The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced into the philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there for the successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became for the successors of Plato.
Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind which he has mingled with them.[59] Instead of establishing that there is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal, something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision the proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple. In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal, because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it, it comes from it,—it is not it.
Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the treatise, de l'Existence de Dieu. The second part is entirely Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs. Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:[60]
Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. Its ideas are universal, eternal, and immutable.... The idea of the infinite is in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles....—Chap. liv. Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me, and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence. It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and I am never deceived except in not listening to it.... This internal rule is what I call my reason....—Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end: it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in me....—Chap. lvi.... That which appears the most in us and seems to be the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a foreign body....—Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by its own inclination, the other rectifies it.... Each one feels within himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason, which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational, because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them what they are, is one and the same....—Chap. lviii. Where is this wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to its voice? Where is this light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.... The substance of the human eye is not light; on the contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth, it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is illuminated by it....—Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself,—one is myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect, faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration, changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided, although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It must be something real.... Where is this supreme reason? Is it not God that I am seeking?"
Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.[61] "I have in me the idea of the infinite and of infinite perfection.... Give me a finite thing as great as you please—let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape the imagination without escaping the mind.... Sect. 29. Where have I obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence does it come? Where have I obtained it?... Once more, whence comes this marvellous representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself, which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface, obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it.... Moreover, who has made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image[62] of the infinite had no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a mass of extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea which I have of him...."
Chap. iv., sect. 49. "... My ideas are myself; for they are my reason.... My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain, ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What shall I believe, then, they can be?... What then! are my ideas God? They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable like God; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is, my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself, in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar, so unknown, can be, except God."
Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian doctors of the seventeenth century—let us hear Bossuet in his Logic, and in the Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self.[63]
Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy—St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St. Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.[64] In the passages which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than either, to wit, clearness and precision—all the rest in him is in some sort an addition to these.
Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas, from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet renders to himself a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself, interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist only in the mind of God.
Logic, book i., chap. xxxvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pass from this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three angles equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of this triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less—I see nothing contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact, I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could assure me that any human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are, therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably subsist...."