Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Carnegie Andrew" to "Casus Belli" / Volume 5, Slice 4

by Various

The principle which underlies the reasoning of Descartes is that to be conscious of a limit, is to transcend it. We could not feel the limits either upon our thought or upon our existence, we could not doubt or desire, if we did not already apprehend something beyond these limits. Nay, we could not be conscious of our existence as individual selves if we were not conscious of that which is not ourselves, and of a unity in which both self and not-self are included. Our individual life is therefore to us as self-conscious beings a part of a wider universal life. Doubt and aspiration are but the manifestation of this essential division and contradiction of a nature which, as conscious of itself, is at the same time conscious of the whole in which it is a part. And as the existence of a self and its consciousness are one, so we may say that a thinking being is not only an individual, but always in some sense identified with that universal unity of being to which it is essentially related.

If Descartes had followed out this line of thought, he would have been led at once to the pantheism of Spinoza, if not beyond it. As it is, he is on the verge of contradiction with himself when he speaks of the consciousness of God as in some sense prior to the consciousness of self. How can anything be prior to the first principle of knowledge? It is no answer to say that the consciousness of God is the principium essendi, while the consciousness of self is the principium cognoscendi. For, if the idea of God is prior to the idea of self, knowledge must begin where existence begins, with God. The words “in some sense,” with which Descartes qualifies his assertion of the priority of the idea of God, only betray his hesitation and his partial consciousness of the contradiction in which he is involved. Some of Descartes’s critics presented this difficulty to him in another form, and accused him of reasoning in a circle when he said that it is because God cannot lie that we are certain that our clear and distinct ideas do not deceive us. The very existence of the conscious self, the cogito, ergo sum, which is the first of all truths and therefore prior in certitude to the existence of God, is believed only because of the clearness and distinctness with which we apprehend it. How then, they argued, could God’s truthfulness be our security for a principle which we must use in order to prove the being of God? The answer of Descartes is somewhat lame. We cannot doubt any self-evident principle, or even any truth based on a self-evident principle, when we are directly contemplating it in all the necessity of its evidence; it is only when we forget or turn away from this evidence, and begin to think of the possibility of a deceitful God, that a doubt arises which cannot be removed except by the conviction that God is true.[5] It can scarcely be said that this is a dignus vindice nodus, or that God can fitly appear as a kind of second-best resource to the forgetful spirit that has lost its direct hold on truth and its faith in itself. God, truth, and the human spirit are thus conceived as having merely external and accidental relations with each other. What Descartes, however, is really expressing in this exoteric way is simply that beneath and beyond all particular truths lies the great general truth of the unity of thought and existence. In contemplating particular truth, we may not consciously relate it to this unity, but when we have to defend ourselves against scepticism we are forced to realize this relation. The ultimate answer to any attack upon a special aspect or element of truth must be to show that the fate of truth itself, the very possibility of knowledge, is involved in the rejection of it, and that we cannot doubt it without doubting reason itself. But to doubt reason is, in the language of Descartes, to doubt the truthfulness of God, for, in his view, the idea of God is involved in the very constitution of reason. Taken in this way then, the import of Descartes’s answer is, that the consciousness of self, like every other particular truth, is not at first seen to rest on the consciousness of God, but that when we realize what it means we see that it does so rest. But if this be so, then in making the consciousness of self his first principle of knowledge, Descartes has stopped short of the truth. It can only be the first principle if it is understood, not as the consciousness of the individual self, but in a sense in which the consciousness of self is identical with the consciousness of God.

Descartes, however, is far from a clear apprehension of the ultimate unity of thought and being, which nevertheless he strives to find in God. Beginning with an absolute separation of the res cogitans from the res extensa, he is continually falling back into dualism just when he seemed to have escaped from it. Even in God the absolute unity, idea and reality fall asunder; our idea of God is not God in us, it is only an idea of which God’s existence is the cause. But the category of causality, if it forms a bridge between different things, as here between knowing and being, at the same time repels them from each other. It is a category of external relation which may be adequate to express the relation of the finite to the finite, but not the relation of the finite to the infinite. We cannot conceive God as the cause of our idea of him, without making God a purely objective and therefore finite existence. Nor is the case better when we turn to the so-called ontological argument,—that existence is necessarily involved in the idea of God, just as the property of having its angles equal to two right angles is involved in the idea of a triangle. If indeed we understood this as meaning that thought transcends the distinction between itself and existence, and that therefore existence cannot be a thing in itself out of thought, but must be an intelligible world that exists as such only for the thinking being, there is some force in the argument. But this meaning we cannot find in Descartes, or to find it we must make him inconsistent with himself. He was so far from having quelled the phantom “thing in itself,” that he treated matter in space as such a thing, and thus confused externality of space with externality to the mind. On this dualistic basis, the ontological argument becomes a manifest paralogism, and lies open to all the objections that Kant brought against it. That the idea of God involves existence, proves only that God, if he exists at all, exists by the necessity of his being. But the link that shall bind thought to existence is still wanting, and, in consistency with the other presuppositions of Descartes, it cannot be supplied.

But again, even if we allow to Descartes that God is the unity of thought and being, we must still ask what kind of unity? Is it a mere generic unity, reached by abstraction, and therefore leaving out all the distinguishing characteristics of the particulars under it? Or is it a concrete unity to which the particular elements are subordinated, but in which they are nevertheless included? To answer this question, we need only look at the relation of the finite to the infinite, as it is expressed in that passage already quoted, and in many others. Descartes always speaks of the infinite as a purely affirmative or positive existence, and of the finite in so far as it is distinguished from the infinite, as purely negative, or in other words as a nonentity. “I am,” he says, “a mean between God and nothing, between the Supreme Being and not-being. In so far as I am created by God, there is nothing in me that can deceive me or lead me into error. But on the other hand, if I consider myself as participating in nothingness or not-being, inasmuch as I am not myself the Supreme Being, but in many ways defective, I find myself exposed to an infinity of errors. Thus error as such is not something real that depends on God, but simply a defect; I do not need to explain it by means of any special faculty bestowed on me by God, but merely by the fact that the faculty for discerning truth from error with which he has endowed me, is not infinite.”[6] But if we follow out this principle to its logical result, we must say not only that error is a consequence of finitude, but also that the very existence of the finite as such is an error or illusion. All finitude, all determination, according to the well-known Spinozistic aphorism, is negation, and negation cannot constitute reality. To know the reality of things, therefore, we have to abstract from their limits, or in other words, the only reality is the infinite. Finite being, qua finite, has no existence, and finite self-consciousness, consciousness of a self in opposition to or limited by a not-self, is an illusion. But Descartes does not thus reason. He does not see “anything in the nature of the infinite which should exclude the existence of finite things.” “What,” he asks, “would become of the power of that imaginary infinite if it could create nothing? Perceiving in ourselves the power of thinking, we can easily conceive that there should be a greater intelligence elsewhere. And even if we should suppose that intelligence increased ad infinitum, we need not fear that our own would be lessened. And the same is true of all other attributes which we ascribe to God, even of his power, provided only that we do not suppose that the power in us is not subjected to God’s will. In all points, therefore, he is infinite without any exclusion of created things.”[7] The truth of this view we need not dispute; the question is as to its consistency with Cartesian principles. It may be a higher idea of God to conceive him as revealing himself in and to finite creatures; but it is a different idea from that which is implied in Descartes’s explanations of error. It is an inconsistency that brings Descartes nearer to Christianity, and nearer, it may also be said, to a true metaphysic; but it is not the less an inconsistency with his fundamental principles, which necessarily disappears in their subsequent development. To conceive the finite as constituted not merely by the absence of some of the positive elements of the infinite, but as in necessary unity with the infinite; to conceive the infinite as not merely that which has no limits or determinations, but as that which is self-determined and self-manifesting, which through all finitude and manifestation returns upon itself, may not be erroneous. But it would not be difficult to show that the adoption of such a conception involves the rejection or modification of almost every doctrine of the Cartesian system.

In connexion with this inconsistency we may notice the very different relations in which Descartes conceives mind on the one side and matter on the other, to stand towards God, who yet is the cause of both, and must therefore, by the principle Mind and matter. of causality, contain in himself all that is in both. Matter and mind are to Descartes absolute opposites. Whatever can be asserted of mind can be denied of matter, whatever can be asserted of matter can be denied of mind. Matter is passive, mind is active; matter is extended, and therefore divisible ad infinitum; mind is an indivisible unity. In fact, though of this Descartes is not conscious, the determination of the one is mediated by its opposition to the other; the ideas of object and subject, the self and not-self, are terms of a relation distinguishable but inseparable. But in the idea of God we must find a unity which transcends this difference in one way or another, whether by combining the two under a higher notion, or, as it would be more natural to expect on Cartesian principles, by abstracting equally from the particular characteristics of both. Descartes really does neither, or rather he acts partly on the one principle and partly on the other. In his idea of God he abstracts from the properties of matter but not from those of mind. “God,” he says, “contains in himself formaliter all that is in mind, but only eminenter all that is in matter”;[8] or, as he elsewhere expresses it more popularly, he is mind, but he is only the creator of matter. And for this he gives as his reason, that matter as being divisible and passive is essentially imperfect. Ipsa natura corporis multas imperfectiones involvit, and, therefore, “there is more analogy between sounds and colours than there is between material things and God.” But the real imperfection here lies in the abstractness of the Cartesian conception of matter as merely extended, merely passive; and this is balanced by the equal abstractness of the conception of mind or self-consciousness as an absolutely simple activity, a pure intelligence without any object but itself. If matter as absolutely opposed to mind is imperfect, mind as absolutely opposed to matter is equally imperfect. In fact they are the elements or factors of a unity, and lose all meaning when severed from each other, and if we are to seek this unity by abstraction, we must equally abstract from both.

The result of this one-sidedness is seen in the fact that Descartes, who begins by separating mind from matter, ends by finding the essence of mind in pure will, i.e. in pure formal self-determination. Hence God’s will is conceived as absolutely Reason and will. arbitrary, not determined by any end or law, for all laws, even the necessary truths that constitute reason, spring from God’s determination, and do not precede it. “He is the author of the essence of things no less than their existence,” and his will has no reason but his will. In man there is an intelligence with eternal laws or truths involved in its structure, which so far limits his will. “He finds the nature of good and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot be moved by anything else.” His highest freedom consists in having his will determined by a clear perception of the nature of good and truth, and “he is never indifferent except when he is ignorant of it, or at least does not see it so clearly as to be lifted above the possibility of doubt.”[9] Indifference of will is to him “the lowest grade of liberty,” yet, on the other hand, in nothing does the image of God in him show itself more clearly than in the fact that his will is not limited by his clear and distinct knowledge, but is “in a manner infinite.” For “there is no object of any will, even the infinite will of God, to which our will does not extend.”[10] Belief is a free act, for as we can yield our assent to the obscure conceptions presented by sense and the imagination, and thus allow ourselves to be led into error, so on the other hand we can refuse to give this assent, or allow ourselves to be determined by anything but the clear and distinct ideas of intelligence. That which makes it possible for us to err is that also in which the divine image in us is most clearly seen. We cannot have the freedom of God whose will creates the object of his knowledge; but in reserving our assent for the clear and distinct perceptions of intelligence, we, as it were, re-enact for ourselves the divine law, and repeat, so far as is possible to finite beings, the transcendent act of will in which truth and good had their origin.

The inherent defect of this view is the divorce it makes between the form and the matter of intelligence. It implies that reason or self-consciousness is one thing, and that truth is another and quite different thing, which has been united to it by the arbitrary will of God. The same external conception of the relation of truth to the mind is involved in the doctrine of innate ideas. It is true that Descartes did not hold that doctrine in the coarse form in which it was attributed to him by Locke, but expressly declares that he has “never said or thought at any time that the mind required innate ideas which were separated from the faculty of thinking. He had simply used the word innate to distinguish those ideas which are derived from that faculty, and not from external objects or the determination of the will. Just as when we say generosity is innate in certain families, and in certain others diseases, like the gout or the stone, we do not mean to imply that infants in their mother’s womb are affected with these complaints.”[11] Yet Descartes, as we have seen, does not hold that these truths are involved in the very nature of intelligence as such, so that we cannot conceive a self-conscious being without them. On the contrary, we are to regard the divine intelligence as by arbitrary act determining that two and two should be four, or that envy should be a vice. We are “not to conceive eternal truth flowing from God as rays from the sun.”[12] In other words, we are not to conceive all particular truths as different aspects of one truth. It is part of the imperfection of man’s finite nature that he “finds truth and good determined for him.” It is something given,—given, indeed, along with his very faculty of thinking, but still given as an external limit to it. It belongs not to his nature as spirit, but to his finitude as man.

After what has been said, it is obvious that the transition from God to matter must be somewhat arbitrary and external. God’s truthfulness is pledged for the reality of that of which we have clear and distinct ideas; and we have clear and Truth of external world. distinct ideas of the external world so long as we conceive it simply as extended matter, infinitely divisible, and moved entirely from without,—so long, in short, as we conceive it as the direct opposite of mind, and do not attribute to it any one of the properties of mind. “Omnes proprietates, quas in ea clare percipimus, ad hoc unum reducuntur, quod sit partibilis et mobilis, secundum partes.” We must, therefore, free ourselves from the obscure and confused modes of thought which arise whenever we attribute any of the secondary qualities, which exist merely in our sensations, to the objects that cause these sensations. The subjective character of such qualities is proved by the constant change which takes place in them, without any change of the object in which they are perceived. A piece of wax cannot lose its extension; but its colour, its hardness, and all the other qualities whereby it is presented to sense, may be easily altered. What is objective in all this is merely an extended substance, and the modes of motion or rest through which it is made to pass. In like manner we must separate from our notion of matter all ideas of actio in distans—e.g. we must explain weight not as a tendency to the centre of the earth or an attraction of distant particles of matter, but as a consequence of the pressure of other bodies, immediately surrounding that which is felt to be heavy.[13] For the only conceivable actio in distans is that which is mediated by thought, and it is only in so far as we suppose matter to have in it a principle of activity like thought, that we can accept such explanations of its motion. Again, while we must thus keep our conception of matter clear of all elements that do not belong to it, we must also be careful not to take away from it those that do belong to it. It is a defect of distinctness in our ideas when we conceive an attribute as existing apart from its substance, or a substance without its attribute; for this is to treat elements that are only separated by a “distinction of reason,” as if they were distinct things. The conception of the possibility of a vacuum or empty space arises merely from our confusing the possible separation of any mode or form of matter from matter in general with the impossible separation of matter in general from its own essential attribute. Accordingly, in his physical philosophy, Descartes attempts to explain everything on mechanical principles, starting with the hypothesis that a certain quantity of motion has been impressed on the material universe by God at the first, a quantity which can never be lost or diminished, and that space is an absolute plenum in which motion propagates itself in circles.

It is unnecessary to follow Descartes into the detail of the theory of vortices. It is more to the purpose to notice the nature of the reasons by which he is driven to regard such a mechanical explanation of the universe as necessary. A real or substantive Material universe a mechanism. existence is, in his view, a res completa, a thing that can be conceived as a whole in itself without relations to any other thing. Now matter and mind are, he thinks, such complete existences, so long as we conceive them, as pure intelligence must conceive them, as abstract opposites of each other; and do not permit ourselves to be confused by those mixed modes of thought which are due to sense or imagination. Descartes does not see that in this very abstract opposition there is a bond of union between mind and matter, that they are correlative opposites, and therefore in their separation res incompletae. In other words, they are merely elements of reality substantiated by abstract thought into independent realities. He indeed partly retracts his assertion that mind and matter severed from each other are res completae, when he declares that neither can be conceived as existing apart from God, and that therefore, strictly speaking, God alone is a substance. But, as we have seen, he avoids the necessary inference that in God the opposition between mind and matter is reconciled or transcended, by conceiving God as abstract self-consciousness or will, and the material world not as his necessary manifestation, but simply as his creation,—as having its origin in an act of bare volition and that only. His God is the God of monotheism and not of Christianity, and therefore the world is to God always a foreign matter which he brings into being, and acts on from without, but in which he is not revealed.

It is a natural consequence of this view that nature is essentially dead matter, that beyond the motion it has received from God at the beginning, and which it transmits from part to part without increase or diminution, it has no principle of Animals automata. activity in it. Every trace of vitality in it must be explained away as a mere false reflection upon it of the nature of mind. The world is thus “cut in two with a hatchet,” and there is no attraction to overcome the mutual repulsion of its severed parts. Nothing can be admitted in the material half that savours of self-determination, all its energy must be communicated, not self-originated; there is no room for gravitation, still less for magnetism or chemical affinity, in this theory. A fortiori, animal life must be completely explained away. The machine may be very complicated, but it is still, and can be nothing but, a machine. If we once admitted that matter could be anything but mechanical, we should be on the way to admit that matter could become mind. When a modern physical philosopher declares that everything, even life and thought, is ultimately reducible to matter, we cannot always be certain that he means what he seems to say. Not seldom the materialist soi-disant, when we hear his account of the properties of matter, turns out to be something like a spiritualist in disguise; but when Descartes asserted that everything but mind is material, and that the animals are automata, there is no such dubiety of interpretation. He said what he meant, and meant what he said, in the hardest sense his words can bear. His matter was not even gravitating, much less living; it had no property except that of retaining and transmitting the motion received from without by pressure and impact. And his animals were automata, not merely in the sense of being governed by sensation and instinct, but precisely in the sense that a watch is an automaton. Henry More cries out against the ruthless consequence with which he develops his principles to this result. “In this,” he says, “I do not so much admire the penetrative power of your genius as I tremble for the fate of the animals. What I recognize in you is not only subtlety of thought, but a hard and remorseless logic with which you arm yourself as with a sword of steel, to take away life and sensation with one blow, from almost the whole animal kingdom.” But Descartes was not the man to be turned from the legitimate result of his principles by a scream. “Nec moror astutias et sagacitates canum et vulpium, nec quaecunque alia propter cibum, venerem, aut metum a brutis fiunt. Profiteor enim me posse perfacile illa omnia ut a sola membrorum conformatione profecta explicare.”[14]