Initiation into Philosophy

by Émile Faguet

CHAPTER II. CARTESIANS

All the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes. Port-Royal, Bossuet, Fénelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.

CARTESIAN INFLUENCE.—Nearly all the seventeenth century was Cartesian, and in the general sense of the word, not only as supporters of the method of evidence, but as adherents of the general philosophy of Descartes. Gassendi (a Provençal, and not an Italian), professor of philosophy at Aix, subsequently in Paris, was not precisely a faithful disciple of Descartes, and he opposed him several times; he had leanings towards Epicurus and the doctrine of atoms; he drew towards Hobbes, but he was also a fervent admirer of Bacon, and so approached Descartes, who thought very highly of him, though impatiently galled by his criticisms. After the example of Epicurus he was the most sober and austere of men, and of the two it was Descartes rather than he who was Epicurean in the common use of the word. According to a tradition, which to my mind rests on insufficient proof, he was an instructor of Molière.

All the thinkers of the seventeenth century came more or less profoundly under the Cartesian influence: Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, Arnauld, and all Port-Royal. This influence was to diminish only in the eighteenth century, though kept up by the impenitent Fontenelle, but outweighed by that of Locke, to reappear very vigorously in the nineteenth century in France in the school of Maine de Biran and of Cousin.

MALEBRANCHE.—A separate niche must be made for the Cartesians, almost as great as Descartes, who filled the seventeenth century with their renown,—the Frenchman Malebranche, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German Leibnitz. Pushing the theories of Descartes further than Descartes would himself in all probability have desired to, from what Descartes had said that it was only through God that we perceived accurately, Malebranche declared that it was only in God that we perceived accurately, and fundamentally this is the same idea; it can only be deemed that Malebranche is the more precise: "God alone is known by Himself [is believed in without uncertainty]; there is only He that we can see in immediate and direct perspective." All the rest we see in Him, in His light, in the light He creates in our minds. When we see, it is that we are in Him. Evidence is divine light. He is the link of ideas. (And thus Malebranche brought Plato near to Descartes and showed that, without the latter being aware of it, they both said the same thing.) God is always the cause and as He is the cause of all real things, He is cause also of all truths, and as He is everywhere in real objects, He is also everywhere in the true ideas which we can have, or rather in which we can participate. When we seek a truth we pray without thinking we do so; attention is a prayer.

In the same way, from the saying of Descartes that the universe is a continuous creation, Malebranche deduced or rather concluded that our thoughts and actions are acts of God. There can be no action of the body on the soul to produce ideas; that would be inconceivable; but on the occasion, for instance, of our eyes resting on an object, God gives us an idea of that object, whether in conformity or not we cannot tell; but at any rate He gives us that idea of the object which He wishes us to have.

There is no action of our soul on our body; that would be inconceivable. But God to our will adds a force having a tendency towards goodness as a rule, and to each of our volitions adds a force tending to its execution and capable of executing it.

Then, when our will is evil and we execute it, does God sin in our name?

Certainly not; because sin is not an act; it consists in doing nothing; it consists precisely in the soul not acting on the body; therefore it is not a force but a weakness. Sin is that God has withdrawn Himself from us. The sinner is only a being who is without strength because he is lacking in grace.

The principle of morality is the respect for order and the love of order. That makes two degrees, the first of which is regularity and the second virtue. To conform to order is highly rational but without merit (e.g., to give money to the poor from habit or possibly from vanity). To love order and to desire that it should be greater, more complete, and nearer to the will of God, is to adhere to God, to live in God, just as to see rightly is to see in God. All morality, into the details of which we will not enter, evolves from the love of order. The universe is a vast mechanism, as was stated by Descartes, set in motion and directed by God—that is to say, by the laws established by God; for God acts only by general dispositions (which are laws) and not by particular dispositions. In other words, there exists a will, but there are no volitions.