things. But if the divine activity is truly original, it alone 
 also truly produces, and natural things must be regarded 
 as intermediate causes or instruments through which God 
 works. They are not forces, but only " instruments." From 
 this point of view, the natural interaction between soul and 
 body necessarily appears as the result of the divine will: 
 through the body God causes the processes in the soul to 
 arise, through the soul the motions in the body. Now, the 
 instrumental cause has indeed no producing causality of its 
 own, but only acts in connection with the divine will, which 
 it influences, and whose action it modifies, as the nature of 
 the instrument does the activity of the artist. R^gis thus 
 leaves something to the soul that depends upon the soul 
 itself; it cannot produce motion, though it can indeed deter- 
 mine its direction ; it is a director, not a producer, of motion. 
 Thus the divine and human will concur in the production 
 of the bodily motions which correspond to the processes of 
 the soul. The relation of the two substances remains, there- 
 fore, undetermined and indefinite. If one determines and 
 
518 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 changes the direction of a motion, he thereby causes motion. 
 We may regard Regis' position as an attempt to harmonize 
 Cartesianism, not merely with its sensualistic opposite, but 
 also with the innovations which had already appeared within 
 the Cartesian school itself. By the latter, we mean the 
 theories of the French Occasionalists, and of Malebranche, 
 whose principal works were published before those of R^gis 
 were written. Scarcely had the latter entered upon that bril- 
 liant career of instruction in Toulouse, when French Occa- 
 sionalism appeared in the writings of two older Cartesians.^ 
 
 2. Be la Forge and Cordevioy. — In the year 1666, the 
 physician and physiologist, Louis de la Forge, a friend of 
 Descartes, and, with Clerselier, the editor of "Traitd de 
 I'homme," published his work " On the Human Soul, its 
 Powers and Activities, also its Union with the Body accord- 
 ing to the Principles of Descartes," and the advocate Giraud 
 de Cordemoy, his six " Philosophical Essays on the Difference 
 between Soul and Body."^ The relation of the two sub- 
 stances in respect to both their union and separation is the 
 most important of the subjects discussed in these works. 
 
 De la Forge explains the connection between soul and 
 body as the work of the divine will, and, in like manner, the 
 interaction between the two, with the exception of those 
 motions which depend upon our will which he regards as 
 voluntary. The human soul, accordingly, appears as the 
 producing and immediate cause of all conscious and volun- 
 tary actions (motions) ; God, oh the other hand, as the 
 producing and immediate cause of all unconscious and 
 involuntary processes. As to the latter, the bodily impres- 
 sion cannot cause the conception, but only occasion God to 
 cause it, and conversely. He thus maintained one-half of 
 Occasionalism. He accepted Occasionalism except in the 
 
 i Concerning Rohault and Regis, cf. Bouillier, 1. chap. xxiv. pp. 508-510, 
 517-524. 
 
 2 Lovis de la Fori/e : Traits de I'9,me liuraaine, de ses facultds et fonotions et 
 de son union avec le corps d'aprfes les principes de Descartes. Cordemoy: 
 Dissertations philosopbiques sur le discernemeut de I'&me et du corps. 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM. 519 
 
 case of the so-called voluntary motions. If these are not 
 in fact voluntary, and if they are as independent of our 
 will as they are of our knowledge, we must declare that 
 the human will causes no bodily actions whatever, and, 
 on the basis of Dualism, carry out the theory of Occasion- 
 alism. 
 
 Cordemoy took this step. He was the first Occasionalist 
 among the French Cartesians, and his Occasionalism was due 
 to the logical development of his dualistic principles. There 
 is but one active cause, as there is but one kind of self- 
 active being ; viz., mind, or will. Bodies have no wills, there- 
 fore they are not causes. No body, as such, can change 
 another body, none can affect the mind. Thinking sub- 
 stances are fundamentally different from extended ones. 
 The human mind (will), therefore, cannot move a body, and 
 it has just as little power to direct motion. There is but one 
 cause that moves body, and there is but one that causes the 
 interaction between mind and body ; and that is in both 
 cases the divine, because infinite and all-powerful. Will. 
 When two bodies meet, neither of itself moves the other, 
 but their collision is only the occasion upon which the 
 cause that moved the first body moved the second also. If 
 mind and body exist together in man, and the will puts 
 forth a volition to make a definite movement in an organ 
 of the body, the volition is only the occasion upon which 
 God so causes, and so directs, the motion that it corresponds 
 to the purpose. Our will, therefore, is not the efficient, but 
 only the occasional, cause of motion : motion takes place 
 independently of us, voluntary as well as involuntary. Our 
 will causes neither motion nor its direction.^ 
 
 The principles of Occasionalism were stated in the clearest 
 manner by Cordemoy, and we see how far R^gis remained 
 behind. But the Occasionalistic system had been developed 
 still more comprehensively and profoundly in the Nether- 
 lands, and had taken a course similar to that from De la 
 
 1 Bouillier, i. chap. xxiv. pp. 511-616. 
 
520 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Forge to Cordemoy ; viz., from Clauberg to Geulincx. The 
 logical development and application of the dualistic princi- 
 ples of Descartes was the animating thought that found 
 expression in different tendencies. 
 
 II. THE SCHOOL IN THE NETHERLANDS. 
 
 1. Clauberg. — JoJm Clauberg of Solingen in Westphalia 
 (1622-1665) had heard Tobias Andrea in Groningen, had 
 become acquainted with Clerselier and De la Forge during a 
 visit to France, and then continued his philosophical studies 
 in Leyden under Eaey, where he gave special attention to 
 physics, before he began to teach philosophy in Herborn. 
 He was professor of philosophy in the University of Duis- 
 burg during the last thirteen years of his life (1652-1665). 
 A German by birth, and convinced of the philosophical 
 destiny of his mother-tongue, Clauberg was one of the first 
 to teach philosophy in the German universities. He was full 
 of enthusiasm for Cartesianism, and, except the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, he valued no works more highly than those of Des- 
 cartes, and he labored with untiring zeal to defend and 
 explain them. In reply to the theological opponents of Car- 
 tesianism, — Revius in Leyden, with whom we are already 
 acquainted, and his own associate Lentulus in Herborn, — he 
 wrote his " Defensio Cartesiana " (1652) : he explained the 
 " Meditations," defended the Cartesian doubt as the path to 
 truth ("Initiatio philosophi " ), and wrote a logic which 
 served to develop the system, sought to unite the old and 
 new philosophy, and may be regarded as a forerunner of the 
 French manual, " L'art de penser." 
 
 None of his works has a greater claim on our interest than 
 the essay " On the Union of Soul and Bod}' in Man " (" De 
 animse et corporis in homine conjunctione "). The fact of 
 the mutual influence of soul and body cannot be explained 
 by natural laws in view of their substantial difference, but 
 must be regarded as a miracle, due to the exercise of divine 
 power. But the soul, because of its essence, is far more 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM. 521 
 
 powerful than the body ; it has more power orer the body 
 than the body has over it ; it cannot produce the motion of 
 the body, but it can indeed direct it ; it is not its physical 
 but its " moral cause." To use Descartes' figure, it is related 
 to the body like a driver to a wagon : the wagon is moved 
 by the horses, but the driver determines their course. But 
 the body can exert no influence whatever upon the soul : it is 
 completely incapable of any psychical effect. Its impres- 
 sions and motions merely precede, prepare for, i.e., occasion, 
 the corresponding psychical changes, but do not cause them. 
 The soul exercises a directive power upon the body : upon 
 occasion of the bodily impressions, it produces the corre- 
 sponding impressions by virtue of its own thinking nature. 
 Accordingly, in comparison with either God or body, it is 
 not so important as it ought to be on the principles of 
 dualism. Clauberg reminds us of La Forge in limiting Occa- 
 sionalism to the influences of the body, and of Rdgis in 
 ascribing a directive influence to the human will on the 
 bodily motions ; though Rdgis, later than Cordemoy, retraced 
 his steps, and resumed the stand-point of old Cartesiauism, 
 while Clauberg only departed farther from it, and in the 
 vacillations and half-heartedness of his Occasionalism he 
 may be regarded as having entered upon the path that 
 terminated in the critical development of it.^ 
 
 2. Balthasar Bekker. — From the Cartesian dualism, it fol- 
 lows that God is the only real substance and the primitive 
 source of power, the only producing cause in the true sense 
 of the word, in comparison with whom natural things have 
 only a secondary, instrumental, occasional efficiencj^ and the 
 mutual influence of soul and body exists only by virtue of 
 the divine will. Motion in bodies, and knowledge in minds 
 are caused, and the first cause of both is God. No being 
 except God, therefore, can exert a causative force upon 
 minds and bodies, and, therefore, upon man, who consists of 
 the two. This fact overthrows a whole class of generally 
 
 i Bouilller, i. chap. xiii. pp. 293-298. 
 
522 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 accepted opinions. If there are intermediate beings between 
 God and us, spirits below God and of a supernatural character, 
 they cannot exert any influence whatever upon man, nor can 
 they alter the nature of things at all. By the light of rea- 
 son, we see, as Descartes proved, only the reality of God, 
 minds and bodies: we see in bodies no property except 
 extension, no activity except mechanical motion, and, in 
 minds, nothing but understanding and will. We must, 
 therefore, deny that these intermediate beings (demons) 
 exert any power in the world of things, and indeed we dare 
 dispute even their existence. There are undoubtedly many 
 worlds unknown to us, and many unknown beings ; but there 
 are no demonic actions, and, therefore, no demonic causes, 
 at least none capable of appearing to us, and exerting an in- 
 fluence upon us. In this point, the new rationalism opposes 
 all demonology, and attacks a multitude of opinions which 
 have been entertained in the most different forms from the 
 earliest times, and were entertained, as -it were, in the very 
 presence of Descartes' doctrine. There are, as objects of 
 knowledge and reasonable belief, neither demons nor angels, — 
 either good or bad, — no souls of men separate from the body, 
 returning to the Avorld of apparitions, — either happy or 
 damned, — neither Devil nor ghosts, — hence no leagues with 
 the Devil, and no magic based upon it, — neither enchanters 
 nor witches, no power capable of enchanting men and things 
 in opposition to the laws of nature ; in a word, no " en- 
 chanted world." What throws light upon the world is 
 reason, and faith in God, which is based upon it : what 
 bewitches and enchants it is superstition, the objects of 
 which are demons, and which is itself produced by ignorance 
 and deceit. We can judge what strength and courage of 
 conviction were necessary to maintain such a position in a 
 century in which the existence of the Devil was firmly be- 
 lieved by orthodox Christians and people in general, and 
 with such strength that witches were burnt in the name of 
 justice. It was a preacher in the Netherlands, and a doctor 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM. 523 
 
 of theology, who developed this bold position with such 
 energy and thoroughness that his work became famous, was 
 hotly attacked by some, and imitated by many. He paid the 
 penalty for it by losing his position and by being excluded 
 from the communion of the churches, a sacrifice to, and a 
 proof of, his fidelity to his convictions. He was the boldest 
 and most interesting of the Cartesian theologians. 
 
 Balthasar Bekker of West Pnesland (1634-1698) began 
 to preach soon after the completion of his studies (which 
 he had begun in Franeker, and continued in Groningen) in 
 the village of Oosterlittens ; afterwards he went to France, 
 where he labored until 1674, when he accepted a call to 
 Lonen, and three years later to Weesop; shortly after he 
 was invited to Amsterdam (1679), but he lost his position in 
 consequence of his principal work (1694). He had already 
 excited the suspicion and hatred of the orthodox by an 
 earlier work : now he was suspended from his position by 
 the authorities of the city, and, since he remained loyal to 
 his convictions, he was dismissed from it by order of the 
 synod. 
 
 His first work, published in 1668, contained his philosophical 
 creed, — a defence of Cartesianism ("De philosophia Cartesi- 
 anaadmonitio Candida et sincera"): the second, an "Investi- 
 gation of Comets," written in the language of the Netherlands, 
 opened the campaign against superstition, which he attacked 
 in the form of fear of comets. In 1680 the dreaded heavenly 
 body had appeared, and the minds of men were thrown into 
 terror. On this occasion, and with a similar purpose, Pierre 
 Bayle published in Rotterdam at the same time (1683) his 
 work on comets. Bekker's comprehensive and great Avork, 
 written in the tongue of the Netherlands, was published in 
 the years 1691-94 under the title, " The Enchanted World " 
 (" De Betoverde Weereld "), and gave in four books a com- 
 plete and methodical discussion of his subject. The first book 
 gives an account of faith in demons as it is found in different 
 peoples and religions, in the heathens of ancient as well as 
 
524 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 modern times, in Jews and Mohammedans, in Catholic and 
 Protestant Christians, and thus fixes the subject to be 
 investigated in its entirety. In the following books, the 
 matter itself is examined : in the second, from the point of 
 view of reason and the Bible ; in the third and fourth, from 
 that of the facts which are urged as proofs of demons ; viz., 
 the magical arts, — particularly enchantment and prophesy- 
 ing, — the appearances of spirits, and the demonic states of 
 being possessed. The author then distinguished traditional 
 doctrines and testimonies from experiences — subjective 
 in their origin — to which people appeal, and which they 
 allege as present actual facts in proof of demonology. Bek- 
 ker took this occasion to recount a number of facts that had 
 come under his own experience and observation, and which 
 had convinced him of the nullity of the pretended demon- 
 ological facts. (The above biographical account is based on 
 these statements of the fourth book.) The faith of Chris- 
 tians in demons, particularly that of the Reformed Church, 
 was the real object against which Bekker's entire work was 
 directed. It was the faith in the Devil and in leagues with 
 the Devil, in enchanters and witches, which he sought to 
 completely destroy. He wished to prove to the Church that 
 its faith in demons was rooted in superstition. His argu- 
 ments were drawn in the main from three sources ; viz., 
 from the historical origin of the Christian faith in demonol- 
 ogy, from pure reason, and from the Bible. 
 
 Faith in demons, like the faith in a plurality of gods to 
 which it belongs, is of pagan origin, and was inherited by 
 primitive Christianity from paganism. It penetrated primi- 
 tive Christianity, and it became powerful in the Romish 
 Church, in the faith and cultus of which it formed, along 
 with magic, an essential element. This element was partly 
 destroyed, partly preserved, by the Reformation, and ac- 
 cepted by it as an inheritance from Catholicism : this is 
 particularly true of the belief in the existence of the Devil. 
 Thus, the belief in demons and magic in the Romish Church 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM. 525 
 
 is nothing but paganism in Christianity, and the belief of 
 the Reformed Church in the existence of the Devil is noth- 
 ing but Papacy in Protestantism. It is one of the most 
 serious errors of the time to detest the Romish Church on 
 account of things which we admire in pagan religions, and 
 not to see that these things have remained in their essence, 
 having merely changed their forms. And it is just as 
 absurd to regard the Romish Church as the work of the 
 Devil, and the Pope as Antichrist, and still continue under 
 the yoke of papal authority by believing in the power of the 
 Devil. Until we have entirely broken with the authority 
 of the Church and its traditions, we have no right to detest 
 the Papacy, since that is inseparable from the authority of the 
 Church. To Papists we should say, " Your faith in demons, 
 and your magic, is pagan : why, therefore, do you hate pagan- 
 ism?" To Protestants, "Your belief in demons and the Devil 
 is Catholic : why, therefore, do you hate Papacy, and admire 
 paganism?" The Reformed Church sustains the same rela- 
 tion to the Papacy that the Papacy does to pagan religions : 
 they have inherited and accepted their superstitions, and 
 condemned the faith from which they received them.^ 
 
 The philosophical stand-point from which Bekker proved 
 that demonic effects are unknowable, that belief in demons 
 is absurd, and that superstition comes from paganism, was, 
 as we have already seen, the Cartesian, which is based on 
 the dualism of God and the world, mind and body. He 
 rejected the Spinozistic conception of God, and conceived 
 the relation between the soul and body, not strictly accord- 
 ing to Occasionalism, but according to the old Cartesianism, 
 which according to its principles denied the natural inter- 
 action of the two, yet admitted it as a fact. God alone can 
 exert power upon nature : man is the only finite being whose 
 mind has any power over his own body. Hence all faith in 
 demons is without foundation.^ 
 
 1 The Enchanted World, hook i., chiefly xxiv., sees. 16-22. 
 
 2 lb., hook ii., chiefly i., 3-15, ii. i, iii. 1, iv. 8, vi. 11, vii. 
 
526 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But all arguments against demons and their activity are 
 destitute of cogency, so long as tliey are opposed by the 
 Bible, wliich, in so many places, speaks of the appearance of 
 angels and the Devil, of good and bad spirits, of archangels, 
 and of Satan. The author of " The Enchanted World " was 
 a firm believer in the Bible : he dared not, and would not, 
 doubt what he found there. Hence, in order to be cejrtain 
 that there are no demonological actions in the world, that 
 there is no influence exerted by supernatural agents, he had 
 to convince himself that these things are not asserted by 
 the Bible. To gain this conviction, and state the grounds 
 of it in detail, was plainly the most difficult problem of his 
 works ; and it is evident from some of its statements, that it 
 required many years to bring the perceptions of his reason 
 into harmony with his faith in the Bible. Thus, for example, 
 he had for a long time literally understood and accepted 
 the liistory of the fall, and the temptation of the Devil who 
 is spoken of as a serpent. After he had repeatedly and 
 carefully examined all the passages pertaining to this sub- 
 ject along with the necessary philological considerations, he 
 had reached this conclusion: (1) that none of the passages 
 in question teach any thing concerning the origin and 
 nature, property and order, of good and evil spirits, and 
 that, therefore, the Scriptures contain no doctrine of demons ; 
 (2) that none of them assert an immediate activity of angels 
 (good spirits) upon men, or (3) the real activity of the 
 Devil. When angels appear, it is never as independent 
 beings, but either as intermediate causes or instruments of 
 the divine power, or as images and signs (rhetorical figures) 
 of the presence of God; or finally, when they appear in 
 bodily form, and eat and drink, as did those messengers 
 who were sent to Abraham and Lot, they are not super- 
 natural beings, but men. Wlien God is spoken of as coming 
 on the wings of cherubim and of the wind, the cherubim 
 are evidently to be understood in the same figurative sense 
 as the wind ; and when the heavenly hosts of worshipping 
 
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS TO DEVELOP CARTESIANISM, 527 
 
 spirits are mentioned as surrounding the throne of God, 
 angels mean nothing but the throne; and both are images 
 of human forms trying to glorify God. The idea of the 
 Devil, on the other hand, as an independent spirit arrayed 
 against God, having and exerting a power of his own in 
 the world, and possessing a kingdom on earth, is perfectly 
 absurd. Where the Bible speaks of the appearing and 
 actions of the Devil, we must interpret it either allegorically 
 as in the history of the temptation in Paradise, and in the 
 controversy, mentioned in the Epistle of Jude, between the 
 archangel and Satan over the corpse of Moses, or the nar- 
 rative relates to a vision as in the history of the temptation 
 of Jesus. In all other cases, the occurrence is referred to the 
 Devil by the interpreters of the Scriptures through a mis- 
 understanding, while in reality the narration refers only to 
 divine or merely human actions. Thus, it was not Satan 
 who caused the sufferings of Job, but God who tried him ; 
 and it was not the persecutions of the Devil which Paul 
 had to endure, but those of evil men, whether the officer 
 with his scourge, or the enemies of the apostle with their 
 slanders.^ 
 
 This was the attitude of our theologian towards the 
 Holy Scriptures. To harmonize his faith in the Bible with 
 his disbelief in the Devil, he interpreted the Bible in 
 harmony with the laws of nature, only he confined this 
 method to the explanation of demonic miracles while he 
 acknowledged the divine as worthy of belief. Later rational- 
 ism extended the natural mode of explanation to all miracles. 
 As to the question of biblical miracles, there are three points 
 of view. The orthodox say, " Miracles are worthy of belief 
 because they are narrated in the Bible." Rationalists say, 
 "They are not worthy of belief, therefore they are not 
 narrated in the Bible." Those who occupy the third point 
 of view, which is later than the two preceding, affirm their 
 
 1 lb., book il., chiefly viii.; ix., sec. 11; x. 18-23; xi. 12, 13; xiv.; xv. 9; 
 xviii. 3-12; xx, 23-26; xxi.; xxiii. 
 
528 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 minor premise though their conclusion is negative. They 
 say, "Miracles are not worthy of belief although they are 
 narrated in the Bible." The second of these points of view 
 was Bekker's, supported by the rationalism of the Cartesian 
 doctrine ; though he by no means occupied that attitude 
 towards all the miracles of the Bible, but only towards 
 the accounts of demons. That is the remarkable position 
 of this man in the history of philosophy and theology. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. - ARNOLD GEULINCX. 529 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. -ARNOLD GEULINCX. 
 I. GEULINCX' LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 
 rpHE special representative of Occasionalism in its com- 
 -»- plete and systematic form came from Catholic Nether- 
 lands, — Arnold Geulincx^ of Antwerp (1625-1669), a pnpil, 
 and afterwards a teacher, in the University of Lyons. He 
 here studied philosophy and medicine, took his doctor's 
 degree, and for twelve years delivered lectures on philosophy, 
 — the last six as the first representative of the department. 
 His lectures were attended by a large and enthusiastic crowd 
 of students until he was forced to stop, and flee in a state 
 of the greatest destitution to Leyden, where he was hospi- 
 tably and benevolently received by the Cartesian Heidanus. 
 Through his influence, Geulincx, after he went over to the 
 Reformed Church, was permitted to deliver private lectures 
 in the University of Leyden, which were indeed as well 
 attended, though they were not so lucrative, as those in Lyons. 
 The assistance of Heidanus was to him a deliverance. He 
 himself, in the preface of his logic, called the misfortune that 
 had overtaken him a "naufragium rerum;" and Bontekoe, 
 who, under the name Philaretus, published his most impor- 
 tant work after his death, placed on the titlepage the 
 words '•'■ fost tristia auctoris fata^ His position must have 
 been desperate at that time, since Philaretus says in the 
 preface that he must have starved or begged if Heidanus had 
 
 1 The name is spelled in different ways in the titles of his works, — Geulincx, 
 Geulinxs, Geulinx, Geulincs, GeuUnok. 
 
530 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not come to his assistance. What drove him from Lyons 
 is not clearly known. We may surmise, that, on account 
 of the persecution of the Cartesians there by the party of 
 Plempius and the Jesuits, Geuliocx lost his positiou, and, 
 being poor, suffered on account of economic difficulties, and 
 ■was oppressed by the orthodox. The Abb^ Paquot, a licen- 
 tiate of theology from Lyons, in his literary memorabilia 
 (1768), states that debts and official dissensions compelled 
 the unhappy man to have recourse to flight. But his great 
 influence upon the students of the university, and the theses 
 in which he attacked and derided scholasticism, were reasons 
 enough to make him an object of hatred to his antagonists. 
 
 He had not leisure enough to publish all his works. The 
 first work which he published in Leyden was a collection of 
 the theses which he had defended in Lyons, — " Saturnalia, 
 seu qusestiones quodlibeticte in utramque partem disputatae " 
 (1660). Two years later his restoration of logic appeared, — 
 " Logica fundameutis suis, a quibus hoctenus coUapsa fuerat, 
 restituta." This was followed by the first part of his most 
 important work, — "ri'£(9t o-eavroi/ »ive ethica" (Amsterdam, 
 1665), the whole of which was published after his death by 
 Philaretus (Bontekoe). 
 
 His Physics and Metaphysics are next in importance, two 
 posthumous works, in which he opposed the Cartesian stand- 
 point to the Peripatetic ; viz., " Physica vera " (Lugdunum, 
 1680), and " Metaphysica vera et ad mentam peripateticam " 
 (Amsterdam, 1691). Contemporaneously with these, his ob- 
 servations on the Principles of Descartes were published in 
 Dort, — "Annotata prsecurrentia " and "Annotata majora 
 in principia Renati Descartes." 
 
 Geulincx' Logic and " L'art de penser," the logic of Port 
 Royal, appeared the same year ; his Ethics a year before the 
 writings of Louis de la Forge and Cordemoy upon the rela- 
 tion between soul and body. He was independent of both 
 of them, and, therefore, the first and real founder of 
 Occasionalism. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. - ARNOLD GEULINCX. 631 
 
 II. GEULINCX' DOCTRINE. 
 
 He was the first who was in all respects in earnest with 
 the Cartesian dualistic principles, and who set himself the 
 task of making the strictest and most logical application of 
 them. He found likewise that in one of its essential parts 
 the structure of the master still needed to be supplemented 
 and completed. Descartes' system required a theory of 
 - ethics : he had indeed stated its elements and outline in his 
 work on the passions, but he had left this part of his system 
 undeveloped. 
 
 Geulincx undertook to supply this defect. Only a true 
 knowledge of self can furnish the guiding principle of our 
 conduct, and solve the problem of ethics. Hence the title 
 of his most important work, " Tvio6l a-eavrov sive ethica." 
 Know thj^self, know from what thou art, thy true relation 
 to the world, and, hence, thy destiny in the world ! Now, 
 human nature consists in the union of soul and body. In 
 what does this consist ? The problem of ethics leads us to 
 that of anthropology, and this to the fundamental questions 
 of metaphysics : what is the nature of the soul and of the 
 body? How are finite substances distinguished from the 
 infinite substance? The doctrine of morals rests therefore 
 on metaphysics, and has three questions to answer, — What 
 am I ? What is body ? What is God ? Geulincx, accord- 
 ingly, divided his metaphysics into Autology, Somatology, 
 and Theology. Spinoza also called his most important work 
 " Ethica." It may be that the title of Geulincx, whose work 
 probably appeared before Spinoza's, was not without influ- 
 ence upon the latter. 
 
 1. The Doctrine of Principles. — All knowledge rests on 
 the certainty of self, the Cartesian " cogito, ergo sum." The 
 only object of immediate, and, therefore, absolute, knowl- 
 edge, is our own being. Only thinking beings can be objects 
 to themselves, and be evident to themselves. Only thinking 
 activity is immediately certain of itself, and every activity 
 
532 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which is certain of itself must be of a thinking nature. 
 The spheres of my thinking activity and that of my seif-cer- 
 tainty are exactly equal : so far as one extends, so far 
 extends the other, so far extend I myself. 
 
 It is, therefore, clear that I myself am active only as far as 
 my consciousness reveals my activity. If there is in me an 
 activity of which I am not immediately certain, which does 
 not fall within the illuminated circle of my consciousness, I 
 am not in truth myself active : I am not the being who pro- 
 duces this activity, and thus it is evident that something 
 takes place in me of which I am not the producing cause. 
 
 My activity coincides with my consciousness. But the 
 activity which lies in the light of consciousness is perfectly 
 clear and transparent : I see not merely that it happens, but 
 I see through its entire course ; I know how it happens. If, 
 therefore, an activity takes place in me of which I do not 
 know how it happens, I am not really conscious of this activ- 
 ity : it does not lie in the circle of my certainty of self. It 
 is, therefore, not in truth my activity : I am not its cause. 
 
 The mference, therefore, which Geulincx immediately 
 draws from the Cartesian " cogito, ergo sum" and declares the 
 self-evident principle of his doctrine, is this : It is impossible 
 for self-activity to be unconscious, and it is equally impos- 
 sible for unconscious activity to be self-activity. He who 
 does not know how an event takes place in him cannot be 
 the cause of this event. If you do not know, or if you are 
 not conscious, how you do any thing, you yourself do not do 
 it, and it is not your action. Every activity presupposes 
 that it is thought and willed. What, therefore, happens in 
 you without your thought and will does not happen through 
 you : you are not its cause. In other words, Every uncon- 
 scious and involuntary activity is not yours} 
 
 Activity without previous thought and will is impossible. 
 
 1 " Tmpossibile est, ut isfaciat, qui nescit, qvoinodo fiat. Qtiod nescis, qvomodo 
 flat, id non facts " (Metaph., pars i. ; Scientia, v.). " Qua fronte dicam, id me 
 facere, quod quomodoflat neaciof" (Tract., i. sec. ii. § 2, par. 4). 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. - ARNOLD GEULINCX. 533 
 
 This "impossible" contains the whole of Occasionalism. 
 My thought is modified in a variety of ways. I have expe- 
 riences which I do not consciously produce, which, like my 
 sensations, come involuntarily, the origin of which I do not 
 know. They are independent of my thought and will: I 
 myself am my thought and will. They do not, therefore, 
 depend upon me: they, therefore, presuppose a will foreign 
 to mine, which produces them in me. This foreign will 
 produces in us the multitude of sensations either immedi- 
 ately through itself, or through us, or through bodies. Our 
 own nature as thinking is one, simple, indivisible. That 
 foreign will, therefore, cannot produce in us sensations 
 through ourselves, and for the same reason not through 
 itself, since as a thinking being it is likewise simple. The 
 only means of its activity, therefore, is body, but mere ex- 
 tension, as uniform as it is, cannot produce that variety of 
 experiences : it must, therefore, be body in its variety, i.e., 
 in its changes, which is the means employed by that foreign 
 will in producing in us the experiences that do not depend 
 upon ourselves. Now, all changes in body are motions, and 
 our involuntary experiences must, therefore, be produced by 
 a will not our own by means of the motion of bodies.^ 
 
 Now, mind, by reason of its nature, is inaccessible to any 
 motion. Motion is the approach or withdrawal of parts; 
 but the mind has no parts, and therefore it cannot be moved. 
 Only the divisible is movable, and the mind is indivisible. 
 Between mind and body, therefore, there is no natural com- 
 munity. There is no influence, no incursus, of body into 
 mind. If, therefore, by means of the body something takes 
 place in mind, the body cannot be the producing, but only 
 the instrumental, cause of it ; not the cause, but only the in- 
 strument; not "-causa efficiens," but ''causa oceasionalis" 
 (occasional cause). ^ 
 .There are a great number of bodies different because of 
 
 1 Metaph., i.; Scient., ii., Iv., vi., vii. 
 a Metaph., pars. i. ; Scient., viii. 
 
534 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 their motions ; among these bodies or parts of the material 
 world one is the instrument, by means of which a multitude 
 of sensations are produced in me : with this body, my soul is 
 united. The union of a soul and a body is man : I am man 
 so far as I am united with a body in which a will not my 
 own causes my motions, and through these motions causes 
 experiences in my soul. To enter into those conditions of 
 human nature, i.e., into this union with a body, is to be 
 born : to leave those conditions is to die. The constitution of 
 human nature is not my work : I do not produce it, and I do 
 not know how it is produced. I only know that it is not 
 caused by me, that it must, therefore, be caused by a will 
 other than mine. In the world in which I live, I am accord- 
 ingly myself the work of a will not my own. 
 
 My power extends only as far as my will, and my will 
 should not be directed to objects beyond my power. Where 
 I can do nothing, I ought not to will any thing. ' Vbi nihil 
 vales, ihi nihil velis ! " In this point, the doctrine of morals 
 empties into metaphysics, the " ostium fluminis moralis,^' as it 
 were, as Geulincx says.i 
 
 We see plainly how closely the occasionalistic mode of 
 thought is connected with the ethical, and conditions the 
 latter. What does not take place through my will and with 
 my consciousness is not my deed • this sentence contains in 
 nuce the whole of Occasionalism. 
 
 The immediate inference is obvious. My connection with 
 the body, and with the world in which I am born, live, and 
 die, is not my work, since it lies beyond the sphere of my 
 will and my consciousness. This world is not the scene of 
 my activity, and it ought not, therefore, to be the object 
 of my will : this sentence contains the whole sum of ethics. 
 
 If, with Descartes, we admit -the validity of the opposition 
 of thinking and extended substances, in view of the actual 
 union of soul and body, no other conclusion is possible than 
 the Occasionalism of Geulincx. It does not explain the fact 
 
 1 Metaph., i.; Sclent., xi.; cf. ix., x. 
 
THE SYSTl'EM OF OCCASIONALISM. -ARNOLD GEULINCX. 635 
 
 of that union, but rather the impossibility of comprehending 
 it on natural principles. If the absolute opposition of soul 
 and body is once accepted, nothing else can indeed be 
 inferred than the impossibility of their natural community. 
 
 Experience shows that there is an apparent interaction 
 between soul and body. Certain motions in our bodies are 
 followed by certain states of consciousness in our souls, and, 
 in like manner, certain volitions are followed by certain 
 motions which correspond to those volitions. It is easy to 
 say that the will moves the body, and the impressions upon 
 the senses produce the sensations. But how is it possible, 
 we must ask, for the soul to act upon the body, or the body 
 upon the soul, since both are substances fundamentally dif- 
 ferent in nature, and excluding each other ? In such a rela- 
 tion any mutual influence is impossible. Bodily processes 
 can never be caused by the soul, and the body has just as 
 little power to cause changes in the soul. Thus, philosophy 
 overthrows what experience seems to teach ; viz., the mutual 
 causal relation between soul and body. 
 
 But if, in spite of all this, a causal relation does exist, it 
 must be so conceived that every reciprocal influence of one 
 upon the other, every natural interaction (injiuxus pJiysicus), 
 is excluded. It is not the will that causes motion, nor the 
 impression which causes sensation ; but this is their relation : 
 when an impression or a motion takes place in an organ of 
 my body, on occasion of this, the corresponding sensation is 
 produced in my soul, and in like manner, on occasion of a 
 volition, the corresponding motion m my bodily organ. The 
 causal relation is only occasional. Both sides are entirely in- 
 dependent of each other : no kind of natural causal nexus, 
 therefore, exists between them. They are in complete har- 
 mony, but such a one as excludes every natural accommo- 
 dation of one to the other : they are in a miraculous harmony 
 which admits no natural explanation. I feel, in harmony 
 with the impressions upon my senses ; but the' cause of this 
 sensation is neither body, since it cannot act upon the soul. 
 
636 HISTOEY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 nor I myself, since the sensation is involuntary, and I do not 
 know how it arises. My body moves in harmony with my 
 volitions ; but the cause of this motion is neither the body, 
 since this is a merely extended substance incapable of itself 
 of any kind of activity, nor am I myself the cause, since my 
 own activity is not of the nature of motion, but only of 
 thought and will. 
 
 This union of soul and body is the greatest wonder of the 
 world. It is absolutely impossible to comprehend how will 
 and motion, sensation and impression, con-espond to each 
 other. This correspondence appears perfectly magical, con- 
 sidered from the natural point of view. That T, through 
 my will, set my body in motion, is not less wonderful than if 
 I thereby set the whole material world in motion. It is no 
 less wonderful, said Geulincx, that the tongue in my mouth 
 trembles when I pronounce the word "earth," than if the 
 earth had thereby trembled.^ This shows how perfectly 
 Geulincx understood his point of view. The wonder is not 
 diminished because the body is mine upon which I act, since 
 it consists precisely in the fact that a part of the material 
 world is my body, or, what is the same thing, that there is 
 one body which is connected with me who am a soul. 
 
 What is the source of this union of soul and body? 
 Since they are not united of themselves, but, on the con- 
 trary, exist independently of each other, they must be 
 united by a particular activity, — one that proceeds from nei- 
 ther of the two sides, one whose cause can neither be soul 
 nor body. The cause of this activity, therefore, can only be 
 God. There is no action, no activity whatever without wilL 
 The activity which unites the soul with the body is not 
 ours : it is not our will. Its cause must, therefore, be a will 
 that is independent of us, and there is no being of this 
 nature but God. Thus, the problem of Occasionalism is 
 solved theologically. 
 
 From this point of view, Geulincx develops his concept 
 
 ^ Etbica Tract., i. sec. ii. § 2, par. 11. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. - ARNOLD GEULINCX. 537 
 
 of God. He it is who unites the soul with the body. Man 
 consists of both, pre-supposes, therefore, the existence of 
 minds and bodies. The union of the two requires the 
 motion of bodies, and this is possible neither through minds 
 nor through bodies, but only through God. God, therefore, 
 must be conceived as moving will which is more powerful 
 than the infinite material world ; i.e., he must be conceived 
 as omnipotent will. He causes in us the states of conscious- 
 ness which do not depend upon our thought and will. 
 Therefore, he must be conceived as a thinking being ; i.e., as 
 mind. He works in minds and bodies : he is related to 
 things, therefore, as an active being to those that are passive. 
 He acts, they are acted upon, are passive. All things depend 
 upon him: he depends upon nothing. God is the absolute 
 being : he is of himself (a se), cause of himself, unlimited, 
 perfect, necessary, eternal. That he should not exist is 
 impossible : it is impossible for minds and bodies to be 
 united except through him. What contradicts the nature 
 of things, contradicts also the divine nature ; or rather, the 
 eternal truths are a necessary consequence of the divine 
 intelligence in which they dwell. These truths cannot be 
 changed, even by the divine will : he can only affirm them, 
 and act according to them. Thus, the Occasional mode of 
 thought elevates more and more distinctly the eternal 
 necessity of things into a divine necessity, upon which the 
 will depends, and which forms, as it were, nature in God.^ 
 
 In this point, Geulincx is borne along by a current of 
 thought which struggles towards Spinoza. 
 
 Natural minds are related to the divine Mind as dependent 
 and conditioned beings to one that is independent and 
 unconditioned, as particular to universal, as limited to 
 unlimited. Geulincx still wavered between the theological 
 and naturalistic conception. He regarded finite minds as 
 creatures, and at the same time as modes of God: the 
 former conception is theological, the latter naturalistic. 
 
 1 Metaph., pais, iii.; Scient., vii. 
 
538 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 He denotes minds as " mentes creatce, particulares, limitatce : " 
 he calls them " aliquid mentis.'" Thus, the creatural relation 
 becomes a partitive one ; the theological conceiDtion, natural- 
 istic; the creatures of God, modifications of God. The 
 more Geulincx feels compelled to concentre all activity in 
 God, the more must he limit the field of self-activity in 
 things, so that at last they have no existence for themselves, 
 but are only effects or modes of God.^ 
 
 2. Mhics. — Theology and autology unite in the point 
 which determiues the outlines of ethics. We know ourselves 
 as creatures of the power of God, as dependent upon him, 
 and permeated by his activity. This perception of our entire 
 dependence upon God is at the same time the perception 
 of our entire lack of power. Our knowledge of self har- 
 monizes with our knowledge of God in the sentence, " Ubi 
 nihil vales, ibi nihil velis.'' This thought determines ethics. 
 Of this principle which it receives from metaphysics it 
 makes a virtue, in which lies the spirit of renunciation of 
 the world. 
 
 There remains to man nothing higher than to bring his 
 will and actions in harmony with his knowledge, than to 
 affirm what his reason teaches him, than to obey it willingly 
 and perfectly. This love of reason is the fundamental form 
 of all virtue, of all moral action : its different kinds are 
 the cardinal virtues, which, from this point, can easily be 
 determined. We must first perceive the voice of reason by 
 making a careful study of ourselves, then obey it, doing 
 what it commands, and, finally, make this obedience the 
 guiding principle of our conduct, the constant rule of our 
 lives. Thence the fourth and highest duty naturally fol- 
 lows: we must pretend to be nothing except what we in 
 truth are, — instruments in the hand of God. In view of 
 the knowledge of our entire dependence, and utter weak- 
 ness, we must renounce every idle wish, every false self- 
 exaltation, and become truly humble in the inmost recesses 
 
 1 Metaph., pars, iii.; Sclent., ii. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM.- ARNOLD GEULINCX. 539 
 
 of our nature. Thus Geulincx determines the four cardinal 
 virtues which proceed from the love of reason or the will 
 conformable to it; viz., diligence, obedience, justice, and 
 humility. The last is the daughter of virtue, and the sum 
 of them all.i 
 
 This humility is the moral expression of a true estimate 
 of self, and this is itself a necessary consequence of true 
 self-knowledge. Thus, the highest of the virtues appears 
 as the fulfilment of the injunction, yi,5(9t o-eawoV. When we 
 know what we in truth are, every kind of self-exaltation is 
 impossible: those apparent worths which blind our self- 
 love vanish ; we see the vanity and nothingness of all our 
 idle wishes and desires; and the host of worldly cares, which 
 are nourished by our self-love, cease to give us pain. 
 
 Our self-examination reveals the fact that we conceive a 
 world of which we ourselves form a part, that in this world 
 we are united with a body which we call ours : we see that 
 we have produced, and can produce, nothing of this world ; 
 that we do not know how we act upon our body, and cause 
 motions in it ; that these motions, therefore, are as little our 
 work as the changes in the rest of the universe ; that, there- 
 fore, the world which we conceive can neither be the scene 
 nor the object of our activity. Where we can do nothing, 
 we ought to will nothing. Hence we should desire nothing 
 for our body, but should merely contemplate it : we should 
 relate ourselves to this machine which we call our body as to 
 the world in which we live, not practically, but merely theo- 
 retically, because, in truth, we can do nothing more. Thus 
 we obey the injunction, " Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis." ^ 
 
 1 " Virtus est amor rationis. Ratio est in nobis imago divinitatis" (Etli. 
 Tract., i. cap. i. § i. par. 6). " DiUf/entia est anscnltatio rationis. Obedientia est 
 executio rationis. Justitia est adwqnatio rationis" (Eth. Tract. ,i. cap. i. § i. par. 
 6). " Humilitas est virtntum cardinalium stimma. Humilitas cireulum absol- 
 vit ; ultra earn virtuti nihil addi potest. Igitur filia virtutis humilitas (lb., § i. 
 par. 2). 
 
 ^ "Sum igitur nudus spectator hiijus machince. Esse me in hoc mundo-me 
 ipectare hunc mundum " (Eth. Tract., I. sec. ii. § 2, par. 8, par. 14). 
 
540 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The power of our will reaches no farther than our 
 thought : it does not reach beyond our inner world. In this 
 alone should we live and act. A complete renunciation of 
 the world, directed to God, necessarily springs, therefore, 
 from true knowledge of self. We renounce our own self as 
 far as this is of a worldly nature. Our worldly existence, 
 our well-being, and our value in the world, cease therewith 
 to be objects of our interests, cares, and wishes. This re- 
 nunciation is not an act of vanity, but of piety and modesty. 
 From the false relation to the world, which our self-deception 
 deludes us with, we turn to the true, revealed by our self- 
 knowledge ; and this destroys our self-love, and demands the 
 abandonment of all idle wishes. 
 
 This kind of renunciation and genuine self-abasement in 
 opposition to self-exaltation, Geulincx calls " despeetio sui." 
 It is the consequence and the negative expression, as it were, 
 of the " inspectio sui." Self-knowledge and resignation are, 
 accordingly, the constituents of humility, which is nothing 
 else than submission to the divine order of things, and that 
 state of the mind which is destitute of all the cares of self- 
 love, the " ineuria sui," as our philosopher well explains the 
 " despectio sui." ^ 
 
 Here we see most plainly how the ethical doctrine of the 
 Occasionalists irresistibly tends towards Spinozism. Geu- 
 lincx himself calls love of reason — the principle of his 
 Ethics — love also of God. He says that the lughest of 
 the virtues depends upon love of God and reason. In the 
 '■'■amor Dei intellectualis" of Spinoza's Ethics, we find the 
 culmination of what Geulincx had meant by the " amor Dei 
 ac rationis." 
 
 But we must first consider the system of Occasionalism in 
 
 1 " Humilitos est contemptio sui prcB atnore Dei ac rationis. Requiritur ad 
 humiUtatem, contemptus negatives sui ipsiiis, quo quis de se non laboret, de non, 
 curet, nullam sniprie amore rationis rationem ducat. Atnor enim Dei ac rationsi 
 (qui est ipsa virtus) hoc agis in amonte, ut se ipse deserat, a se penitus recedat. — 
 Humilitas est ineuria sui. Partes hunvilitalis sunt dues; inspectio sui et despectio 
 sui " (Eth. Tract., i. sec. ii. § 1). 
 
THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONALISM. — ARNOLD GEULINCX. 541 
 
 its application to the theory of knowledge ; i.e., in the com- 
 pleted form which Malebranche developed in France. He 
 stands between Geulincx and Spinoza. His most important 
 work appeared nine years after the Ethics of the one, and 
 three before that of the other. 
 
542 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MALEBBANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 
 I. THE INTUITION OF THE WOELD IN GOD. 
 
 IN criticising the doctrine of Descartes, we have already- 
 seen that it contains two opposing elements ; viz., the 
 theological and naturalistic, the affirmation of the substan- 
 tiality of God and the world as the totality of natural 
 things. The concept of God requires the complete depend- 
 ence of things, while that of nature requires their own 
 peculiar independence. This contradiction Descartes could 
 not tolerate. God is, in his system, the only real substance ; 
 while minds and bodies are not really substances, though 
 they are called by that name. God in truth is the only sub- 
 stantial and efficient being. Is the action of this being free, 
 or necessary ? Does it proceed creatively from arbitrary 
 will, or is it determined by unchangeable laws ? Is it will, 
 or nature ? Must we conceive it according to Augustine, or 
 Spinoza? Descartes was personally inclined to the former: 
 the tendency of his doctrine was towards the latter. While 
 he seemed to approach Augustine, he actually approached 
 Spinoza.i 
 
 This characteristic required to be developed in a peculiar 
 system. Starting from Descartes, it struggles towards 
 Augustine, but turns directly towards Spinoza ; and, though 
 it violently resists him, against its will it goes so far to mete 
 him that it even crosses the boundary of his system. The 
 stand-point of this trend of thought is remarkable and signi- 
 
 1 Cf. book ili. chap. xi. pp. 471-478. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S STAND -POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 543 
 
 ficant in that in it, on Cartesian principles, Augustinianism 
 and Spinozism almost touch each other, and, at the same 
 time, violently repulse each other. 
 
 We find the problem already adumbrated in Descartes. 
 How is a knowledge of things, particularly of bodies, possi- 
 ble, if minds and bodies are substances, opposite in nature, 
 which completely exclude each other? Plainly such a 
 knowledge from those two sides is not possible : it cannot be 
 by means of the nature of minds and bodies. Descartes 
 himself had shown profoundly how the idea of the perfect 
 reveals in us the idea of the imperfect, how in the light of 
 this idea we become conscious of our own imperfection, i.e., 
 of ourselves, perceive our self-delusion, fall into doubt, and 
 thereby first attain to the certainty of our thinking being. 
 He had shown how in this certainty of self, the existence of 
 tilings outside of us, the reality of bodies, becomes evident 
 to us through the idea of God, and onli/ through this. Our 
 knowledge of things thus appears, even according to Des- 
 cartes, in its last analysis as an illumination through God, as a 
 seeing of things in God or in the light of the divine reason. 
 
 This claim is very plainly hinted at by Occasionalism : it 
 is suggested by that assertion of Geulincx, " If you do not 
 know how you do any thing, you do not do it at all : it is 
 not your own activity." ^ Now, we have the perception of 
 the external world without knowing how this perception 
 arises. Our conscious reflection finds it, and pre-supposes it. 
 This intuition, the world as presentation, is not our work ; 
 and it is just as little an effect of the external world upon 
 our minds, for such an effect is impossible. Our intuition 
 of the world is, therefore, only possible through God : onjy 
 in him can we present to ourselves the world without us. 
 We see things in God. That is the central point of the 
 doctrine which Nicholas Malehranche made his own. There- 
 with are indicated the fundamental features which constitute 
 the philosophical character of this man, his importance and 
 1 See preceding chap., p. 631 and following. 
 
544 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 position in the course of the development of the Cartesian 
 doctrine. He was a religious and theological thinker of the 
 Augustinian type, and an enthusiastic disciple and profound 
 student of the new philosophy. The type of an Augustinian 
 Cartesian was embodied in him. His mode of thought was 
 that of Occasionalism, like Geulincx's: he was the most out- 
 spoken opponent of Spinoza, whom he abhorred as an atheist, 
 whose doctrine he rejected — with all sincerity, and in 
 perfect conviction — as atheistic and chimerical. But in 
 spite of it, of all the opponents of Spinoza, there was 
 no other who approached him more closely : of all the Car- 
 tesians, there was no other who had so manifestly cleared 
 the way for the fundamental thoughts of Spinoza as Male- 
 branche. While he fled from him, he fell into his hands. 
 It was his historical work to apprehend with religious zeal, 
 and logically develop, the Augustinian element in the doc- 
 trine of Descartes. To devote himself to this problem in 
 perfect freedom from disturbance, he found the favoring 
 conditions in the society of priests of the Oratory of Jesus, 
 which, in the midst of the noisy metropolis, occupied a quiet 
 dwelling in Rue St. Honore. 
 
 II. THE ORATORY OF JESUS. 
 
 Even after the Council of Trent, the desire was active in 
 Catholicism for a deeper theological culture to purify men 
 without alienating them from the Church. To this end, the 
 Oratory of Jesus was founded in Paris, a society of priests 
 without vows. A scientific centre had grown up in that 
 retired society which was regarded as one of the first of the 
 theological circles of France. Their rivals were the Jansen- 
 ists and Jesuits, — the former with similar aims and tenden- 
 cies, the latter with opposed. It is no wonder that the 
 Jesuits were hostile to the Oratory ; that, with their purpose 
 of restoring the Church, they attacked a society of priests 
 which seemed to them a lot of secret reformers. Wherever 
 Augustinianism was active, the Jesuits were suspicious. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE. AND WORKS. 545 
 
 And it was very powerful in the Oratory. Plato and Augus- 
 tine were there rated more highly than Aristotle and 
 Thomas. The characteristic difference of the two was 
 manifest in their attitude towards the philosophical move- 
 ments of the time. The fathers of the Oratory embraced 
 Idealism ; the Society of Jesus Sensualism. We have seen 
 already that the latter were the outspoken opponents of 
 Descartes, whose doctrine of mind they attacked with the 
 weapons of Gassendi, while the former sympathized with 
 Descartes, whose doctrine of God had affinities with Augus- 
 tinianism. In this revival of Augustinianism within the 
 Catholic Church, in this anti-Jesuitical attitude, in this 
 friendliness towards Cartesianism, the priests of the Oratory 
 may be compared with the recluses of Port Royal. But 
 this mental kinship could not prevent a very bitter and 
 obstinate controversy from breaking out between the greatest 
 thinker of the Oratory and the greatest theologian of Port 
 Royal, between Malebranche and Arnauld. 
 
 The founder of the Oratory himself in a certain way 
 assisted in founding the new philosophy. Fourteen years 
 after the founding of the Oratory of Jesus, Cardinal BdruUe 
 had that memorable conversation with Descartes, in which 
 he pledged him to put his doctrine on paper, and publish 
 it (1628).' At his advice, the philosopher went into retire- 
 ment, and wrote the " Meditations : " BdruUe died too early 
 (1629) to see the publication of Descartes' works. His 
 successor, De Condren, remained faithful to the purposes of 
 the founder, and recommended the study of these works to 
 the members of the Oratory. The Fathers Gibieuf and De la 
 Barde were personal friends and admirers of the philosopher: 
 Poisson explained the Essay on Method and the " Geometry," 
 and translated the fragment of Mechanics and the Compen- 
 dium of Music. The spirit of Descartes was at home in the 
 Oratory. His doctrine appeared to the fathers in complete 
 harmony with Augustine, as the longed-for alliance between 
 
 I See book iii. chap. iii. pp. 203-205. 
 
546 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 religion and reason, Christianity and science. In this feel- 
 ing, Andre Martin, the first of the members of the Oratory 
 who publicly taught Cartesianism at a university (Angers), 
 wrote under the name of Ambrosius Victor, his " Philosophia 
 Christiana," a work that prepared the way for our philos- 
 opher. In his " Athei detecti," the Jesuit Hardouin called 
 Andr^ Martin the teacher of atheism, whom Malebranche 
 followed. Those persecutions with which we are already 
 acquainted, which, through the influence of the Jesuits, were 
 aimed at the doctrine of Descartes, soon threatened the Ora- 
 tory also. To preserve it from destruction, the superiors of 
 the society warned the members in 1678 against further culti- 
 vating the pernicious doctrine. Then it appeared how deeply 
 Cartesianism had struck roots. They made answer, " If Car- 
 tesianism is a pestilence, more than two hundred of us have 
 caught it." Four years before, Malebranche's most important 
 work had appeared. The Cartesian doctrine in alliance with 
 the spirit of religious contemplation and the Augustinian 
 mode of thought was already accepted in the Oratory when 
 Malebranche became a member of it. 
 
 m. MALEBRAITCHE'S LrFE AND WRITINGS. 
 
 1. Incidents. — Fontenelle's memorial oration and the bio- 
 graphical remarks of the Jesuits Andr^ and Adry, which 
 have recently been discovered by the Abb^ Blampignon, are 
 our sources of information concerning the life of Nicholas 
 Malebranche, which externally was very monotonous.^ He 
 was born in Paris, Aug. 6, 1638, the son of a royal officer^ 
 and the last and weakest of many children. Even in early 
 life he was obliged to endure an operation, in consequence 
 of which his fate prescribed a celibate life. Nature herself, 
 in harmony with his inclination, directed him to the clerical 
 .office. When he arrived at the age of manhood, — usually 
 the period of greatest vigor, — he had to suffer for twenty 
 years with a nausea at the stomach, that made every attempt 
 
 ' Bouillier, ii. chap. ii. p. 16. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 547 
 
 to take nourishment painful. In body he lacked every thing 
 that belongs to strength and beauty. He was unusually 
 tall and slender, extremely thin, and besides he was deformed 
 by a very large curve of the spine. His head alone was well 
 developed, his eyes fiery, and the expression of his counte- 
 nance was mild and amiable. He bore his bodily afflictions 
 with the greatest patience, lived temperately, and in great 
 quietness, and thereby attained a quiet of mind which 
 strengthened his intellectual powers, and preserved his life. 
 No one had believed that with such a body he could live to 
 be seventy-seven years old. That he might have the care of 
 his mother as long as possible, he remained with his parents 
 until his sixteenth year. Destined for the clerical calling, 
 he took his philosophical course in the College de la Marche, 
 and then pursued his theological studies in Sorbonne. These 
 studies left him with feelings similar to those with which 
 Descartes left the school of La Fl^che. Thus dissatisfied, 
 he became at the age of one and twenty a priest of the Ora- 
 tory of Jesus. Even then he was not at once seized by the 
 prevailing intellectual current. His was one of those pro- 
 found natures who must themselves experience what they 
 are to believe. His philosophical needs and talents remained 
 concealed until his twenty-sixth year. They manifested 
 themselves only in the fact that none of the learned, philo- 
 sophical, and historical studies with which he had been 
 occupied in his first five years in the Oratory, satisfied him. 
 At the end of that time he had the painful experience that 
 his thirst for knowledge remained without satisfaction. That 
 Cartesian desire for knowledge, out of sympathy with the 
 Renaissance, with its study of history and antiquity, would 
 not let him rest, though he was unable to discover in himself 
 the source of truth, and had no idea where it was to be 
 found. Then one of those significant accidents that never 
 fail to appear in the lives of such men, revealed to him 
 his true vocation. His path one day lay through Rue St. 
 Jacques; and he entered a book-store, where his attention 
 
548 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was called to the latest literary novelty, the "Traitd de 
 I'homme " of Descartes, which had just been published. At- 
 tracted by the title, Malebranche took the book with him. 
 As he read it, his curiosity changed into the greatest admira- 
 tion. For the first time he saw a strict, evident, well- 
 arranged method of explanation and exposition : for the first 
 time he felt the charm of philosophy. There was what he 
 had so long sought for, as it were, instinctively and in vain. 
 He had to put the book down more than once because his 
 throbbing heart would not let him read further. Now his 
 work becomes clear to him. He will study the works of 
 Descartes, at first nothing but these. At a single stroke, 
 as it were, he felt alienated from all other objects, and 
 entirely absorbed in the doctrine of Descartes. After he 
 had devoted ten years to the study of it, and had thoroughly 
 mastered it (1664-74), he published his most important 
 work, "On the Investigation of Truth." The book soon 
 made him famous. After it appeared, he was called 
 '■'■Auteur de la recherche de la verite." The Oratory shared 
 in this fame, and in a general assembly the fathers voted 
 him thanks, and congratulated him. 
 
 A series of writings followed this principal work, extend- 
 ing even to the last year of his life. Their essential theme 
 was the unity of religion and theology, of Christianity and 
 metaphysics, of Augustinianism and Cartesianism (when 
 logically developed). It was this unity which Malebranche 
 represented. 
 
 2. Controversies. — As much as he loved peace, he could 
 not prevent his writings from provoking opponents, who did 
 not cease to attack him ; and he never tired of defending 
 liimself. That he, a priest of the Oratory, presented to his 
 generation the doctrine of Augustine in alliance with that of 
 Descartes, and by the depth of his thoughts as well as by 
 the beauty of their exposition gained influence over men, 
 necessarily embittered the Jesuits, who felt his triumph over 
 Pelagianism and Scholasticism as a double defeat. Some of 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 549 
 
 them inclined towards him when Arnanld, their more obsti- 
 nate and most dreaded enemy, took the field against him. 
 Malebranche's doctrine of divine grace, which he developed 
 in a particular work (1680), separated the two who were 
 friendly to each other before. Arnauld opened the contest 
 with his book "On True and False Ideas" (1683), which 
 was aimed at Malebranche's theory of knowledge. In the 
 following years (1683-86), polemic after polemic appeared. 
 The opponents rivalled each other in the violence and bitter- 
 ness of their criticisms, until finally the matter seemed to 
 rest. Then arose the controversy between Rdgis and Male- 
 branche concerning the pleasures of sense and their moral 
 worth. Arnauld seized this opportunity to renew the con- 
 troversy, after a long pause, with undiminished violence. 
 Malebranche had finished the first part of his reply when 
 his irreconcilable enemy died, Aug. 8, 1694, in his exile in 
 the Netherlands. Malebranche also remained unreconciled ; 
 and even after the death of his opponent, in the feeling of 
 the injustice which he had suffered, he could not restrain 
 himself from replying. His essay on grace had found de- 
 cided opponents among the ablest and most influential theo- 
 logians of the French church, particularly in Bossuet and 
 FSnelon, both of whom were favorable to Cartesianism. 
 Bossuet vainly endeavored to bring Malebranche to other 
 thoughts; he feared that the philosopher of the Oratory 
 would sow the seed of heresies; and, at his suggestion, his 
 disciple and friend, F^nelon, wrote a violent reply to the 
 essay on grace, which, however, remained unpublished, and 
 did not appear until a century after the death of its author. 
 The relation between Malebranche and Bossuet changed 
 when, some years later, a bitter conflict broke out between 
 the latter and F^nelon (the bishops of Meaux and Cambray) 
 concerning the question whether, in the love of God, the 
 passive state of entire self-denial — as the mystics and quiet- 
 ists insist upon it — is necessary or to be condemned ? B< s- 
 suet rejected the quietistic view to which F^nelon inclined. 
 
650 HISTOR'X OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Malebranche then wrote his essay " On the Love of God " 
 (1697), which maintained Bossuet's position, and so won 
 him that he took the first step towards a closer friendship 
 with Malebranche, which was never again disturbed. 
 
 The most important subject of controversy between Male- 
 branche and Arnauld related to the doctrine of divine provi- 
 dence and grace, of unconditional predestination, determining 
 every single event, of groundless arbitrary divine will, capa- 
 ble of being limited by no kind of necessity and freedom on 
 the part of others (the independence of the human will). 
 The divine will is not to be bound by the divine wisdom and 
 the unchangeableness of his being, by the necessity of a best 
 constitution of the world and the unchangeableness of its 
 laws. He causes not merely the facts which happen, but the 
 occasions of their happening ; and certainly, this divine ac- 
 tivity concerns not merely the universal order, but each par- 
 ticular case. As soon as an unchangeable law prevails, — 
 whether a physical or moral necessity, — God is subject to 
 it ; and the creed of the Church that declares an omnipotent 
 Creator, is false. These are, in brief, the considerations 
 which, in the polemical form of unrelenting censure and bit- 
 ter reproach, the strictly Jansenistic Arnauld urges against 
 his opponent. Every acknowledgment of a necessity in 
 God, every attempt to construct a thSodicee, every optimis- 
 tic theory which regards the divine will as bound to create 
 the perfect and best, appeared to him as a characteristic of 
 naturalism — in opposition to Christian faith — which he 
 had reason enough to find in Malebranche's doctrine: he 
 might have found it, even in the doctrine of Descartes. It 
 was the point in which Malebranche, against his will as it 
 were, affirmed the eternal necessity of things in God. He 
 affirmed it without injury to liis piety and his orthodoxy, 
 which could not have been more sincere. And, therefore, 
 Arnauld's judgments seemed to him so unjust: he was 
 frightened from the mirror which the latter held before him 
 as he was terrified by the doctrine of Spinoza. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 551 
 
 Divine predestination concerns also the motions of external 
 bodies ; through these, those of our bodies, the occasional 
 causes of our volitions and actions, which, therefore, can by 
 no means be independent of God. This kind of psychical 
 predestination by the motion of bodies was called '' pr emotion 
 physique" Upon this subject the Jansenist Boursier wrote an 
 elaborate work in which he rejected every limitation of divine 
 predestination, and taught it in the sense of "■promotion " (^prce- 
 motion)} (He agreed with Malebranche in four points, and 
 was friendly to him.) But human freedom was not thereby 
 to be denied. Malebranche defended it in his " Thoughts 
 on Premotion Physique," and aptly characterized the contra- 
 diction of Boursier, who put human actions entirely within 
 the power of God, and still attempted to mjiintain their free- 
 dom. We might just as well say, " God changes a globe 
 into a cube without injuring its spherical form, or a cube 
 into a globe without removing its corners." It was Male- 
 branche's last work in the last year of his life. 
 
 He lived in his cell in the Oratory in the deepest retire- 
 ment for more than a half-century. Sometimes he enjoyed 
 the quiet of the country at the house of a hospitable friend. 
 He was so accustomed to the solitude of his retired life, and 
 was so absorbed in his thoughts, that he seldom spoke, and 
 was called in the Oratory the "silent and meditative man." 
 His fame as a philosopher and an author brought him many 
 visitors. Scholars who came to Paris wished to see the man 
 who wrote the work on the investigation of truth. Even 
 during his last sickness he became acquainted with the Eng- 
 lish philosopher, Berkeley, and had an eager conversation 
 with him concerning the existence of matter. It is said that 
 the exertion hastened his death.^ He died after four months 
 of suffering, Oct. 13, 1715. 
 
 1 De Taction de Dieu sur les creatures, traits dans lequel on prouve la pro- 
 motion physique. (Paris, 1713.) 
 
 2 Gf. my work, Francis Bacon and His Followers, 2d ed. (Brockhaus, 1875), 
 book iii. chap. xi. p. 669. 
 
552 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The century of the French illumination (^Aufklarung) for- 
 got the doctrines of this man, but not his fame. Voltaire 
 called him " the great dreamer of the Oratory ; " Buffon, 
 "the divine Malebranche." His style was admired: even 
 Voltaire called him a master of philosophical style. Some 
 have been pleased to call him the French Plato, a compari- 
 son which Malebranche deserves neither as a thinker nor 
 an author, and which neither his doctrine of ideas nor his 
 dialogues justify. Perhaps we can more correctly say, that, 
 after Descartes, he was the greatest metaphysician of France, 
 if we do not forget that the distance between them is great. 
 In truth, Descartes stands in France alone and incomparable. 
 3. Writings. — Malebranche's public literary activity 
 covers a period of more than forty years. It began with his 
 most important work, " De la recherche de la v^rit^," the 
 first three books of which appeared in 1674, the three follow- 
 ing in the next year. Six editions of it were published dur- 
 ing the lifetime of the author, the last of which (Paris, 1712) 
 is the completest. Seventeen explanations (^ielaircissementa) 
 were added to this. The Reformed preacher Lenfant, to the 
 great delight of its author, translated the work into Latin, 
 " De inquirenda veritate libri sex " (Genevse, 1685). 
 
 "Conversations chrdtiennes, dans lesquelles on justifie la 
 vdrit^ de la rehgion et de la morale de Jdsus Christ " (Paris, 
 1677), followed the above-mentioned work. It was written at 
 the request of Duke Chevreuse, and published without the 
 name of its author. Xext came " Traitd de la nature et de la 
 grice, en trois discours " (Amsterdam, 1680). This essay was 
 the occasion of the controversies above spoken of. Then fol- 
 lowed "Meditations chr^tiennes et mdtaphysiques" (Cologne, 
 1683), which is regarded as his masterpiece in point of 
 style. Although the first edition consisted of four thousand 
 copies, a second was soon necessary. The same year " Traitd 
 de morale " appeared (Cologne, 1683). (According to Bouil- 
 lier, Malebranche was said to have written this work at the 
 request of the Princess Elizabeth, — which is difficult to be- 
 
MALKBEANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. 553 
 
 lieve, as the latter had died three years before.^) After the 
 first work, which laid the foundation of his philosophy, 
 the most important for his philosophical point of view is 
 " Entretiens sur la m^taphysique et sur la religion " (Rot- 
 terdam, 1688). It is the most concise statement of his 
 doctrine. 
 
 His last works were "Traits de I'amour de Dieu" 
 (Lyons, 1677), "Entretiens d'un philosophe chr^tien avec 
 un philosophe chinois sur I'existence et la nature de Dieu "' 
 (Paris, 1708), " Reflexion sur la premotion physique, centre 
 le P. Boursier" (Paris, 1715). His controversial writings 
 against Arnauld were published in four volumes, — " Recueil 
 de toutes ses r^ponses a Arnauld " (Paris, 1709). 
 
 The result of Arnauld's attacks was that the essay on 
 nature and grace was put on the Romish Index, May 29, 
 1689, and, indeed, without the remark '■'■donee corrigatur.'" 
 The Latin translation of his most important work, the " Traite 
 de morale," and the " Entretiens sur la mdtaphysique et sur 
 la religion," met the same fate twenty years later. As pain- 
 ful as this was to the pious Malebranche, his convictions 
 remained unshaken. We must follow the truth, wrote he to 
 a friend, '■'•per imfamiam et honam famam.''^^ 
 
 1 Eouillier, ii. chap. li. p. 37. 
 
 ' lb., chap. ii. p. 25. Even in his lifetime a collection of his works was 
 published in eleven volumes (Paris, 1712). Genoude and Lourdoiieix pub- 
 lished complete collective editions in two quartos (Paris, 1838). Tlie three 
 principal works (Recherche de la v^rite, Me'ditations chretiennes, Entretiens 
 sur la metaphysique) were published with a revised text and an introduction In 
 four volumes by Jules Simon (Paris, 1877). 
 
554 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MALEBEANCHE'S DOCTRINE, (a) THE PROBLEM OP 
 KNOWLEDGE OF OCCASIONALISM. 
 
 I. DUALISM AND OCCASIONALISM. 
 
 1. The Substantiality of Things. 
 
 THE principle which determines the doctrine of our 
 philosopher consists in the application of the princi- 
 ples of dualism to the possibility of our knowledge of 
 things. How can the nature of body be evident to mind, 
 when there is no sort of natural community between the 
 two, but rather a complete opposition ? In his maintenance 
 of the latter, Malebranche is through and through Cartesian. 
 With Descartes, he explains the difference of essence between 
 thinking and extended substances as the foundation of phi- 
 losophy, and, also, defines substance as that being which can 
 exist, and be thought, without another, while the opposite 
 is true of its states or modifications, the manner of its 
 existence (maniere d'etre). Now, thought is independent of 
 extension, and conversely ; thinking and extended substances 
 (minds and bodies) are, therefore, independent of each other, 
 and hence, in this respect, substances.^ 
 
 Extension is divisible ; its parts can be united or separated : 
 in this way spatial relations arise, which form different and 
 changing orders. The order in which the parts unite is 
 figure : its change in space is motion. The only modifica- 
 tions of extension are form and motion : the corresponding 
 modifications of thought are intellect and desire. Intellect 
 
 1 Entret. sur la m^taphys., chap. i. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE. 555 
 
 expresses itself in the threefold form of sense-perception, 
 imagination, and pure reason ; the faculty of desire in the 
 twofold form of inclination and passion. 
 
 How is a true knowledge of things possible by means of 
 human knowledge subject to such modifications? We are 
 exposed to errors, and must inquire into their sources in 
 order to find the path to truth. For aught we can yet say, 
 it is possible, that, on account of its nature, our thought is 
 in danger at every step of falling into errors, that the Will-o'- 
 the-wisps of error are seen in each of its modifications, and 
 mistaken by us for the light of truth. These illusions are 
 to be laid bare. True knowledge sees things as they are in 
 themselves without any foreign addition. But through our 
 sensation and imagination, we do not consider things as 
 they are in themselves, but as they affect us, and as they 
 are to our sensibility, through the impressions they make 
 upon it. And while we are under the power of our inclina- 
 tions and passions, we have just as little power to perceive 
 the true nature of things. We do not see what they are 
 in themselves, but how we are sensible of them, how we 
 regard them, and what they are worth to us in the state of 
 life in which we exist. What, therefore, we are conscious 
 of through sense and imagination, through inclination and 
 passion (by which we are blinded), is not the true nature 
 of things, but always only their relation to us. What we 
 are conscious of is, in the last analysis, only our states of 
 consciousness dependent upon the impressions made upon 
 our senses. And pure understanding (esprit pur) taken by 
 itself, opposed, as it is, in its isolation to things without us, 
 independent, as it is, to the rest of the modifications of 
 thought, can, at first view, reveal to us clearly and distinctly 
 neither the nature of things nor their relations. 
 
 Our modes of presentation and desire are, accordingly, so 
 many sources of error, so many paths upon which the truth 
 is not to be found. To investigate the truth, these erroneous 
 paths must be avoided, and, therefore, must first of all be 
 
556 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 known. The problem of our philosopher is, therefore, 
 divided into the investigation of those five sources of error 
 and the universal method of truth. There are, accordingly, 
 six books in the whole work : (1) " On the Senses ; " (2) 
 "On the Imagination;" (3) "On the Understanding, or 
 Pure Mind ; " (4) " On the Inclinations, or Natural Affec- 
 tions;" (5) "On the Passions;" (6) "On the Universal 
 Method of Truth." The fundamental question was the 
 problem of knowledge ; and the conception of it was, as we 
 see, absolutely determined by the dualistic principles of the 
 Cartesian doctrine.^ 
 
 2. The Inactivity of Things. — The nature of the material 
 world consists only in extension that is divisible, movable, 
 capable of form. Bodies can be moved, but they are inca- 
 pable of self-motion. Extension is destitute of energy, bodies 
 are not moving forces. Every change that takes place in the 
 material world is a motion, but no body has power to pro- 
 duce motion: none is its producing, efficient cause. Now, 
 motion is the only kind of effect that can be attributed to 
 bodies. If they are unable to cause motion, they are unable 
 to cause any thing whatever: they are of themselves com- 
 pletely inactive, entirely destitute of power to act upon mind 
 and change its states. Matter cannot modify mind. It can- 
 not affect it either agreeably or disagreeably : it cannot make 
 it happy or unhappy.* Now, since the universe consists of 
 minds and bodies, and bodies exert power neither upon mat- 
 ter nor mind, it follows that they do not exert power at all, 
 but that power is exerted through them. If we call the 
 acting force cause, we must declare that bodies are incapable 
 of being causes, that bodies are no real or actual causes. 
 
 It might seem that the motion whose cause bod}' cannot 
 be, is produced by minds. But how can minds move body, 
 since the nature of both is such as to exclude any kind of 
 connection? Now, composition or union is a kind of con- 
 nection, and is inconceivable without motion. Man is a 
 
 1 Kecherche de la \in%i, liv. i. chaps, i., iv.; liv. iii. conclusion. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE. 557 
 
 union of soul and body ; but neither can the soul of itself 
 attract the body, nor the body the soul. A human being, 
 therefore, is a union of two substances, neither of which 
 could have produced the union. The cause of human exist- 
 ence is not to be found, therefore, in nature, not in things, 
 neither in minds nor bodies. The will of man moves nothing, 
 not even the smallest body. I will to move my arm in a 
 particular direction, and the motion takes place. If the will 
 were the producing cause of the motion, a necessary connec- 
 tion must exist and be knowable between it and the motion : 
 the motion must have, in that case, depended upon the will 
 mediately or immediately, therefore upon consciousness, and 
 we must be the more capable of producing motions in our 
 bodies, the more plainly we see the connection between will 
 and motion in all its connecting links, and the anatomist 
 must be also the strongest athlete. The motion of the arm 
 follows the volition without our perceiving the connection, 
 without our knowing the series of connecting links that com- 
 municate motion from the will to the body. Motion, there- 
 fore, takes place in entire independence of our thought and 
 knowledge. Now, since will is a modification of thought, 
 motion takes place independently of our volition : it follows 
 after it, but not out of it. Even if we were able to follow 
 motion from one organ of the body to another, its connec- 
 tion with the will would not thereby be known. Suppose it 
 is the animal spirits which, by means of the nerves, set the 
 muscles in motion, and through these the arm : we only see 
 how one moving body moves another, but not how the 
 will produces motion in the animal spirits, not how the soul 
 moves the body. This connection is unknown and unknow- 
 able. It is a natural impossibility, since there is between 
 will and motion, thought and extension, no community re- 
 sulting from their natural activity. 
 
 Body moves neither mind nor body, nor is it moved by 
 mind. If now, nevertheless, bodies are united with each 
 other and with minds in harmony with law, if there is an 
 
558 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 order of things, the cause of it is not the efficient nature of 
 things themselves. Things are not active beings ; they are 
 not real and true causes ; they do not act. Yet natural 
 events appear everyvsrhere dependent upon natural causes. 
 When bodies collide, their motion is changed according to a 
 constant lavr. If we will to move the arm, the arm in fact 
 moves. In the former case, the collisi(5n of the bodies 
 appears the material cause of the change in motion that fol- 
 lows it : in the latter, the will seems the cause of the motion 
 of the arm. This natural causality must be affirmed, and at 
 the same time the activity of natural things must be denied. 
 What remains, therefore, but to maintain that natural causes 
 are not the efficient causes of things ? A ball strikes a ball ; 
 it imparts to the latter its motion ; it is the natural cause of 
 this motion. But since the ball can never be the producing 
 cause of motion, it cannot be the producing cause of im- 
 parted motion. In brief, the natural cause is not the pro- 
 ducing. What is it, then ? What is a cause without 
 activity? It is not active but passive cause, not the force 
 but the medium and mere vehicle of efficiency, not the effi- 
 cient but the occasional cause, not real cause but mere occa- 
 sion. The so-called natural causes are all of them merely 
 occasional. In this point, Malebranche completely agrees 
 with Geulincx, although he does not directly appeal to him. 
 He is a Dualist, like Descartes, and an Occasionalist, like 
 Geulincx. His Occasionalism was the necessary consequence 
 of the Dualism which he maintained as a fundamental 
 principle.! 
 
 3. The Causality of God. — Now, if all natural causes are 
 merely occasional, what is the producing cause ? The nega- 
 tive answer is evident from the simple conversion of the fol- 
 lowing sentence : if no natural thing is a real or true cause, 
 a real or true cause is also no natural thing, no' finite, im- 
 perfect thing . whatever, but the infinite and perfect being 
 alone ; i.e., Crod himself, who can be but one, since his per- 
 
 1 Eech. de la vdrit^, liv. vi. part ii. chap. ili. Entret., vii. 
 
MALEBRANCI-IE'S DOCTRINE. 559 
 
 fection is not relative, but absolute. There is but one true 
 cause, and it includes all true energy in itself; and, without 
 it, there is no kind of active power. This one true cause is 
 God. That is the conclusion of the true philosophy, which, 
 in this point, is in entire harmony with true religion. Only 
 by means of the principles of the new philosophy, i.e., the 
 doctrine of Descartes, is this great and decisive truth clearly 
 and distinctly conceived. Only from this point, therefore, 
 is the harmony between reason and faith, philosophy and re- 
 ligion, possible. Malebranche fixes upon this point of coin- 
 cidence as his goal, and keeps it constantly in mind. 
 
 From this fundamental view, the opposition of this philos- 
 ophy to the old is at once evident. There is but one true 
 cause : all the rest are occasional, therefore not in truth 
 causal at all. God is the only cause. In comparison with 
 him, natural things are not less causal, but not causes at all, 
 not causes in the relative sense, but, in the strict understand- 
 ing of the term, not causes at all. The question is as to the 
 difference between God and the world, God and things ; and 
 it is precisely in this point that Malebranche found the dif- 
 ference between the new philosophy and the old. We can- 
 not explain the difference between God and the world by the 
 different kind of causality or activity of the two. In that 
 case, God would be regarded as the absolute, highest, and 
 first cause, and things as relative, lower, and secondary 
 causes ; God and the world would then differ only in degree ; 
 things would be causes, only with less power. Malebranche 
 states with the utmost emphasis that the contrast betwee-ni 
 false and true, pagan and Christian, philosophy, consists ia 
 the affirmation and denial of secondary causes. He insists 
 upon their absolute denial. Under whatever name they are' 
 affirmed, whether as forms, faculties, qualities, energies, plastic- 
 forces, as soon as things are regarded as causes or agencies, 
 "philosophy falls into the most dangerous of all errors." For 
 what is the necessary result? To be a cause is to effect, to 
 produce, to create. There is no efficiency that is not of a 
 
560 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 productive, creative nature. No finite and natural thing can 
 create : none can change of itself or by means of another 
 finite thing. To exert a power of causality is to create : to be 
 a cause is to be God. These assertions Malebranche regards 
 as identical. If things are causes, they are, therefore, of a 
 divine nature : as secondary causes, they are divinities of 
 the second and a lower degree, " little deities ; " and nature 
 herself a world everywhere filled with divine or demonic 
 powers. Is not this paganism ? To admit secondary causes 
 is to affirm paganism. With this mode of thought, says 
 IMalebranche, the heart may be a Christian, but the head is a 
 pagan. The error is contrary to reason because it is based on 
 an absurd proposition : a secondary cause is a little deity; i.e., 
 a deity which is none, a pure chimera. It is also pernicious 
 because of its inevitable moral consequences. What one re- 
 gards as divine, he must affirm. Natural things appear to 
 partake of the divine nature, and the human will is blinded 
 by such an imagination, and insnared in desires for the world ; 
 the love for God becomes stifled by the love for his creatures ; 
 the mind must certainly be a pagan, and the heart, filled with 
 such desires, can hardly remain a Christian. Hence Male- 
 branche called this error the most dangerous in the philoso- 
 phy of the ancients.^ 
 
 II. CHRISTIANITY AND rHILOSOPHT. 
 
 1. The Divine Will as the Law of Nature. — Things, ac- 
 cordingly, exist, persist, and act, only by means of the 
 divine causality. They exist through God; i.e., they are 
 creatures, minds as well as bodies. Body of itself is neither 
 at rest nor in motion. God, therefore, is the author, both of 
 rest and motion in the material world. He alone is the au- 
 thor of the union of soul and body ; therefore, of human 
 existence. He causes in our mind, both sensation and 
 knowledge. Without the divine assistance we could not 
 
 1 Rech. de la v^rite, liv. vi. part ii. chap. iii. " De I'erreur laplus dangereuse 
 de la philosophic des anciens." 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE. 561 
 
 move a finger nor prononnee a syllable. " Without God," 
 said Malebranche, " man in the world would be as immovable 
 as a rock, and as dumb as a block. Without him, the union 
 of body and soul is impossible. He must unite his ever active 
 will with our ever powerless desires that our will may show 
 itself by the corresponding action.^ A creature is from its 
 very nature destitute of power as the divine yiH is omnipo- 
 tent by reason of its nature. To effect is to create. To 
 suppose that a finite will acts creatively, is a cause, has 
 effects, is as great a contradiction as to suppose that the all- 
 powerful will of God is not creative.^ The existence of the 
 world and its conformity with law is, therefore, only the 
 effect of God. All the activity in the world is his creating 
 activity. The world exists, i.e., it is created : the world en- 
 dures, i.e., creation does not pause, does not cease, does not 
 pass away, works continually. The continuance of the 
 world is preservation by God : the preservation of the world 
 is continual creation. 
 
 The causal nexus of things is the divine will, only this. 
 It is the indissoluble bond that connects all creatures ; by it 
 alone things are connected ; by it alone soul and body are 
 united, by it alone the world endures and lives. " The 
 universe is in God, but God is not in the universe." Male- 
 branche uses the first sentence to state his own theory ; the 
 second, that of Spinoza ; and he does it expressly to denote 
 the doctrine of the latter, and to reject it (as atheistic). If 
 God is in the universe, producing activity is in things them- 
 selves, and the door is thrown wide open for that most dan- 
 gerous of all errors which deifies things. But if the universe 
 is in God, he alone is the cause of every thing.^ 
 
 The world exists because God wills it: it obeys law 
 because the divine will is steadfast and constant. "God is 
 wise ; he loves order, and will not violate it ; he acts in 
 accordance with it, does not at any time disturb it." The 
 
 1 Entret., vii. = Rech. de la v&itS, liv. vi. p. ii. chap. 3. s Eatret., viii. 
 
562 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 motions of the material world, and the union of soul and 
 body in man, take place according to this eternal order. 
 
 The divine purpose in this union can be none other than 
 to test the human soul. Its duty is to stand this test, to 
 keep its independent and higher nature free and pure in 
 immediate union with God, in spite of its union with the 
 body. " God can unite minds with bodies, but he cannot 
 subject minds to bodies." Reason enables us to see clearly 
 that the soul is independent of its body. Experience 
 daily convinces us of the contrary. We are dependent 
 upon our bodily states, and miserable because of this depend- 
 ence. 
 
 2. Error as the Consequence of Sin. — Whence this depend- 
 ence ? God never willed it, nor caused it : he could do 
 neither. It was not our original state (immediately depend- 
 ent upon God), but the wretched condition which we have 
 brought upon ourselves : we have fallen, and thereby come 
 under the power of the body. Human nature is oppressed 
 by the yoke of the body because of the guilt of sin : it is 
 original sin that has deprived us of the independence of the 
 soul. Sin pre-supposes freedom. In the state preceding the 
 fall, the soul was independent of the body, and dependent 
 directly on God. How was freedom possible in such a state 
 of dependence? This possibility is inconceivable. "Free- 
 dom," said Malebranche, "is a mystery." 
 
 The divine will is unchangeable. God wills the inde- 
 pendence of the mind, and he does not cease to will it even 
 after we have lost it through the guilt of sin. He willed 
 it originally according to his wisdom, and wills now to 
 restore that which has been lost, according to his mercy : he 
 desires to save us from sin through Christ. God's vrill 
 being the only cause, we live in a double union : our mind is 
 united with God, upon whom it directly depends, and like- 
 wise with a body, upon which it does not depend. The fall 
 of man reversed this relation : it estranged us from the 
 divine light, and made us subject to the body. Now, God 
 
MALEBRAKCHE'S DOCTRINE. 663 
 
 can still only will our restoration ; i.e, salvation.i If philoso- 
 phy, by its own resources, can point out that the path of 
 holiness alone can lead us to truth, Malebranche's object is 
 accomplished; viz., the unity of philosophy and religion, 
 of metaphysics and Christianity, of Cartesianism and Augus- 
 tinianism. To understand Malebranche, we must realize 
 with all clearness how in his mind the two parts meet, and 
 with what important results the Christian religion and 
 Augustinianism co-operate in his solution of the problem 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Truth consists, as Descartes taught, in the clear and dis- 
 tinct conception of things. Obscure and confused concep- 
 tions are not true : our sensations are caused by our external 
 impressions ; our imaginations by our inner. Neither teach 
 what things are in themselves, but only what they are for us. 
 Neither the senses nor the imagination, therefore, give us 
 knowledge ; and, as Malebranche repeatedly urged, we must 
 carefully distinguish between feeling (sew^iV) and knowing 
 Qconnaitre) if we wish to avoid error. Our sensations are 
 not, as such, false, since only through them do we learn how 
 other bodies are related to ours : they show what is useful 
 or hurtful to our body, what tends to preserve or endanger 
 our life ; and as long as sensations are regarded only in this 
 sense, they do not lead us into error. They do not lead 
 us into error until we use them to attain a knowledge of 
 things. " We should consider the senses as false witnesses 
 in relation to the truth," said Malebranche, " but as true 
 counsellors in relation to the preservation and needs of 
 life ! " 
 
 To seek to know through the senses is nothing else 
 than to make our judgment and thought dependent upon 
 them. And that is the root of error. We err as soon as 
 our thought falls under the control of the senses. But how 
 is it possible to avoid this after the mind has once become 
 dependent upon the body? Dependence is the penalty of 
 
 1 En tret., iv. 
 
564 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sin, in consequence of which thought comes under the 
 dominion of the senses, takes them as guides to knowledge, 
 and thereby falls completely under the power of error, and 
 no longer distinguishes between feeling and knowing. 
 
 3. Knoivledge as Illumination. — But if error is the penalty 
 of sin, we can get rid of it only by a thorough eradication of 
 sin ; i.e., by salvation or the immediate union of the soul with 
 God. We err necessarily and inevitably while the soul de- 
 pends upon the body with which it was united by God, but 
 to which it was by no means subjected by God : we know 
 the truth just as necessarily and inevitably when the soul 
 depends upon God, when our mind is immediately united 
 with the divine. Error is the guilt of sin, the darkening of 
 the soul by the body which controls it: knowledge is the 
 illumination of the soul by the divine light. It is possible 
 only through God, as error is possible only by turning from 
 God, by subjection to the yoke of the body ; i.e., by sin. 
 
 From this point we can get the clearest perception of the 
 inmost motive and problem of Malebranche. He took the 
 Cartesian Dualism for his foundation, and logically developed 
 it into Occasionalism. This logically denies the activity of 
 things, and admits only the causality of the divine will. 
 Malebranche opposes this conception to the philosophy of the 
 ancients, i.e., to Naturalism, and in this point agrees with 
 Augustine. But even the divine causality cannot destroy 
 the dualism of mind and body, since the foundation and 
 principle of the doctrine would thereby be destroyed: the 
 divine causality, therefore, cannot make the mind dependent 
 upon body. This dependence is not possible in, and by 
 means of, God, but it exists, nevertheless, in fact. It is, 
 therefore, only possible through ourselves, through our es- 
 trangement from God, through sin which darkens our mind 
 and causes error. But if error is the result of sin or our 
 estrangement from God, knowledge, or the destruction of 
 error, is only possible through our union with God and his 
 illumination. 
 
MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE. 565 
 
 Now, if it can be proved by purely philosophical argu- 
 ments that our knowledge of things is only possible in and 
 through God, that we see things in God, a very important 
 regressive inference results. If knowledge is, only possible 
 through union with God, error can only arise by our fall 
 from God : error is, therefore, a proof of sin ; and since, as 
 experience shows, we are inevitably involved in it, the same 
 is true of the sin which causes it. The error in which we 
 live, and which clings to us, is a proof of original sin. That 
 is the central point of Augustinianism, which is, dogmati- 
 cally, the acutest and completest expression of the Christian 
 doctrine. The core of the doctrine of Malebranche now lies 
 plainly before our eyes. The proposition that knowledge is 
 only possible as illumination, that we see things in God, 
 forms the connecting link between philosophy and religion, 
 metaphysics and Christianity. Every thing, therefore, de- 
 pends upon the philosophical proof of this proposition, and 
 the vindication of it as the theory of knowledge. This is 
 the problem which is still to be solved. 
 
566 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (6) SOLUTION OP THE PEOBLEM : THE INTUITION OP 
 THINGS IN GOD. 
 
 I. OBJECTS AlfD KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 AS different as are the objects of human knowledge, so 
 different are its kinds. The objects of our knowledge 
 are God, our own minds, other finite minds, and body. The 
 perfect can never be evident from the imperfect, nor the in- 
 finite from the finite. Our knowledge of God is not, there- 
 fore, deduced, but original, and is of all our knowledge the 
 clearest and most distinct. The consciousness of God is 
 the light by which we know. Bodies, on the other hand, are 
 not knowable of and through themselves : they are not of an 
 intelligible, but of a material, nature, extended substances, 
 independent of us, and opposite to us in nature. It is as im- 
 possible for mind to go beyond the limits of its thinking 
 .nature as for body to go beyond extension. How can 
 they affect each other? How can mind be acted upon by 
 matter ? How can matter make its way into mind ? The 
 objects of the mind are only conceived things (ideas). If- 
 there are ideas which present the nature of body clearly and 
 distinctly, then, and only then, is a knowledge of things 
 possible. 
 
 If we were not ourselves of a mental nature, we should 
 never learn that there are other minds : if we did not know 
 by our own experience what sensations, conceptions, and 
 desires are, we would have no suspicion that similar facts 
 exist in other beings. We know other minds only by means 
 
THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD. 567 
 
 of analogy, not, therefore, immediately, but by a comparison 
 guided by our own inner experience. We suspect that they 
 are similar to us: we know it, as Malebranche says, "par con- 
 jecture" We ourselves are the original with which we com- 
 pare them : the criterion for the knowledge of men is the 
 knowledge of self. In what does this consist ? We need no 
 medium for it as we do for the knowledge of the nature of 
 body ; only a conception or idea could be such a medium : 
 but in the knowledge of self, the being which we conceive 
 coincides with the conceiving being ; the knowledge of self, 
 therefore, does not take place through ideas. It has the 
 character of immediate certainty. Malebranche denotes it 
 by the term " conscience," But this immediate consciousness 
 does not extend beyond our inner experience : we know of 
 ourselves nothing more or less than what we inwardly and 
 directly perceive. Before we experience joy and pain, we 
 do not know what emotions (affecte') are : we know ourselves 
 only so far as we have experience of ourselves, only through 
 inner perception, or, as Malebranche says, ^'■par sentiment 
 intSrieur." ^ 
 
 We are not in a position to comprehend, to make clear to 
 ourselves, to realize, all the possible modifications of our 
 thought, all possible inner experiences in our consciousness. 
 There is, therefore, no clear and distinct knowledge of self ; 
 but there is indeed an idea which presents to us the nature 
 of body clearly and distinctly. Malebranche, therefore, does 
 not admit the Cartesian assertion that the nature of mind is 
 more clearly evident to us than that of body. Descartes 
 saw that sensible qualities are our states of sensation, con- 
 ceptions modifications of thought, but only because they 
 could not be modifications of extension. He was by no 
 means able to so evidently deduce the different sensations 
 from the nature of thought as the different figures from that 
 of extension. Mathematics is clearer than psychology, and 
 that is a distinct proof that the nature of body is more 
 
 I Kech. de la v^rite, liv. iii. part ii. chap. 7. 
 
568 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 evident than that of the soul : the evidence for the latter is 
 plainly less. If both were knowable only in the same de- 
 gree, we could as easily and clearly deduce colors and tones 
 from mind as the figures of a triangle, square, etc., from 
 extension (body). If two ideas are equally clear, and at 
 the same time completely diiferent, they could never be 
 mistaken for each other, and their difference would always 
 be evident to us. Soul and body are fundamentally dif- 
 ferent. If the ideas of soul and body are alike clear, how 
 is it that so many men cannot distinguish them, but con- 
 ceive the body far more distinctly than the difference of 
 one from the other? The explanation is, that the nature 
 of the soul is by no means so evident to our consciousness, 
 that our knowledge of self is by no means absolutely clear, 
 that it is rather, as Malebranche expresses it, a " connaissance 
 confuse." ' 
 
 We can illustrate the difference of knowledge in respect 
 to its objects and kinds by sight. What makes things visible 
 is light : we see things in light. We cannot see our own act 
 of seeing, but we are certain of it through our experience ; 
 and from this certainty of our own power of seeing, we infer 
 that of others. As our power of seeing is related to the 
 light, so is our power of knowing to God. As our power of 
 seeing is related to things in the light (images of things), so 
 is our power of knowing to the ideas of body. As our inner 
 experience of color is related to our seeing, so is our know- 
 ing to our own soul ; and as our own power of seeing is re- 
 lated to that of others, so is our knowledge to other minds. 
 
 Of the four objects of knowledge, only one, accordingly, is 
 completely evident and clear; viz., body. Bodies can be 
 known only through ideas, and through ideas only bodies are 
 knowable. The question concerning the knowledge of 
 things is, accordingly, resolved into the question concerning 
 ideas. 
 
 ' Rech. de la ve'rite, liv. iii. part ii. chap. vii. par. iv.; Eclairc, xi.; Entret., 
 iii. 
 
THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD. 669 
 
 II. MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE OF IDEAS. 
 
 1. The Origin of Ideas. — How is a clear knowledge of 
 things possible ? Reduced to its simplest and ultimate form, 
 this question runs, How are ideas possible, and what is their 
 origin ? The ideas of things are immediate objects of our 
 consciousness, and as such they are in our mind. The ques- 
 tion is. How came they in our mind, whence have we received 
 them? There are, at first view, three possibilities for the 
 solution of this problem : ideas are given to us either by the 
 body, or by the soul, or by God. There are two cases of each 
 of the two last possibilities : either the soul, creating ideas, 
 produces them out of itself, or they belong to the soul as its 
 properties : they are modifications of thought which we 
 know through inner experience. God produces ideas in the 
 soul, either by stamping them all at once upon it, and making 
 them innate, or creating single ideas anew in the soul every 
 time, as occasion demands.^ 
 
 Let us suppose the- first case : there are bodies, Avhich, ac- 
 cording to the Peripatetic view, produce ideas in us. Now, 
 bodies themselves cannot enter into the soul : there must, 
 therefore, be copies, or resembling forms, that peel off from 
 body, touch our senses, and impress themselves upon it 
 (especes impresses), then are made intelligible, are trans- 
 formed into sensation, and become consciousness (^espjeces 
 expresses'). If the images of a body go out from the body 
 itself, they must be parts of it. But, if so, the material sub- 
 stance must become less and less, until it is finally completely 
 resolved into images. If those forms are parts of bodies, 
 they are themselves material, and therefore impenetrable. 
 Now, since they fill all space, from the stars to human eyes, 
 it is impossible to see how they penetrate these spaces which 
 are filled, and, in the thousand-fold crossings and disturbances 
 to which they are necessarily subject, can produce definite 
 and distinct impressions.^ And, even granting that these 
 
 1 Rech. de la verite, liv. iii. part li. chap. i. 
 
 2 lb., liv. iii. p. ii. chap. ii. 
 
570 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 copies as effects of bodies are communicated to the organs 
 of our senses, this communication would still consist in 
 motion. Now, how is it possible for motion to be trans- 
 formed into sensation ? "I am indeed able," said Male- 
 branche, " to follow the activity of the sun, for example, 
 through all the space between it and me ; but since this space 
 is filled, I see, of course, that the sun cannot make an im- 
 pression upon me where it is, that its activity must be trans- 
 mitted even to the place where I am, even through my eyes, 
 and through these to my brain. But advancing thus from 
 motion to motion, I do not comprehend how the sensation 
 comes into existence. Tliis transformation of motion into 
 sensation has always appeared to me perfectly incomprehen- 
 sible. What a wonderful transformation ! An impression 
 upon my eyes metamorphosed into a flash of light ! I see 
 this flash, not in my soul, of which it is a sensation, not in my 
 brain, where the motion terminates, not in my eye, where the 
 impression is made, but in the air, — in the air, I say, which 
 is completely incapable of such a modification. What a 
 miracle ! " ' Sensation can never result from motion. If so, 
 body would be able to modify the soul, and body and soul 
 could not be opposite in nature. From whatever point of 
 view we consider the matter, it is evident from every reason 
 that it is impossible for bodies to produce ideas in us. 
 
 There remain, therefore, but two alternatives : either the 
 cause of ideas in the soul is the soul itself, or God. - 
 
 It may be that the soul produces ideas out of itself, or 
 possesses them among its properties (as modifications of 
 thought). Let us examine these alternatives. The first case 
 has three possibilities; viz., the soul produces ideas either 
 out of nothing, or out of material impressions, or according 
 to the object to which the idea relates, like a copy accord- 
 ing to its original. To produce something from nothing is to 
 create. But the soul has no creative power, and does not, 
 therefore, create ideas. But if it cannot produce ideas at 
 
 1 Entret., iv. par. vi. 
 
THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD. 571 
 
 all-, it cannot produce them out of material impressions ; for 
 ideas are spiritual beings {itres spirituels), and material im- 
 pressions are of a bodily nature. How can spiritual things 
 be made out of bodily? If man cannot create an angel, 
 said Malebranche, he also cannot produce him out of stone. 
 At least, the latter is as difficult as the former. It must, 
 therefore, on the above supposition, be the objects them- 
 selves according to which the soul forms ideas. But to 
 copy objects, we must have them before our minds, there- 
 fore have ideas of them. Why, then, does the soul need to 
 produce ideas since it already has them ? Such an hypothesis 
 is not an explanation of the origin of ideas, since it pre- 
 supposes it, and subjects it to a condition which represents 
 the producing of ideas as entirely unnecessary. Thus, in 
 whatever way we consider the matter, we come to the same 
 conclusion : it is impossible for the soul to produce ideas.' 
 
 Let us take the second case. Ideas are contained in the 
 soul ; it possesses them by virtue of its very nature ; they 
 belong to its natural qualities, as the sensations of cold and 
 heat, colors and tones, as the affections of joy and pain, 
 as the passions of love and hate, etc. The soul is, if not 
 the cause, the natural subject, of ideas. Since its nature is 
 higher and nobler than that of body, it must contain more 
 reality than body : in the nature of the soul, that of body is 
 also expressed and contained therein in an eminent manner 
 (^Sminement). The intelligible world will, accordingly, com- 
 prehend in itself the sensible and material : conceptions or 
 ideas of body are, accordingly, ideas of body, and as such, 
 like all other modes of thought, natural manifestations of the 
 soul. In that case, it is our thought in which ideas exist : 
 it is our knowledge of self, or our inner experience through 
 which we become conscious of ideas. But this entire theory 
 contradicts the fundamental principles of our philosopher. 
 Whatever may be the relative rank of soul and body, their 
 relative grade of being, they are decidedly and certainly 
 
 1 Eech. de la veritiS, liv. iii. p. ii. cliap. iii. 
 
572 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 opposed to each other. Now, how can thought conceive 
 extension, how can extension be an object of our conception, 
 how can ideas of body be modifications of thought, or natural 
 qualities of the soul? From Malebranche's point of view, 
 it is manifestly impossible for the soul to possess ideas of 
 body by virtue of its very nature. Now, since it can neither 
 produce nor possess them, it is in every sense impossible for 
 ideas to proceed from the soul.i God alone, therefore, 
 remains as the cause of ideas. 
 
 2. The World of Ideas in God. — We have received ideas 
 neither from bodies nor from ourselves : God, therefore, as 
 it seems, is the only source from which we could have 
 received them. In this case, there are two possibilities : 
 either God has stamped all ideas upon the soul once for all, 
 and they are innate, or he produces every idea in us anew 
 whenever we require them. 
 
 Let us take the first case : all our ideas are innate. Now, 
 it is evident that they are infinite in number : take a single 
 class, as that of geometrical figures ; it is without limit. 
 There are countless figures, and even single figures, as a 
 triangle, an ellipse, etc., has countless forms : there are an 
 infinite multitude of triangles, an infinite multitude of 
 ellipses, according to the distance of their foci. All our 
 ideas are, accordingly, an infinite multitude of countless num- 
 bers. Our soul is finite, the world of ideas is infinite. How 
 can the finite soul conceive this infinite world, and not 
 merely conceive, but even receive it into itself? As little 
 as God can impart his infinity to the soul, so little can 
 he make the world of ideas innate. The theory of an 
 innate world of ideas is in conflict with the nature of the 
 human mind, which never ceases to be a creature or limited 
 substance. 
 
 Let us take the second case, — the only one, as it appears, 
 that still remains: we have received ideas from God, not 
 all of them at once, but single ones, one after another, as we 
 
 1 Rech., liv. iii. p. ii. chap, v.; Entret., i. 
 
THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD. 573 
 
 require them. As often as we will to present to ourselves a 
 definite object, God produces the idea of it in our minds. 
 We have not had the idea before : on the contrary, we have 
 been entirely without it. But without any idea of an object, 
 how can we tliink of it? How can we will to bring it 
 before our minds ? Is not thinking of an object equivalent 
 to seeking the idea of it ? How can we seek that of which 
 we have no idea at all ? It is, accordingly, impossible for 
 God to produce the idea of an object in our minds according 
 as we need it, if we do not in any manner whatever, how- 
 ever obscurely, already possess the idea. But if we already 
 possess it, it is unnecessary for God first to produce it.i 
 
 By this path, therefore, we reach no result, or rather the 
 negative one that we can neither receive ideas from bodies, nor 
 from ourselves, hor from God. There is, therefore, no source 
 from which ideas can flow into our minds ; it is, accordingly, 
 altogether impossible for us to have them ; we are not the 
 being that has them, we are not the subject of ideas. From 
 this negative conclusion follows the positive : the only possi- 
 ble source of ideas is God. It is impossible for God to 
 convey ideas from his being into ours, either by making 
 them innate, or by creating them each time anew. It is, 
 therefore, clear that ideas arise in God, and also that they 
 can be, and remain, nowhere but in him. Ideas are in and 
 through God alone : he alone is the infinite and all-embra- 
 cing being (^etre umversel), the only cause of ideas, and, 
 through them, of things.^ 
 
 Now we have reached the solution of the problem. 
 Ideas are, and remain, only in God : knowledge of things is 
 possible onlj- through ideas, therefore only in God ; i.e., 
 we know or we see things, only in God. 
 
 3. Intelligible Extension and Universal Reason. — If we 
 know things through ideas, they are the ideas which are 
 evident to us, and which cause our knowledge. They could 
 
 1 Eech., liv. iii. p. ii. chap. iv. 
 
 ' lb., liv. iii. p. ii. cliap. v.; Eutret., ii. 
 
574 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not have such a power upon our minds if they were not of 
 a higher nature than the latter. The only truly efficient 
 being is God. If, therefore, ideas are of an efficient nature 
 (efficaoes), they are divine. Thus, the proof of the assertion 
 that ideas are in God, is found in the fact that we know by 
 means of ideas. This proof, said Malebranche, will have 
 the force of a demonstration to those who are accustomed 
 to abstract thought.' 
 
 The things which we know clearly and distinctly through 
 ideas are only bodies : these, in all their forms and changes, 
 are modifications of extension, and nothing else. It is, 
 therefore, the idea of extension by means of which all 
 bodies are known, and nothing else. All ideas, accordingly, 
 can be reduced to this one, intelligible extension, — VStendue 
 intelligible, — as Malebranche, in his dialogues, most simply 
 denotes the fundamental form of all ideas.^ 
 
 Intelligible extension is neither a modification of exten- 
 sion nor of thought. No modification of extension is 
 intelligible, no modification of thought can be a conception, 
 of extension. Intelligible extension can, therefore, neither 
 belong to extension, since it is intelligible, nor to thought, 
 since it is extension. It cannot, therefore, belong to finite 
 beings at all, to beings contrasted with others, but only to a 
 being which is without opposition, which is unlimited and 
 infinite. The idea of extension is only possible in God ; and 
 since only this idea makes the external world knowable, it 
 is clear that we see all things in God. The idea of exten- 
 sion is related to the ideas of bodies, as extension as such to 
 actual bodies. As extension is modified in bodies, so is the 
 idea of extension in the ideas of body. As extension con- 
 stitutes the condition and principle of the material world, 
 so the idea of extension is the fundamental form and princi- 
 ple of the world of ideas. It is the primordial idea (idSe 
 primordiale'). As ideas are related to things, so intelligible 
 
 ' Rech., llv. iii. p. ii. chap. vi. 
 2 Entret., i. pars. 9, 10. 
 
THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD. 675 
 
 extension is related to actual. Ideas are in God, things are 
 outside of him. Those are of a creative nature ; these are 
 creatures ; or, to express this relation in Platonic terms, ideas 
 are the archetypes, things, copies. Thus, Malebranche called 
 intelligible extension the arcAetype of the material world.i 
 
 After we have shown how the idea of extension is related 
 to the ideas of bodies, and to body itself, there remains the 
 question, How is this idea related to minds? It forms in 
 minds the clear and distinct object of their intuition: tliis 
 object is in all minds the same. In the intuition of this 
 object, therefore, all minds agree ; and however different we 
 may be in other respects, this conception is the same in all 
 of us. As the idea of extension expresses the essence of 
 all bodies, so the intuition of it expresses the essence of all 
 minds, — the universal reason (la raison universelle). There 
 is but one reason, and this remains unchangeably like itself. 
 The multiplicity and variety of individual minds are cancelled 
 in it : it does not belong as a modification to the nature of 
 finite minds, for in that case reason would be as different 
 as individuals; but by reason of its universality and un- 
 changeableness, it belongs to the nature of God.^ 
 
 Universal reason and intelligible extension mutually cor- 
 respond to each other. They are related to each other as 
 subject and object : universal reason is the subject for which 
 intelligible extension is the object, and conversely. God 
 comprehends the universal reason in himself; this, intelligi- 
 ble extension; this, the ideas of all bodies, therefore the 
 objects of clear and distinct knowledge. To make this 
 knowledge ours, we must take the point of view from which 
 alone the objects of knowledge, the ideas of body, i.e., the 
 intelligible extension, appears. This point of view is the 
 universal or divine reason. In it, said Malebranche, minds 
 exist. This expression is identical in meaning with the 
 proposition, we see things in God. "God sees in himself 
 
 1 Entret., iii. par. i.; lb., ii. par. i. ; lb., iii. par. ii. 
 
 2 lb., i. par. x.; lb., iii. par. iv. 
 
676 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 intelligible extension, the archetype of matter, of which the 
 world consists, and where our bodies dwell : we see only in 
 God, since our minds dwell only in the universal reason, 
 that intelligible substance which comprehends in itself the 
 ideas of all the truths which we discover." ^ 
 
 1 Entiet., i. par. x.; lb., xii. 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 577 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (c) THE RELATION OP THINGS TO GOD. - PANTHEISM IN 
 MALBBEANCHE'S DOCTRINE. 
 
 I. THE UNIVERSE IN GOD. 
 
 1. God as the Place of Minds. 
 
 "TTTE are now in the very centre of the system. Male- 
 ' ' branche combines two important proofs in order to 
 establish his doctrine of ideas and the intelligible world in 
 God, the real theme of his philosophy. He deduces the one 
 from the fact of our knowledge, the other from the creation 
 of the world. 
 
 The fact that we perceive and know a world without us 
 is undeniable, but it is explicable neither by means of the 
 powers of our senses nor by body. What we perceive 
 through our senses is always only our own impressions and 
 states, not the properties of external things as such. The 
 external world is not sensible, but material. Matter cannot 
 of itself act upon our mind: it cannot impart itself and 
 represent itself to mind. The capacity to be intuited and 
 known does not belong to its properties : the material world 
 as such is not knowable. It is conceivable that the mind 
 could have sensations of body while bodies themselves were 
 destroyed, while all its real properties ceased to exist. And 
 that is an evident proof that the capacity to be presented 
 to the mind does not belong to matter. The material world 
 is not conceivable : the world, therefore, which we conceive 
 is not material. Hence the world as conception or object 
 can only be of an intelligible character ; and since it is pro- 
 
578 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 duced neither by nor in our thought, its cause can only be 
 God, and it can continue to exist nowhere else than in him. 
 Malebranche's proof can be most concisely expressed as 
 follows: Without an intelligible world, there can be no 
 knowledge ; without God, no intelligible world : hence our 
 knowledge of things is only possible through and in God.^ 
 The other proof, deduced from the doctrine of creation, leads 
 to the same conclusion. God must conceive what he cre- 
 ates. Creation pre-supposes the creator and the idea of the 
 world, God and the idea of things. Without the eternal 
 presence of things in God, there is no creation, no world, 
 therefore, also, none knowable to us. If things are to be 
 evident to us, their ideas must be present to us ; and since 
 these are only in God, our presence in God is necessary in 
 order to conceive them. There is no other stand-point for 
 true knowledge. Truth consists in our clear and distinct 
 conception of an object ; and this must be strictly distin- 
 guished from all other conceptions, and is, therefore, possi- 
 ble only in the intuition of the intelligible world, i.e., in 
 God. We must be in God in order to have clear thoughts. 
 Our conceptions are confused Avhen we are out of him. 
 Hence the expression Malebranche used to state this fact : 
 "God is through his presence so closely united with our 
 souls, that we can say that he is the place of minds, exactly 
 as space is the place of bodies. God is the intelligible world 
 or the place of minds, as the material world is the place of 
 bodies." ^ 
 
 2. Things as Modes of God. — Our objects of knowledge 
 are particular and finite things. The particular cannot be 
 conceived without the universal, since it is its more precise 
 determination ; the finite not without the infinite, since it is 
 its limitation. Now, God is the absolutely universal and 
 infinite being. Hence the ideas of things are related to the 
 idea of God, as the particular to the universal, as the limited 
 to the unlimited. What is true of ideas must, indeed, be 
 
 I Bntret., i. 2 Eeeh., liv. iii. part ii. chap. vi. 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 579 
 
 true^ of things themselves. Things are related to God as 
 particular beings to the universal one, as finite to the infinite 
 one. They are, in a limited and imperfect way, Ayhat Cxod 
 is infinitely and perfectly: they take part in the divine 
 being, are "participations" of it. Thus Malebranche arrives 
 at the significant assertion, "All particular ideas are only 
 participations of the universal idea of the infinite in so far 
 as God's being does not depend upon his creatures, but all 
 creatures are notUng but imperfect participations of the divine 
 being. All ideas which we have of creatures in particular 
 are only limitations of the idea of the Creator." ^ 
 
 God himself, according to Malebranche, is the single pur- 
 pose of all divine activity. This certainty is evident from 
 the simplest thought, as well as from the revelations of the 
 Scriptures. What God creates, he creates for himself: he 
 alone is the cause and the end of all his creatures. Minds 
 exist only to consider the works of God, and therein to per- 
 ceive God himself: they exist by means of this intuition, in 
 which they see the image of God, — which is, as it were, the 
 mirror of God. As he alone is the end of creation, so he is 
 the only object of our knowledge, and the only goal of our 
 efforts. The consideration and love of God is the funda- 
 mental cause of our conceptions and desires, of our entire 
 spiritual life. " If we did not see God," said Malebranche, 
 " we should not see ang thing : if we did not love him, we 
 should not love any thing." Every volition is a striving for 
 God, love for him. Without this love, we could neither 
 love nor desire any thing. Without God, our being is inac- 
 tive and dead, our thought without light, our volitions with- 
 out an end. Without him, there is neither power to think nor 
 to desire. To think is to know God, to will is to love him. 
 In this point, a manifest contradiction appears between phi- 
 losophy and experience. The former sees in God the con- 
 stant goal of our efforts : the latter shows that we constantly 
 desire the particular and perishable goods of the world. If 
 
 1 Rech., liv. iii. part ii. chap vi. 
 
580 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the first is necessary, the second appears impossible : if we 
 admit the testimony of experience, we must declare the 
 theory of philosophy to be the greatest of all errors. Male- 
 branche denied that there was any contradiction, and main- 
 tained that his theory was in harmony with experience. 
 Our worldly desires are, in his eyes, no exception to his 
 theory that love to God is the sole, animating cause of our 
 volitions. It is with our desires precisely as with our con- 
 ceptions: our ideas of things are participations of the uni- 
 versal idea of God, our desires for things are participations 
 of the love for God. Our love for the particular and transi- 
 tory goods of the world, and our love for God as the most 
 universal and eternal good, stand in the same relation as the 
 particular and the universal, the finite and the infinite, the • 
 limited and the unlimited, the conditioned and the uncondi- 
 tioned. What the latter is perfectly and infinitely, the for- 
 mer is imperfectly and finitely. Our desires for things are 
 modifications of our love for God. What, indeed, can things 
 themselves he except modifications of God? It is not we who 
 draw such inferences from the position of our philosopher : 
 he himself declares them openly and freely. " We can only 
 love particular goods," said Malebranche, "by turning the 
 love for God, which he infuses into us, into the direction of 
 those goods." Those particular goods are worldly things : 
 our love for worldly things is accordingly a determination 
 of our love for God. All our desires are modifications of 
 the will whose fundamental direction is towards God. If 
 we desire worldly things, the will is directed towards crea- 
 tures, but in truth its object is the Creator. The move- 
 ment, therefore, which impels it towards creatures is only a 
 determination of that movement which struggles towards 
 God. But if our love for creatures is only a determination 
 of our love for God, creatures themselves must be regarded 
 lis determinations of. God. Hear Malebranche's own decla- 
 ration : " All the particular ideas which we have of creatures 
 are only limitations of the idea of the Creator, as all desires in 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 581 
 
 reference to creature, are only determinations of the movement 
 of the will which is directed tozvards the Creator." i God's power 
 produces things and their modifications; his wisdom in- 
 cludes the ideas of all things in itself; his love is the inmost 
 motive of all natural effort. The being of God consists in 
 this power, wisdom, and love : they are God himself. Hence 
 the divine being, in which all things have their existence and 
 their ideas, is the only cause and purpose of their activity. 
 "Let us," said Malebranche, concluding this most important 
 section of his most important work, "let us abide in this 
 conviction, viz., that God is the intelligible world or place of 
 minds, as the material world is of bodies ; that all things re- 
 ceive their modifications through his power, find their ideas 
 in his wisdom, are moved necessarily and in harmony with 
 law ! And since his power and love are he himself, we be- 
 lieve with the apostle Paul that he is not far from every one 
 of us, for in him we live and move and have our being." ^ 
 
 II. MALEBRANOHE'S PANTHEISTIC TENDENCY 
 
 That sentence of Paul's is found in the Bible, and panthe- 
 ists eagerly quote it. The farther Malebranche advanced in 
 the development of his fundamental thoughts, the more 
 prominent became the features of his pantheistic mode of 
 thought, not as the object of the philosopher, but the inevi- 
 table destiny of his doctrine which accepted two diametri- 
 cally opposite views of the world, the Augustinian and the 
 naturalistic, and sought to combine them. And exactly 
 in this is it a true and necessary reflection of the period 
 
 ' " Ifous ne pouvons aimer des biens particvUers qu'en determinant vers ces 
 Mens le mouvement d'amour que Dieu nous donne pour lui. Ainsi comme nous 
 n'aimons attcune chose que par Vamoiir n^cessaire, que nous avons pour Dieu ; 
 nous ne voyons aucune chose que par la connaissance naturelle, que nous avons de 
 Dieu: et toutes les ide'es particulieres, que nous avons des creatures, ne sont que 
 des limitations de I'idee du Criateur, comme tous les mouvements de la volonte 
 pour les creatures ne sont que des determinations du mouvement pour le Createur " 
 (Bech., liv. iii. p. ii. chap. vi.). 
 
 * Eech., liv. iii. p. ii. chap, vi.: " Que nous voyons toutes chases en Dieu." 
 
582 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which revived Augustinianism with intense fervor, and, at 
 the same time, was irresistibly filled with that naturalism 
 which mastered the new era of philosophy. Between the 
 two tendencies, as between two diverging lines, there are 
 very different distances at diiferent stages of development. 
 At one point they are very wide apart ; at another they ap- 
 proach each other: the point in which they meet is Male- 
 branche. Descartes, Geulincx, Plato, are the connecting 
 links — the stages, as it were, of the course along which his 
 doctrine passes ; Descartes and Plato being the two extremes. 
 Malebranche's method of combining them was not eclectic. 
 There was one fundamental thought that urged him through 
 these different stages: from Descartes, as a starting-point, 
 through the Occasionalists to Augustine ; from Augustine, 
 through Plato, to a naturalistic conception of God, which 
 was on the very point of becoming Spinozism. 
 
 The dualistic principles of Descartes formed the starting- 
 point of Malebranche, and he accepted Occasionalism without 
 qualification. He maintained the absolute inactivity and in- 
 substantiality of things, the activity and substantiality of God 
 alone. Fi'om this point, there is but one step to Augustinian- 
 ism. Even our knowledge of things depends upon God: it 
 is only possible as illumination. " We see things in God." 
 This assertion is Augustinian in reference to the ground of 
 our knowledge, and Platonic in reference to its objects ; for 
 what we see in God are the ideas of things, the intelligible 
 world. If, according to Descartes' doctrine, — consistently 
 developed, — an absolute opposition exists between us and 
 things without us, between minds and bodies, an opposition 
 excluding every kind of community, we can know only in 
 the light of God, and things are knowable only through 
 ideas. 
 
 It is only bodies which are knowable through ideas. Now, 
 bodies are modifications of extension : hence the idea of the 
 latter, intelligible extension, is our proper object of knowl- 
 edge, the fundamental form into which j\'lalebranche analyzed 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 583 
 
 ideas. Here we see most clearly the Cartesian origin of his 
 system. Only when the nature of body consists simply in 
 extension, as the Cartesian dualism requires, does the essence 
 of knowable things, or the idea of the whole material world, 
 consist in intelligible extension. 
 
 The intelligible world is in God : God is the intelligible 
 world. It is the object of the universal reason : God is the 
 universal reason. The intelligible world is our object of 
 knowledge, in so far as we are in the universal reason, or 
 God. These are not mere inferences from Malebran die's 
 doctrine, but literal statements of it. There remains between 
 God and the world no other difference than that between in- 
 telligible and actual extension. The latter is what the former 
 is not; viz., creature. But by what characteristics is the 
 creatural character of extension distinguished from its divine 
 and eternal nature? We cannot say that intelligible exten- 
 sion is infinite while matter is finite, for the latter is, indeed, 
 infinite. According to Malebranche's explicit statement, 
 that, the intelligible world is the archetype of the actual 
 world, such an absolute difference between ideal and real 
 extension can no longer exist. We find no characteristic to 
 distinguish the two ; and, even if there were such, it would 
 not be knowable. The difference between these two kinds 
 of extension is, therefore, in no case an object of knowledge. 
 But since the whole difference between God and the world 
 is analyzed into this distinction, we are obliged to decide 
 that between God and the world, according to Malebrauche, 
 an evident difference no longer exists. 
 
 But we must go still farther. In the range of the doctrine 
 of our philosopher, deductions appear, which not only obliter- 
 ate the knowable difference between God and real extension, 
 but their essential difference. Even Malebranche declared 
 that the ideas of things are "limitations" of the idea of 
 God, our desires for things are "determinations" of our 
 love for God, and creatures themselves imperfect "participa- 
 tions " of the divine being. What is true of all things, must 
 
584 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 be true of bodies. Even ideas of bodies are limitations of 
 the ideas of God ; even bodies themselves participate in the 
 divine nature, and are related to God as our desires are to 
 the love of God ; they are determinations or modifications of 
 God. Now, bodies are modifications only of extension. If 
 they are, likewise, modifications of God, God must be the 
 extension, the modes of which are bodies ; i.e., he is real 
 extension. 
 
 The Occasionalistic principles, which Malebranche applied 
 without qualification or reserve, irresistibly lead to just this 
 conclusion. Completely powerless as natural things here 
 appear, without all substantiality, without any power to act 
 independently, they can be nothing more than mere modifi- 
 cations of God: they take part in the being of God, and, 
 therefore, coincide with him. They are in a determinate, 
 finite, imperfect manner, what God is perfectly, infinitely, 
 indeterminately. Here from the nature of things a highly 
 important regressive inference can be drawn of God. Things 
 are either minds or bodies. If minds must relate themselves to 
 thought as body does to extension, things are either the inodi- 
 fications of thought or extension. Now, if both are modifica- 
 tions of God, God must unite both these attributes in himself. 
 He is the one and only substance — whose activity consists 
 both in thought and extension. This proposition takes us 
 into the heart of Spinozism, a purely naturalistic system, to 
 which the doctrine of Descartes has led us through Geulincx 
 and Malebranche, to which Malebranche himself was driven 
 by the Cartesian-Occasionalistic, Augustinian, Platonic mode 
 of thought, however strongly he opposed the doctrine of 
 Spinoza, and wished to maintain that of Augustine. I re- 
 mark in passing, that the pantheistic feature of his doctrine 
 is by no means to be considered as a form of its later devel- 
 opment — as some have contended — on which Spinoza's 
 works exerted a certain influence, but that it is found even 
 in his most important work, and nowhere more distinctly 
 appears than in that most important section which treats of 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 685 
 
 the fundamental theme " that we see all things in Cxod." 
 Spinoza's most important work appeared three years later. 
 It is not true, therefore, that Malebranche, in his dialogues 
 on metaphysics and religion, gave more scope to the panthe- 
 istic mode of thought than in his work on the investigation 
 of truth. The later work is different from the earlier, only 
 in relation to the doctrine of the universal reason and intelli- 
 gible extension; but this difference is not connected with 
 the pantheistic development of the doctrine, but with its 
 simplification and concise conception. 
 
 God is universal reason ; he is the intelligible world ; 
 therefore, also, intelligible extension. So said Malebranche. 
 God is an infinite, tliinking, and extended being. So said 
 Spinoza. The whole difference between them consists only 
 in intelligible extension, which Malebranche identifies with 
 God, while he distinguishes the actual from him. But even 
 this remnant of Platonism vanishes in presence of the explicit 
 assertion that things, therefore bodies also, participate in 
 the being of God — in presence of the inference which Male- 
 branche cannot guard against, that things, therefore even 
 bodies, are modifications of God. This naturalistic feature 
 inevitably moulded the doctrine of our philosopher, and gave 
 to its conception of the divine will that deterministic char- 
 acter, which the Jansenists rightly regarded as a limitation 
 of the unconditional will of God, and was, therefore, so 
 violently opposed by Arnauld. We can easily understand 
 that Malebranche, who was not conscious of this tendency 
 of his doctrine, and of the logical result of his ideas, though 
 he was indeed aware of the religious spirit and purpose of his 
 entire system, — we can easily understand that he regarded 
 these attacks as the wretchedest and the most hostile mis- 
 interpretations. It had been his aim to put the honor of God 
 beyond every thing, by ascribing to him alone all power and 
 activity ; and he could not see how he had thereby infringed 
 upon the divine will. It is true that Malebranche affirmed 
 these two propositions: God is absolutely and infinitely 
 
586 HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 powerful, and acts according to eternal and necessary laws ; 
 and God is absolutely free, acting independently of any laws. 
 He did not see the contradiction in which he was involved, 
 and appealed to the second proposition when he was re- 
 proached with the first, and when his opponents objected 
 that it was impossible for the activity of God to be controlled 
 by law, and, at the same time, for the will of God to be 
 absolutely free. 
 
 If any one wishes so to present to himself this contradic- 
 tion in Malebranche's own conceptions that he may see the 
 two contradictions close to each other, there is scarcely a 
 more striking example than that letter (first discovered and 
 published by Cousin) which the philosopher wrote, March 
 21, 1693, to a certain Torssac on the immortality of the soul. 
 Some attempt to prove the immortality of the soul, he said, 
 from the substantiality of the mind and the impossibility of 
 destroying it: but if God created the soul from nothing, he 
 can also annihilate it ; and immortality must, therefore, be 
 based on the power and will of God. But such a method of 
 proof affords no mathematical certainty. " Since every thing 
 depends upon God, and the world by no means necessarily 
 proceeds from his nature," "there is between voluntary 
 effects and their cause no such connection as between truths 
 and their principles." The immortality of the soul cannot, 
 therefore, be rigorously demonstrated. Nevertheless, Male- 
 branche will give good proofs (cZe bonnes preuves'). The 
 most important is, " God's mode of action must correspond 
 to his attributes ; he must act as he is : the guiding principle 
 of his volitions is found in his essence ; it consists in the 
 unchangeable order of his perfections. Now, if God is wise 
 and omniscient, he is unchangeable and constant in his 
 purposes, — and he would not be if we were not immortal. 
 GocTs nature forms the rule and the inviolable law of his 
 activity, and I discover in him nothing that could induce 
 him to will our annihilation. We cannot judge the divine 
 will according to ours, and in general we must resist our 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 587 
 
 inclination to anthropomorphize the causes of things if we 
 would know them rightly." Malebranche found the decision 
 of the question of immortality in divine revelation and the 
 incarnation, since the end of divine creation can be none 
 otlier than the salvation of the world. 
 
 In this letter, the fundamental features of the philosopher 
 lie before us. He affirms the freedom of the divine will, 
 making every tiring dependent on his unconditional decrees : 
 he denies it, making the will of God dependent on the 
 eternal necessity of the divine nature, which is revealed in 
 Christ's work of salvation. Cousin aptly said, " Malebranche 
 was, with Spinoza, the greatest disciple of Descartes : he was 
 in a literal sense the Christian Spinoza." 
 
 Only a little while before he died, Malebranche was com- 
 pelled, in a confidential correspondence with the well-trained 
 mathematician and physicist De Mairan, to defend himself 
 against Spinozism, and to meet the charge that the latter 
 is a necessary consequence of his own doctrine. These 
 eight letters, written in the last year but one of his life 
 (Sept. 27, 1713-Sept. 6, 1714), the publication of which we 
 likewise owe to Cousin, ^ are a highly interesting and instruc- 
 tive proof of Malebranche's relation to Spinoza : they show 
 in what Malebranche saw the chief distinction of their 
 doctrines, and how, finally, without having weakened the 
 conviction of his friend, he grew weary of defending him- 
 self, and laid down his pen without having accomplished 
 his object, and discontinued the painful discussion. De 
 Mairan, forty years younger than Malebranche, with a 
 reverential devotion to him, acquainted with his works as 
 well as with those of Descartes, — himself inclined to Des- 
 cartes, — had just read and re-read Spinoza's works, attracted 
 by the mathematical arrangement of its propositions, and the 
 clearness and cogency of its proofs : he had reflected upon 
 them in perfect quiet (" dans le silence des jJdssions" as he 
 
 1 v. Cousin: Fragments de philosophie Carte'aienne (Paris, 1852). Corre- 
 spondence de Malebranche et de Mairan, pp. 262-348. 
 
588 HISTORY OP MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1 
 
 said, quoting a beautiful expression of Malebrancft fs), and 
 he was unable to break the chain of its demote jjrations. 
 He was by no means blinded by admiration, since the 
 religious and practical inferences from the doctrine seemed 
 to him questionable enough. He turned to Malebranche 
 with the urgent request, " Overthrow this system for me, 
 whose proofs are so cogent, and whose consequences are so 
 depressing." He had already read and examined a number 
 of refutations ; but they did not convince him, since he saw 
 that none of them understood the system they attempted to 
 demolish. Now he hoped that the deepest thinker of the 
 time would point out the fundamental error of that terrible 
 system. For Malebranche himself, he urged, had spoken in 
 his "Meditations" of such a fundamental error, of such a 
 " false principle " which had compelled Spinoza to deny 
 creation, and heap error on error. Was it contempt or 
 sympathy that caused him to say in that passage, " le misS- 
 rable Spinoza " ? ^ De Mairan took him at his word : " Point 
 out this error, and prove it ! " Malebranche had studied the 
 works of Spinoza neither dispassionately nor thoroughly, but, 
 as he himself confessed, had read them formerly (^autrefois'), 
 and never completely (en totalitS'). Besides, philosophizing 
 by letter was troublesome to him. But, if he had had the 
 most thorough knowledge, he could have taken no other 
 position in opposition to it than the one here formulated, 
 which he repeated ad nauseam. 
 
 His answer to Mairan literally confirms the judgment 
 that we have pronounced concerning the difference of the 
 two systems. Spinoza's fundamental error was, he said, 
 that he did not distinguish intelligible and material extension, 
 the world in God and the created world, the ideas of things 
 and creatures, and, therefore, denied creation. This con- 
 fusion was the false principle of his doctrine and. the ground 
 of all his errors. And just as literally does Mairan's third 
 reply agree with our view. There are two kinds of cou- 
 
 1 Mdditationes chrdtiennes. Mcid., Ix. § 13. 
 
THE RELATION OF THINGS TO GOD. 589 
 
 fusion : we can identify things whicli are different, and 
 •we may seek to distinguish those that are not different. 
 Malebranche is involved in a confusion of this second char- 
 acter concerning the relation of the intelligible and real 
 (created) extension. De Mairan aptly wrote, "Reverend 
 Father, your distinction between intelligible and created 
 Extension only serves to confuse the true ideas of things. 
 JV^hat you call intelligible extension, is, according to all the 
 properties you ascribe to it, extension itself (TStendue propre- 
 ment dite). What you call created extension, is related 
 to intelligible, as modifications to a substance." In brief, 
 Malebranche's doctrine, rightly understood, is Spinoza's.