[20] (p. 13). The question of the grounds of this division is discussed in more detail in my Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874, Bk. ii. chap. vi.; cf. also chap. i. section 5). The statements there made regarding this division I still consider to be substantially correct in spite of many modifications respecting points of detail.
[21] (p. 13). Meditat. iii. “Nunc autem ordo videtur exigere, ut prius omnes meas cogitationes (all psychical acts) in certa genera distribuam.... Quaedam ex his tanquam rerum imagines sunt, quibus solis proprie convenit ideae nomen, ut cum hominem, vel chimaeram, vel coelum, vel angelum, vel Deum cogito; aliae vero alias quasdam praeterea formas habent, ut cum volo cum timeo, cum affirmo, cum nego, semper quidem aliquam rem ut subjectum meae cogitationis apprehendo, sed aliquid etiam amplius quam istius rei similitudinem cogitatione complector; et ex his aliae voluntates sive affectus aliae autem judicia appellantur.”
Strangely enough this clear passage has not prevented Windelband (Strassb. philos. Abhandl. p. 171) from ascribing to Descartes the view that the judgment is an act of volition. What led him astray is a discussion in the fourth Meditation on the influence of the will in the formation of judgment. Even scholastics like Suarez had ascribed too much to this influence, and Descartes goes so far in exaggeration of this dependence that he considers every judgment (even the self-evident judgments) as the work of the will. But to “produce the judgment” and “to be the judgment” are yet manifestly not one and the same. And, therefore, although Descartes, in the passage cited, allows his view as to the influence of the will to appear, and probably it is only on this account that he assigns to the judgment the third place in the fundamental classification of psychical phenomena, yet none the less he says without contradiction: aliae voluntates—aliae judicia appellantur.
More illusive are a couple of passages in his later writings, i.e. in his Principia Philosophiae (i. 32), published three years after the Meditations, and in a work also written three years later: Notae in Programma quoddam, sub finem Anni 1647 in Belgio editum, cum hoc Titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis, ubi explicatur quid sit, et quid esse possit.” Particularly might the passage in the Principles lead to the opinion that Descartes must have changed his view, and it is astonishing that Windelband has not appealed to this passage rather than to that in the Meditations. We read here:—Ordines modi cognitandi quos in nobis experimur, ad duos generales referri possunt; quorum unus est, perceptio sive operatio intellectus; alius vero volitio sive operatio voluntatis. Nam sentire, imaginari, et pure intellegere, sunt tantum diversi modi percipiendi; ut et cupere, aversari, affirmare, negare, dubitare, sunt diversi modi volendi.
At first sight this passage appears to be so clearly in contradiction to the one in the third Meditation that, as we have said, it is scarcely possible to avoid the supposition that Descartes had meantime rejected his thesis as to the three fundamental classes of psychical phenomena, so shunning Scylla only to plunge into Charybdis; avoiding the old mistake of confusing the judgment with the idea (Vorstellung), he would now seem to confound it with the will. But a more attentive examination of all the circumstances will suffice to exonerate Descartes from such a charge, and this on the following grounds: (1) There is not the slightest sign that Descartes was ever conscious of having become untrue to the view expressed in the Meditations. (2) Further, in the year 1647 (three years after the publication of the Meditations and shortly before writing the Notae to his Programma) the Meditations appeared in a translation revised by Descartes himself, where, remarkably enough, not the slightest alteration is to be found in the decisive passage in the third Meditation. “Entre mes pensées,” it reads, “quelques unes sont commes les images des choses, et c’est à celles-là scules que convient proprement le nom d’idée.... D’autres, outre cela ont quelques autres formes; ... et de ce genre de pensées les unes sont appelées volontés ou affections, et les autres jugements.” (3) In the Principles itself he says directly after (i. No. 42) that all our errors depend upon our will (a voluntate pendere); but so far is he from regarding the “error” as an act of volition, that he says there is no one who errs voluntarily (nemo est qui velit falli). Still clearer is it that he does not regard the judgment like the desires and dislikes as inner activities of the will itself, but only as a product of the will, since he at once adds: sed longe aliud est velle falli quam velle assentiri iis, in quibus contingit errorem reperiri,” etc. He does not say of the will that it desires, affirms, assents, but that it wills the assent; so also, not that it is true but that it desires the truth (veritatis assequendae cupiditas ... efficit, ut ... judicium ferant).
As to Descartes’ real view, therefore, there can be no doubt; his doctrine has not in this respect suffered the slightest change. It only remains, therefore, to come to an understanding of his obviously variable modes of expression, and this is, I believe, solved incontrovertibly in the following manner. Descartes, while regarding will and judgment as two classes differing fundamentally, none the less finds that in contradistinction to the first fundamental class—that of ideas—these have something in common. In the third Meditation he designates (cf. the above passage) as the common element the fact that although essentially based upon an idea, in both alike there is contained a further special form. In the fourth Meditation a further common character appears, i.e. that the will decides concerning them; not only can it determine and suspend its own acts, but also those of the judgment. It is this common character which he was bound to regard as especially, indeed all important, in the first part of the Principles, xxix.-xlii. Accordingly, he classes them, in opposition to the ideas (which he calls operationes intellectus) under the term operationes voluntatis. In the Notae to the Programma he calls them distinctly in the same sense, “determinationes voluntatis.” “Ego enim, cum viderem, praeter perceptionem, quae praerequiritur ut judicemus, opus esse affirmatione vel negatione ad formam judicii constituendam, nobisque saepe esse liberum ut cohibeamus assensionem, etiamsi rem percipiamus, ipsum actum judicandi, qui non nisi in assensu, hoc est in affirmatione vel negatione consistit, non retuli ad perceptionem intellectus sed ad determinationem voluntatis.” He does not even hesitate in the Principles to term both these two classes of modi cogitandi, “modi volendi” the context seeming sufficiently to indicate that he means only to express thereby the fact that they fall within the domain of the will.
In further support of this explanation we may compare the scholastic terminology into which Descartes as a young man was initiated. It was customary to denote under the term actus voluntatis not merely the movement of the will itself but also the act performed in obedience to the will. In accordance with this custom, the actus voluntatis fell into two classes; the actus elicitus voluntatis and the actus imperatus voluntatis. In a similar manner Descartes groups the class which, according to him, was only possible as an actus imperatus of the will along with his actus elicitus. There is here, therefore, no question of a common fundamental character of the intentional relation.
Clear as all this is to those who carefully attach due weight to the various moments, it would yet appear that Spinoza (probably misled rather by the passage in the Principles than by that cited by Windelband), anticipates Windelband in this misunderstanding of the Cartesian doctrine. In his Ethics, ii. prop. 49, he actually, and in the most real sense, regards the affirmatio and negatio as “volitiones mentis,” and by a further confusion, comes finally to obliterate the distinction between the two classes ideae and voluntates. “Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt” his thesis now reads, so overthrowing not only the three-fold classification of Descartes, but also the old Aristotelian dual classification. Spinoza has here, as usual, done nothing else than corrupt the teaching of his great master.
[22] (p. 13). I do not mean to say that the classification is, universally recognized to-day. It would not even be possible to regard as certain the Principle of Contradiction if in order to do so we were to await universal assent. In the present instance it is not difficult to understand that old, deeply-rooted prejudices cannot all at once be banished. But that even under such circumstances it has not been possible to urge a single important objection affords the best confirmation of our doctrine.
Some, as for instance, Windelband—while giving up the attempt at including judgment and idea (Vorstellung) in one fundamental class, on the other hand believe it possible to subsume judgment under feeling, thus falling back into the error which Hume committed earlier in his inquiry into the nature of belief. According to these writers, to affirm implies an act of approval, an appreciation on the part of the feelings, while denial is an act of disapproval, a feeling of repugnance.