 Chapter 54 of History of Philosophy Second period from Descartes to Kant of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Brent History of Philosophy by William Turner Second period from Descartes to Kant The second period in the history of modern philosophy extends from Descartes to Kant. That is, from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 18th. It comprises some of the greatest modern systems of thought, namely the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. The last forming, as it were, the connecting link with the period of criticism, inaugurated by Kant. The periods which we are about to study is one of dogmatism and empiricism, although it includes, as we shall see, more than one system of scepticism, partial or complete. It is a period during which intellectual activity within the church is confined for the most part to the domain of theology. Philosophy no longer stands to theology in the close relation in which it had stood during the Middle Ages, and battles in which the most vital principles of religion are involved were fought outside the church and in the domain of philosophy. This association of philosophy from theology is one of the characteristics of the period. Chapter 54, Descartes' Life Rene Descartes was born in Lahae in terrain in the year of 1596. He studied at the Jesuit College of Le Flesh, and throughout his life maintained the most friendly relations with his teachers, his greatest regret being their refusal to accept his philosophy. On quitting the College of Le Flesh in 1612, he went to Paris, where for a time he abandoned all serious study. Later, however, in obedience with the maxim Benet visite qui benet la tute, which he made the guiding principle of his life, he retired into seclusion in a lonely quarter of the city, and there continued his studies. In 1617, determined to study the great book of the world, he took service as a volunteer in the Army of Prince Maurice of Nassau, repairing first to Holland and afterwards to Germany, where he left the Army of Prince Maurice, for that of the Elector of Bavaria. While in winter quarters in Newburgh, on the Danube, in 1619 to 1620, he experienced the mental crisis of his life, and discovered, as he tells us, the foundries of a wonderful science, the principle namely that all geometrical problems can be solved by algebraic symbols. It was in the same mental crisis that the notion of universal methodic doubt first occurred to him, as well as a thought that the mysteries of nature and the laws of mathematics could both be unlocked by the same key. Footnote. In portus hibernis naturai, mystery components come legibus, mathiesos, utriusche, arcana, idum clave, reserrari, posea osus esperare, epitaph, composed by Chenoux. End of footnote. After a brief visit to his native place, he took up his abode in Holland in 1629, and there published his most important philosophical works, the discur de metude, 1637, Medetociones de prima filosofia, in 1641, and Prentipia filosofia, in 1644. At the invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden, he went to Stockholm in 1649, where he died in the early part of the following year. Besides the works mentioned in the preceding paragraph, Zeica wrote a trité de passiones de la mou, published in 1650. Amongst his posthumous works, the most important was the Recesses de la vérité, en reglée pour la direction de l'espérite, published in 1701. His letters, published 1657 to 1667, are important for understanding his doctrines. The collected works of their car were published in 1650 and 1701. Cousins' edition, 11 volumes, Paris, 1824 to 1826, has long been the standard edition. It will doubtless be superseded by the edition, which is being prepared by messes Adam and Tannery, and of which three volumes have already, in 1901, appeared. With regard to second resources, it is impossible to give here an adequate list. Mahaffey's Descartes, included in Blackwood's philosophical classics, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1894, is an excellent manual for English students of Descartes. Footnote, consult Bouillier Histoire de la philosophie Carticienne, the Troisième edition, Paris, 1868. Also Wallace, article on their car in Encyclopedia Britannica, translations, method, meditations, etc., by Weitzch, 10th edition, London, 1890, Meditations by Lowens, London, 1878, Extracts by Tory, New York, 1892. End footnote, doctrines, physical and mathematical doctrines. Descartes' contribution to the mathematical and physical sciences, important as they are, cannot be treated here except in a general way. Descartes is the founder of analytical geometry. To the science of algebra, he contributed the treatment of negative roots and the invention of the system of index notation. To physics, he contributed the first statement of the law of signs in reference to the refraction of light. This last point is, however, a matter of dispute, the discovery being by some authorities attributed to Snellius. Footnote, cross-reference, revue de méthes physique et de moral, Juliette, 1896. End of footnote, Descartes' method. Descartes, as is well known, advocates universal methodic doubt as the beginning of philosophical thinking. During his sojourn at Newberg, to which illusion has already been made, he occupied himself with the project of finding some one certain truth and of discovering the true method of attaining to the knowledge of all things of which his mind was capable. With this purpose in view, he first resolved to get rid of all prejudices acquired from books, and to call in question all the principles and conclusions of science and philosophy. It is to be remarked that Descartes did not propose this method of doubt as a means to be used indiscriminately by all. The resolution which he made was merely for his personal use. It is to be noted, in the second place, that Descartes accepted from his universal doubt truths belonging to theology and to the political and moral sciences. Having resolved then to doubt everything that his predecessors had taught, he proceeded to draw up a set of rules for his further guidance. The logic of the schools, he remarked, will be of little avail in this systematic inquiry, because it is suited rather to communication than it is to discovery of truth. Accordingly, he proposed a substitute for the rules of formal logic before following principles. One, to admit nothing as true which is not perceived so clearly and distinctly as to admit of no doubt. Two, to divide as far as possible every question into its natural parts. Three, to pass synthetically from the easier to the more difficult. Four, to make accurate and complete enumerations, both in seeking middle terms and in considering the elements of difficult problems. Footnote, cross-reference Descartes de la méthode du parti ouvre-choise, page 14, and footnote. These simple and elementary rules are not difficult of observance, they indicate, and this is the point with which we are chiefly concerned, the essentially deductive nature of the method which Descartes introduced. Indeed, during the winter of 1619 and 1620, when Descartes started out to construct a system of knowledge by the aid of these rules, he first applied them to the mathematical sciences. But finding the method to be at once easy and fertile of results and considering that the principles of all sciences are derived from first philosophy, he determined to apply to all branches of physical and philosophical science the method which he had so successfully used in mathematical studies. Descartes' own statements preclude all possible doubt as to the deductive nature of his physical and scientific method. Footnote, cross-reference Lettres, in cousin's edition of Descartes' work 7, page 121, and peregle, etc., passem. Starting point. The plan conceived during the winter of 1619 and 1620 that, namely, of applying to all branches of knowledge and mathematical method which starts from an intuition and proceeds by deduction, was perfected in the discourse on method, which appeared in 1637 and in the meditations published in 1641. In these treatises, Descartes attempts to discover an incontrovertible truth, alequid incongossum, known to us by a clear and distinct intuition, and from that single truth to deduce all science. The truth which he discovers to be beyond all possibility of doubt, and which he accordingly selects as the beginning of all scientific knowledge, is the fact of his own conscious thought. I may doubt, he observes, about everything else, but I cannot doubt that I think. What doubt is to think, but if I think, I exist. Gojito ergo sum. Footnote. Cross-reference the scur catroparti uvreschoas, page 25. Also, du parti meditation opus citatum, page 79. End footnote. To this, Ghassendi objected that one may infer existence from any external action, such as walking, and argue ambulo ergo sum. But Descartes protested that the ergo sum is not an inference, as indeed it cannot be if Gojito is the first truth. It is, however, evident that Descartes himself, by the use of the word ergo, gave rise to the misunderstanding. The complex proposition, therefore, Gojito ergo sum merely expresses the undeniable certainty of the self-evident intuition that I think, and of the equally self-evident intuition that I exist. No doubt Descartes selected thought rather than an external action, such as walking, because, though I may be deceived as to whether I am walking or not, I cannot be deceived as to whether I am thinking. He felt, too, that thought in some way implies existence, and he had, perhaps in mind, St. Augustine's Côte Sifalo sum. He does not, however, appear to have realized the difference between an indirect argument, such as St. Augustine's was, merely a reductio ad absurdum of the opponent's contention and a direct proof or demonstration. Descartes might have turned, at this point, to the consideration of matter or extension. He might have considered that we have a clear and distinct idea of extension, which is as primitive and undirived as is our idea of thought and thinking subject, but instead of doing this, he proceeded, like the mathematician that he was, to deduce all knowable truth from the fewest possible premises. He passed, therefore, deductively from his own existence to the existence of God, and from the existence of God to the existence of the extended matter, external world. The existence of God. Descartes reduces his proofs of the existence of God to two. Footnote. Cross-reference, responsis, au premier objection, opus chitatum, page 146. Elsewhere, ouvre chois, edited by cousin, volume 9, page 164. Descartes enumerates three proofs. End of footnote. The a posteriori argument, from effect to cause, and the a priori argument, which proceeds from the idea of God to the existence of God. We take up first the a posteriori argument. Having established the truth that I think and therefore I exist, Descartes goes on, in the third meditation, to argue deductively as follows. Of the ideas which I find in my mind, some arise from external causes, and others from the mind itself. Now, among the ideas which I possess is the idea of God, that is, the idea of a most perfect being. This idea, however, cannot have been produced by me, for the fact that I doubt proves that I am an imperfect being, and an imperfect being cannot cause that which is most perfect. He alone, who is himself in doubt with all perfection, can produce in my mind the idea of the most perfect being. Therefore, from the idea of God, which I possess, I am warranted in concluding that God exists. Footnote, ouvre chois, page 103. End footnote. The existence of God is then not an intuitive truth, but rather a truth inferred from an intuition of the contents of the mind. The most serious flaw in Descartes a prosteriore argument is the assumption of the principle of causality. Descartes, it must be remembered, has resolved to doubt about everything, and up to this point he has established merely the truth that he thinks and that he exists. He has no right, therefore, to assume the principle of causality, in virtue of which it is affirmed that whatever perfection is in the effect must also be in the cause. If he assumes it is in virtue of clear and distinct perception, he must abandon the attempt to deduce all truth from one intuition. Apart from this flaw, which may be called accidental, the argument is intrinsically invalid. It is not true that an idea cannot contain, representatively, a perfection which is neither formally or eminently in the mind that conceives the idea. I may form in my mind an idea of the infinite without possessing the perfections which the idea of the infinite represents. The principle that the effect is not greater than the sum of its causes is true in the order of being, but in the argument which we are studying, the effect is in the order of representation, while the cause is in the order of existence, and the transition from the ideal order to the real order is always fallacious. We next come to the a priori, or as Descartes calls it, the geometrical proof of the existence of God. We find in our mind certain ideas possessing properties so fixed and immutable that we cannot acquire such ideas without holding to the truths of the properties which are necessarily connected with them. We cannot, for example, possess the idea of a triangle and understand what the idea means without admitting that the sum of the angles of the triangle is equal to two right angles. Now, when we examine the idea of God, we find that it is the idea of the most perfect being, an idea, namely which comprises all perfections, including that of existence. If existence were not comprised among the perfections of God, he would not be the most perfect being. Therefore, from the fact that we possess the idea of a supremely perfect being, we are warranted in concluding that such a being exists. The arguments may be stated in scholastic form and praesiology thus. For note, cross-reference Rev. de Metaphysique et de Moral, Juliet, 1896, page 436. The argument is found in the first volume, Medellanes uvreshois, page 120, in the footnote. Descartes' geometrical or ontological argument raised the perfect tempest of controversy. It was attacked on all sides as being a mere restatement of Saint Anselm's argument, as containing an illogical transition from the ideal to the real order, and as falsely assuming that existence is a perfection. Despite these objections, the argument gained many supporters and remained in honor among Cartesians of the 17th and 18th centuries. Having thus demonstrated the existence of God, Descartes next proceeds to infer from the goodness and wisdom of God, the veracity of the faculties of the human mind, and to build on this basis the whole superstructure of philosophy. The succulus vertiosus is flagrant. Descartes proves the existence of God, and then from the veracity of God infers the reliability of the cognitive powers by which the existence of God has been established. If, Descartes proceeds to argue, our faculties of knowledge are reliable, our senses are to be believed when they testify to the existence of the external world, the existence of material extended being is not known therefore by intuition, but rather by way of inference, from the primitive intuition of my own existence and from the truths deduced therefrom. Doctrine of Two Substances By direct intuition then, we know that there is a thinking substance, self, and by inference we know that there is an extended substance, matter. Now, substance being that which so exists as to need nothing else for its existence, it is clear that God alone is, properly and strictly speaking, a substance. Mind, however, and matter, since they need nothing for their existence, except the cooperation of God, may be called created substances. The essence of mind is thought, the essence of matter is extension. Everything that may be predicated of mind is a mode of thought, while everything that is predicated of matter is a mode of extension. Mind and matter, therefore, are antithetical. Footnote, cross-reference Volume 6, Meditation, Opus Kitartum, page 126. End footnote. It remains to see how Descartes applied his doctrine of dualism to this concept of nature and to anthropology. But before taking up Descartes' philosophy of nature, it will be convenient to gather from the foregoing doctrines the principle of Descartes' epistemology. Descartes' epistemology. When Descartes makes the veracity of God the all-sufficient guarantee for the reliability of our sense processes and of our thought processes, he lays down a principle which he wishes to be regarded as the ultimate metaphysical basis of certitude. But in every system of epistemology, principles of psychology are applied and we may ask, for example, by what quality is the knowledge which comes from the outside world to be distinguished from the knowledge which comes from the world within us? How can I distinguish the idea of a thing from the idea of a mere mental fancy? How, for instance, does my idea of Julius Caesar differ from my idea of a laden? Descartes would answer that the mind, being a race cogitans, a substance whose very essence is thought, must be conscious of all its acts. When, therefore, I am conscious of an idea which I myself formed, iteia amep sufacta, I am conscious of having formed it. But when an idea comes to me from outside, idea aventizia, I am conscious of the non-interference of my will and I know that, whether I will it or not, the idea represents so much and no more. Ideas of this latter class must, therefore, be caused by something outside the mind, and I conclude that the something outside the mind exists. Descartes is then a reasoned realist. Descartes maintains the existence of real substance as well as of real qualities. For, if qualities exist, substances exist, since nothing can have no qualities. Nili nulla sunt attributta. Thus, in the Principia Filosofia, Vol. 2, p. 52, he writes, ex hoc quod aleicud attributum adesse precipiamos, concluurimus allicu amadesarem existentum sievei substantium cui ilu tribui possita. Still, he teaches that the secondary qualities taste color, etc., of material things, or modes of consciousness, rather than qualities of the real substances. They are, indeed, movements of real substances which movements on being communicated to the nerves of filaments are conducted to the pineal gland, where they come in contact with the mind and are perceived by it. It is not, however, the movement of the substance in the world outside us that is perceived by the mind, but merely the movement of the filaments, which is caused by the movement of the external substance. There is, then, a real cause of color, taste, etc. Nevertheless, the color, taste, etc., being only modes of the subjective organism, are, strictly speaking, states of self, rather than states of not-self. By this doctrine of subjectivism, Descartes paved the way for the idealism of subsequent philosophers. It was easy for Berkeley, for example, to reason away the primary qualities of matter by reducing them, as Descartes had reduced the secondary qualities to states of self, and to conclude that the very substance of matter has no existence except in thought. Descartes, it must be remembered, is not an idealist. He maintains the existence of an external world of matter with its qualities, extension and motion. Nevertheless, he is justly regarded as the founder of modern idealism. Philosophy of nature. What is the essence of material substance? Descartes, as we have seen, answered that it is extension. The secondary qualities are merely states of the perceiving mind, and among the primary qualities, extension alone is so essential to matter, that without it, matter is unthinkable. Now, from extension, proceed the divisibility, figurability and mobility of matter. Of course, the principle that matter is nothing but extension would, if pushed to its logical conclusions, lead to subjectivism. Descartes taught, as is well known, that the essences of things depend on the will of God. Now, the divine will is immutable. Matter, having at its creation been endowed with a certain measure of motion and rest, retains this measure unchanged. Footnote Opus Chitatum, Monium III, age 47. And footnote, hence the laws of motion. Everything tends to continue in the state of rest, or of motion, in which it is, and changes that state only as a result of the interference of some extraneous cause. Thus, Descartes' notion of matter harmonized with subsequent discoveries. He himself inferred, from his notion of matter, the homogeneousness of space, the existence of substance in the interstellar spaces, the formation of the universe from a primitively homogeneous mass, the explanation of the distinction between solid and fluid bodies, and so forth. The only thing that extension confers on matter is mobility. Matter is essentially inert. It receives its motion from the first efficient cause. Descartes devotes special attention to the application of his mechanical concept of nature to dioptrics. He discards the entire scholastic system of forms, accidental and substantial, entitutive, accounting for the qualities of things, and representative, accounting for our knowledge of things, and explains the phenomena of light, color, vision and so forth in terms of motion. All sensations, he teaches, including that of light, are accounted for by the motion of particles. Light itself is a motion, not indeed a vibration. Descartes did not advance so far as this, but a horizontal pushing of one particle by another. It is needless to remark that long before the days of Descartes, Aristotle denied the emission theory of light, and held that light is a mode of motion. Descartes, however, advanced beyond all his predecessors when he taught, in Mithior, Volume 8 of Discours, that the differences of one color from another is due to the varying velocities with which the motions of light reach the eye. Not less interesting is the portion of the dioptric, the sixth discourse, in which he anticipates many of Berkeley's contributions to the theory of vision. Psychology. It is in Descartes' psychology that the disastrous consequences of his doctrine of the two substances appear. If mind and matter are so opposed as to have nothing in common, the union of soul and body and man must be merely a mechanical one. The body, Descartes teaches, is a machine, so constructed that it carries its own operations by virtue of the impulse received from the soul, which Descartes locates in the pineal gland. This portion of the brain is selected as the seat of the soul because it is the only part of the cerebral substance which is not double. And it is evident, Descartes observes, that if the organ of the soul were double, we should perceive two objects instead of one. It is important to note that Descartes attaches to the word mind, a meaning which is at once narrower than that of the word soul, and wider than that of the expression thinking faculty. He defines mind as race cogitans, but includes under the term thought, sensation, imagination, and volition, as well as the processes of ideation. Thought, in fact, he makes synonymous with states of consciousness. Thought, however, does not include all vital functions. Footnote, Principia philosophia, volume one, page nine, in the footnote. In his account of the physiological processes of the body, as well in his doctrine regarding sensation, Descartes has recourse to the theory of animal spirits. The only physiological principles which he admits are motion and warmth. God, he observes, has placed in the hearts of men and animals, a vital warmth, which promotes the circulation of blood. Footnote, Descartes mentions in terms of praise, Harveys, the motto Cordis et sanguinius in Animalibus of 1628, in footnote, and separates from the blood its finest and most mobile particles, which constitute the animal spirits, spiritus animales. The fluid, a very subtle wind as he sometimes calls it, conveys the stimulation of the senses to the pineal gland and returning through the nerves to the muscles conveys the impulse of motion from the pineal gland to the limbs. In animals, there's no conscious sensation, but only this automatic response of the animal mechanism to stimulate, so that when an animal on the dissecting table utters what is apparently a cry of pain, the noise is, as the Cartesian vivisectionists contended, merely the crash of broken machinery. In man, however, the motion of the animal spirits on reaching the pineal gland enters into the region of thought and thus there arises a passio. In the same way, the motion imparted by the mind from the pineal gland leaves the region of thought and is an actio. Hence, the contents of the human mind, cogitasions, are divided into axions and pasions. Their cart, however, does not maintain this discrimination in the details of his account of the contents of the human mind. With regard to the origin of ideas, their cart at one time held a three-fold classification of ideas, namely inattae, aventitia, and amipso factae. He saw fit, however, at a later period, to explain that by innate ideas he meant merely natural dispositions of the mind, which enable it to develop certain ideas. In the same sense, he observes in his answer to Regius, footnote, cousin's edition, volume 10, page 70, end footnote. We say that certain illnesses are innate in certain families, by which we mean merely that children are born with the disposition for developing those illnesses. None of our ideas, therefore, are actually innate. All our ideas are either occasioned by our sensations, that is, they come apparently at least from the world outside, and are therefore called aventitiae, or result from voluntary combinations of elements of thought, and hence are called idia amipso factae. Besides these two classes, we must distinguish the innate dispositions to develop certain ideas, and these dispositions we may describe as innate potencies of ideas. Descars contrasts will with mind. The mind is essentially limited, while the will is unlimited. We are directly and immediately conscious of our power to perform or to omit certain actions. And in this power, freedom consists, footnote, volume 4, meditation, end footnote. From the freedom of will comes the power of choosing to assert that which we do not understand. The will is, therefore, the source of error. Passions of the soul form, as we have seen, the subject of a special treatise by Descartes. Passion, like every other state of consciousness, is a thought. It is not a state of the body, for every state of the body is either a figure or a movement. Still, it is occasioned by the body, for it arises in the following manner. When an impression is conveyed to the brain, the animal's spirits are disturbed, and the commotion thus produced results in approach or flight or attitude of defence. Now, in the lower animals, this is all that takes place. But in the case of man, the mind perceives this commotion of the animal's spirits, and the thought of the commotion is emotion or passion. Passion, therefore, is a specifically human phenomenon. Footnote, cross-reference Mahafi, Descartes, page 184, end footnote. According to Descartes, the primitive emotions are six in number. Admiration, amor, odium, cupiditas, tesier, gaudium, and testicia. The consideration of the emotions leads us to the next and last division of Descartes' philosophy, namely his ethical doctrines. Ethical doctrines. Descartes did not attempt to elaborate a system of ethics from the principles of his speculative philosophy. In his letters, and especially in those addressed to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick V, of the Palatinate, and in those written to Queen Christina, he lays down certain ethical principles which betray the influence of the Stoics. The highest happiness he teaches is to attain by striving for a knowledge of what is right and by cultivating the will in order to strengthen it in its resolve to do what is right. Knowledge of God as the author of all things. Knowledge of the universe as infinite in magnitude. Knowledge of the soul as distinct from the body, and knowledge of self as part of the domestic and civil society. These are the greatest aids to the attainment of virtue and happiness. We should realize the unlimited power of the will. For from this feeling of power springs the virtue of magnanimity, which is the foundation of all other virtues. Footnote. Cross-reference Hofding, History of Modern Philosophy, Volume 1, pages 240 and 241. Historical position. Dayikar exercised a profound influence on his own and subsequent generations. He stirred the thinking world of his time to its very depths. His doctrines left the impress on the theology, science, and literature, as well as on the philosophy of the 17th century. His philosophy was adopted and defended by religious orders. He had for patrons the Prince of Kondë, the ablest general of the age, and such was the greatness of his fame that more than one royal personage sought admission to the ranks of his pupils. All this enthusiasm produced, however, a natural reaction against his teachings. His works were placed on the index Donec Curiganto, November 20, 1663. The Calvinist universities in Holland proscribed his writings, and the University of Oxford forbade the teaching of his philosophy. Footnote. Cross-reference Gonzales, Op. Citatum, Volume 3, page 239. End footnote. But in spite of all opposition, Dayikar's influence continued, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that his thought determined the whole course of the development of modern philosophy. Dayikar's philosophy is original in form rather than content. His most noteworthy contribution to philosophy is his method. His method is, as we have seen, essentially mathematical. The very opposite of what is known as the scientific model. Yet, by a strange irony of fate, physical science owes more to Dayikar than to Bacon, who sought to reform the sciences by the introduction of the inductive in lieu of the syllogistic process. Dayikar has been compared to Socrates, and indeed he is, in a sense, the Socrates of modern thought. He called attention, as Socrates has done, to the necessity of studying the nature of thought and the conditions of knowledge. But, unfortunately, for the subsequent development of philosophy, he did not base his system of psychology on experience. All his psychological inquiry was vitiated by his preconceived doctrine of the absolute antithesis of mind and matter. A doctrine which, by creating an imaginary chasm between the subject and object, undid all that Socrates, Aristotle and the schoolmen had accomplished. This doctrine is the luckless legacy of Cartesianism to modern thought, for how to bridge the imaginary chasm between mind and matter came to be the problem which almost every great philosopher, Saint Dayikar, has striven in vain to solve. From this fundamental misconception of the relation between mind and matter followed a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of philosophical inquiry. After Dayikar, philosophy once more becomes anthropocentric. It reduces itself to the study of individual consciousness, to a geometry of deductions from internal experience. And the objective world, its origin, plan and destiny, the place of man in nature and even the existence of an intelligent first cause, are all made secondary subjects of our inquiry, to be decided according to the result of the study of our own consciousness. This inversion of the natural perspective is what a modern writer has characterized as the topsy-turvy-dom of Cartesianism. Todayikar too may be traced the misunderstanding which prevails between those who believe in the spirituality of the human soul, and those who rightly insist on the value of experimental methods in the study of psychic phenomena. For the concrete dualistic spiritualism of Aristotle and the schoolman, Dayikar substituted the absolute dualistic spiritualism of Plato, thereby establishing at the outset of the modern period an altogether unnecessary antagonism between spiritualism and empiricism. An antagonism which eventually drove the empirical psychologist to adopt the materialistic concept of the soul as the only concept which justified the study of the correlation between psychic phenomena and physiological processes. End of Chapter 54 Chapter 55 of the History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. History of Philosophy by William Turner. Chapter 55 Cartesianism Toward the end of the 17th century almost every French writer of note evinced a more or less decided tendency towards Cartesianism. Musette, 1627, 1704, and Fenolon, 1651 to 1715 presented the traditional religious philosophy of St. Thomas and St. Augustine in a form which bears unmistakable marks of the influence of Descartes' teachings. Among the Port Royalists, Cartesianism found ardent defenders in Arnaud, 1612 to 1694, and Nicole, 1625 to 1695. Pascal, too, while he no doubt included Cartesianism in his condemnation of all purely rational philosophy, presents in his own doctrines the development of ideas which were germinally contained in the philosophy of Descartes. Finally, Gullinck's M. L. Mbranche gave to Descartes' philosophy a more complete and definite form, and brought to light the elements of occasionalism and ontologism latent in it. Léz Pascal, 1623 to 1662, was born at Clermont in Auvergne and was educated at Paris. He became one of the most conspicuous figures of the Jansenist movement and contributed to the literature of the Jansenist controversy and famous Provincial Letters, Letheres Provinciales. He made several important discoveries in mathematics and physics, and it was a treatise of his that formed the basis of the Port Royal Logic, L'Art des Panthées, which appeared in 1662. The work entitled Panthées, published in 1669, consists of fragmentary reflections intended to form part of the system of a Christian philosophy. Some of these fragments are utterly skeptical in tone, while others read the spirit of dogmatic stoicism, and in point of fact the fundamental thought in Pascal's mind reconciled both these extremes, for while he depreciates reason and condemns all purely rational philosophy, at the same time he exalts faith and insists that the heart has reasons of which reason itself knows nothing. From the point of view of reason and philosophy, man is an eternal enigma, truly great yet no less truly miserable. Quote, man knows that he is miserable, he is therefore miserable since he is so. But he is very great since he knows it. He exalts himself, I abase him. If he abases himself, I exalt him, and perpetually contradict him till he comprehends that he is an incomprehensible monster. Reason therefore cannot solve the mystery of man's state, nor can it discover the cause for his present condition, which is that of a king deposed. Faith alone, by means of the doctrine of original sin, answers the question which reason can merely ask, and solves the riddle of human destiny. On regeneration by the redemption of Jesus Christ is the whole fabric of morality to be based. Consequently faith, or as Pascal commonly expresses it, feeling, sentiment, the heart, is the supreme criterion of the highest truths in the speculative order and of all moral truth. Gulinks. Life. Arnold Gulinks was born at Antwerp in the year 1625. After having studied in top philosophy at Louvain, he went on to Leiden, where he joined the Calvinists. At the University of Leiden he was appointed successively Lecter 1662 and Professor Extraordinary 1665 in the Department of Philosophy. He died at Leiden in the year 1669. Doctrines. Gulinks developed the ontologism of occasionalism which were latent in the Cartesian separation of mind and matter, and in the Cartesian principle that matter is essentially inert. Ontologism. Unless I know that an event happens, I am not its cause. Now I am ignorant of the manner in which a sense stimulus passes into or becomes a sensation in the mind. Therefore I do not cause the sensation. Neither does the body cause it, for the body is essentially inert, unconscious, non-rational. Consequently the sensation, and what is true of sensation is true of all knowledge, is caused by God Himself, and the body and the body stimulus being merely the occasions of the conscious act. Occasionalism. Similarly I have no consciousness of the manner in which my volitions effect movements of my own body or of external things. It is not I therefore who produce these movements but God, who by divine decree institutu quodum decretoche divino, ordained that material things should be the occasions of effects which He alone produces. Ethical Doctrines. From these speculative principles Gulinks deduces certain ethical doctrines. He assumes that where I can do nothing, I ought not to will anything. It is my duty therefore to renounce the world and all worldly motives of action, to retire within myself and cultivate in humility and patience the supreme virtue which is love of God and of reason. Amor de Acquacionis. In this system of conduct the hierarchical idea is not happiness but duty. Malabranche. Life. Nicholas Malabranche was born at Paris in 1638. In 1660 he entered the Paris house of the oratory founded by Saint Philip Neri. Four years later the reunion of Descartes, Thrate de L'homme, decided his philosophical vocation and during the rest of his life he devoted himself as strenuously as his feeble health would permit to the elucidation and development of the Cartesian philosophy. He died in 1715. His most important work is Vescherche de la Verte which appeared in 1675. Malabranche begins his search for truth by an inquiry into the causes of error. The principal source of error he finds to be belief in the trustworthiness of the senses. For the senses were given us to serve practical needs and not for the purposes of revealing the nature of things. The external senses in representing bodies is colored, etc., extension being the only quality which bodies possess. Similarly the imagination deceives us for its impressions come through the body. There is nothing left then but to trust in our ideas as representations of reality. But whence come our ideas? Not from external things, because no finite thing can produce anything, causal efficacy being the pre-occurative of the deity, occasionalism. Indeed all true philosophy Malabranche observes must teach that there is but one cause, just as all true religion must teach that there is but one God. Now a finite being can produce nothing, and if God is the only cause, the conclusion is obvious that it is God Himself who produces our ideas. In Him we see all things, ontologism. Nous voyons tout José en Dieu. He is the locus of our ideas. He is therefore in immediate relation with every thinking soul. What then one asks has become of the soul itself. It is reduced to a mere thought. The soul always thinks, and thought is its being and its life. Historical Position Pascale, Gulinx and Malabranche brought to the surface the elements of mysticism which lay hidden in Descartes' system of thought. The latter two developed also the latent ontologism and occasionalism of the Cartesian philosophy, and revealed the logical nexus between Cartesianism and Pantheism. For although Malabranche protested against the Pantheism of Le Miserable Spinoza, posterity has rightly pronounced his occasionalism to be Spinozism in the stage of arrested development, Pantheism held in check by faith in Christian revelation. Chapter 56 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Florence. History of Philosophy by William Turner. Chapter 56. Spinoza. Life. Baruch Benedict Spinoza was born in 1632 at Amsterdam, where his parents who were Portuguese Jews had sought refuge from religious persecution. He received his early education in the Jewish Academy at Amsterdam. Later he studied natural science under the tuition of a free-thinking physician named Van Den End and was initiated into the mysteries of Talmudic literature and philosophy by the rabbi Monterra. In 1656 he was solemnly excommunicated by the synagogue on account of his heterodox views and obliged to leave his native city. After a few years spent at Reinsburg and Vorburg he repaired in 1669 to the Hague, where he earned his livelihood by polishing lenses. In 1673 he declined the offer of a professorship at Heidelberg, preferring the quiet and independence of the humble life which he had elected to lead. He chose poverty for his lot and when he died in 1677 his worldly possessions were barely sufficient to pay a few trivial debts which he had contracted during his illness. Sources The principal philosophical works of Spinoza are De Intellectus, Eman Datione, Ethica Ordine, Geometrico Demonstrata, Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus Theologico Politicus, Principia Philosophia Cartesiana in geometrical form, Cogitata Metifisica, and a short treatise on God and man written in Dutch. The best edition of Spinoza's works is that of Van Vloten and Land, the Hague 1882-1883 in two volumes reprinted 1895 in three volumes. Pollock's Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy, London 1880 and Principal Caird's Spinoza, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1888 are excellent introductions to the philosophy of Spinoza. The Ethica was translated by White, London 1883, and by Elvis, London 1883-1884. Doctrines Spinoza's idea of philosophy It will be impossible to arrive at a definite idea of Spinoza's system, or to reconcile the widely divergent interpretations of his philosophy, unless we first inquire into the motive which actuated him in his philosophical speculations, and try to discover the point of view from which he looked out on the world of life and thought. In the treatise De Intellectus Emma D'Attione, he gives us a kind of mental autobiography, and tells us that his aim in philosophy is to seek the knowledge which makes men happy. His thought, therefore, is not set in motion by a problem of causality, nor is he interested in the question of the value of knowledge, but he is troubled at the unrest of which the whole world is full, and he approaches the problems of philosophy in the ethical rather than in the scientific spirit, with the hope of leading his reader to look upon things in that aspect of them which shall conduce to greater spiritual and moral perfection. This is the significance of the title Ethica, by which he designated his great metaphysical treatise. To this ethical aim of his philosophy, Spinoza subordinated everything else, even logical consistency and systematic coherency causing to converge in one channel of thought, Cartesianism, the pantheism of Bruno and Memonides, and the mysticism of the Neoplatonists and the Kabbalistic philosophers. Starting point, definitions. Spinoza's method is even more formally and technically mathematical than that of Descartes. The Ethica starts with definitions and axioms and proceeds by process of syllogistic proof to the establishment propositions and corollaries. Spinoza defines substance as follows. Definition 3. Peer substantium, intelligo, idquod in sei est, et per sei concipita, hoc est idcugis conceptus, known indiget, conceptu, ulterius re, aquo, formari, debia, and here, whatever view we may take as to the preponderance of Descartes' influence on Spinoza's mind, we cannot fare to observe that Spinoza's definition is but an interpretation of the ambiguous words in which Descartes defines substance. Re's quai, itte existit, ut nulla alia re, indigiat ad existendum. Spinoza next proceeds to define attribute. Peer attributum, intelligo, idquod intellectus, de substantia, peccipit, tamquam ad existem, accentiam, constituens, definition 4. In the following definition, definition 5, he describes mode. Peer modum, intelligo, substantiae affectiones, sei ve idquod in alio est, pear quod etiem concipita, substance. Substance, attribute, and mode are the cardinal ideas in Spinoza's system of thought. Having defined them, therefore, he proceeds to show, from the definitions, a, that substance is 1, infinite, proposition 8, and indivisible, proposition 12, b, that the one substance is God, proposition 14. Now, God is defined, definition 6, as ends absolute infinitum, hoc est substantiae constants, infinitus, attributus, quorum, unum quod quae, iternum et infinitum, accentiam, exprimit. God is then an infinity of infinities, and although an attribute, such as thought or a mode, such as space, may be infinite, God alone is infinite in the infinity of his infinite attributes. They are infinite in one respect, he is infinite in all respects. The existence of God is a necessary truth. In proof of this, Spinoza advances the argument that God is substance, and substance must exist. Proposition 6, for not depending on anything else for its existence, it must cause itself, and therefore its essence must contain existence. In the second place, Spinoza, proposition 11, advances in proof of the existence of God, an argument of which the following is the major premise. Id necasario existit, cugius nulla ratio, val causa, data, quae impidit, quominus existat. He then proceeds to argue that neither in the divine nature, nor outside it, is there any cause which could prevent the existence of God. The argument, as is evident, is guilty of the fallacy of passing from the order of ideas to the order of existence, and merely proves the self-evident truth that if God exists, existence is a necessary attribute of the divinity. Thirdly, Spinoza advances the foreign proof of the existence of God. Posse non existere, impotentia est, et contra, posse existere potentia est, but perse notem. Si it a quae, id quaw jam necasario existit, non nisi entier finita sunt, sunt ergo entier finita, potentiora, enti absolute infinito. At qui hock, ut perse notem, absurdum est, ergo vel nihil existit, vel ends absolute infinitum, necasario etiem existit. At qui nos vel in nobus, vel in alio quot necasario existit, existimus, ergo ends absolute infinitum, hock est, per definition six, deus necasario existit. In a Scolian appended to this argument, Spinoza, after calling attention to the apparently aposteriori form of the proof, remarks that in reality, we do not argue from the existence of the finite to that of the infinite, that the conviction that God exists is based not on the reality of the finite, but rather on the unreality, that is, on the imperfection of all finite being. For the more perfect a substance is, the more reality it possesses. God is the only substance. Proposition 14, whatever is, is in God. Proposition 15, it follows, Proposition 18, that God is the imminent, not the transient cause of all finite existence. It remains therefore, for us to find in his unity, that from which the differences of things are derived. This Spinoza attempts to do, by means of the doctrine of attributes and modes, attributes of the divine substance. The first determination of the infinite is by means of the attributes, thought and extension. God is indeed an infinity of attributes, thought and extension are merely the two attributes under which the human mind is capable of representing him. Instead therefore, of Descartes' doctrine of the antithesis of the substance of mind to the substance of matter, we have the doctrine of one substance, conceived under the antithetical attributes, thought and extension. For thought is merely one way of looking at God and extension another, so that when I say, Deist est, reis, cogitans, and deist est, reis, extensor, I am speaking of one in the same reality, conceived in two different ways. The attributes therefore, are not ways in which God determines himself, but rather ways in which we determine him. And consequently, the first attempt to find in the one the reason of the difference of the many is a failure. Indeed, Spinoza, if he were consistent, should have ended where he began, namely at the definition of the one substance, and never have even attempted to derive the many from the one. Not deterred, however, by his first failure, Spinoza in his doctrine of modes, renews the attempt to find the derivation of the finite from infinite, modes of the divine substance. The attributes were never, it seems, intended to mean finite being. For the character of independence, per se, concipi, belongs to attribute, as it does to substance. But the mode, which can neither exist nor be conceived without substance, definition five, is surely finite, and here, if anywhere, we shall find the derivation of the finite from the infinite. For modes are, apparently, the countless parts into which the divine substance is sundered, the numberless billows which the ocean of eternal being casts up from its unfathomed depths. It is only in so far as God is determined to particular modes of being that he can be said to cause them. My body is caused by God in as much as it is a determination of him. So too is my soul. So also are the various objects in the world around me. When, therefore, I ask, are these modes identical with God? Am I God? I must answer that I am not God, for he is infinite, and I am determined to this particular mode. But take away the determination of my mode of being, and I am God. In this sense, we are diminished gods. There are, therefore, two ways of viewing concrete finite things. First, as they are determined in time and space, and secondly, subspecchie, itony tartis, that is, prescinding from all determination and looking at things merely as flowing necessarily from the divine substance. A. We are now in a position to ask, is Spinoza a pantheist? For the answer to this question will depend on the answer to this other question. Does Spinoza hold that finite things as such exist at all, that the modes have any existence, apart from the substance, that they determine the substance in the sense of a real determination? Spinoza expressly teaches that nothing proceeds from the infinite except the infinite. Are the modes then infinite, since they come from the infinite? He answers that the modes come from God, inasmuch as, quiteness, God is modified by finite modes and may therefore be finite. This, however, is merely a subterfuge. The real answer is given when, on the ground that all determination is negation, or limit is not being. Spinoza finally denies that the mode is real. The senses, it is true, present the world to us as consisting of finite beings, really determined and distinct from one another and from the infinite. Yet, if we view things, subspecie, I turn it artist, and reflect that all determination is negation, then all distinction and all finiteness disappear, and we find that we have returned to the starting point, to the assertion, namely, that God is one and all is God. We may indeed distinguish between natura and naturans, which is substance absolutely devoid of determination, the indivisible one, and natura naturata, which is substance infinitely modified and determined to an infinity of modes of being. But the distinction dissolves when we reflect that determination is negation, and that consequently the sum of all determinations is equal to nothing. We may therefore maintain the formula substance equals God equals nature. It is clear now that the mode is as unreal as the attribute, and that substance evades all attempts at differentiation in determination. We can see how things lead up to substance, but we cannot see how they are derived from it. The substance, which is the central concept in Spinoza's system of thought, has been compared to the lion's den, with a many tracks lead, but whence none can be seen to return. b. The self-maintaining impulse Spinoza once more renews the attempt to derive the finite from the infinite, when he describes the finite as only partly negative. There is then, in the finite, a positive element which, when we come to examine it, we find to be a self-maintaining impulse, an effort, canatus, by which it seeks to preserve its existence. In Ethica 3.6, this impulse is said to be the essence of finite being. But here, once more, when we ask how this positive element is related to the substance, Spinoza is obliged to answer that it is a determination of God. We are therefore thrown back on the monism with which we started. There is no being but God. c. Description of the Infinite Abandoning now all attempt at deriving the many from the one, let us inquire with Spinoza into the nature of the one substance. We must not expect to define it, for to define is to determine. We may, however, describe it by predicating terms of it analogously, as the schoolmen would say. It is, for example, a cause, not in the sense in which fire is a cause of heat, but rather in the sense in which the blackboard may be said to be the cause of the figures which limit, or determine, portions of its surface. The one substance may be said to be eternal, in the sense that its essence involves existence, or to use Spinoza's peculiar phraseology, in the sense that it is the cause of itself. But what surprises us most in Spinoza's description of the one substance is the assertion that it possesses neither intellect nor will, these being determinations belonging to Natura Naturata. It is evident, therefore, that the infinite is a geometrical rather than a dynamic infinite, that there is in it no principle of freedom or finality, that all things proceed from it by necessary and immutable law, just as the properties of a triangle, to use Spinoza's favorite illustration, proceed from the nature of the triangle. God is not a self-determining, self-integrating spirit, but an inert, impersonal substance, philosophy of the finite. The first determinations of substance are, as we have seen, mind and matter, or substance conceived as thinking, and substance conceived as extended, these attributes, although antithetical and therefore exclusive of interaction, are arranged in a certain parallelism, so that every mode of substance has its thought aspect and its extension aspect. For example, the idea of a circle and the circle itself are the thought aspect and the extension aspect of one and the same mode of substance. To this parallelism we shall return later on. Before taking up the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of matter, it is necessary to speak of the infinite modes. A. The infinite modes are introduced in order to fill up the gap between God and finite modes. As modes they are finite. As infinite modes they belong to the sphere of the infinite. These infinite modes are either modifications of the absolute nature of some attribute, or modifications of an attribute already modified, but so modified as to be eternal and infinite. When asked for examples, Spinoza answers that to the first class belongs infinite intellect, as an infinite mode of thought, and motion and rest as infinite modifications of extension. While to the second class belongs the form of the whole universe, Facche is totius universei, which, though it varies in an infinity of ways, is always the same. This final attempt at mediation between the infinite and the finite is, like Horspernose's previous attempts in the same direction, a failure. For the modes must, in ultimate analysis, be either finite or infinite. The doctrine of infinite modes is, however, interesting by reason of its striking resemblance to the Neoplatonic doctrine of the Logos, which was just such an illogical introduction of a something intermediate between the one and the many. Indeed, Spinoza himself was aware of the resemblance. The doctrine is also of interest, as showing once more how Spinoza's speculative intuition realized the necessity of introducing into his system some principle productive of differentiation and plurality, a principle which, however, the logic of his system would not and could not admit. From each of the infinite modes precedes an infinity of finite modes. From infinite intellect precede all finite minds, and from infinite extension precede all finite bodies. We come therefore to the philosophy of body and mind, be philosophy of body. Extension is infinite, one, because it is an attribute of God, and two, because its development could be impeded neither by a mode of thought nor by a mode of extension. And whatever is finite is so, because it is in some way impeded in its development. Extension is not only infinite, it is also one and continuous, because, and whatever problem Spinoza happens to be discussing, he always takes us back to this point. Substance is one and continuous. There is therefore no substantial, but merely a modal, divisibility of extension. Extension is essentially active, not inert, as Descartes taught, for it is, as we have seen, an attribute of substance, and substance, although incapable of self-differentiation, is essentially and eternally active. Every extended mode of substance is, therefore, preceded by and followed by an infinite series of movements. Thus, for the mechanism of Descartes, Spinoza substitutes a dynamism of a peculiar kind, namely a dynamism based on the eternal activity of the infinite substance, not on the activity of matter itself. Particular bodies are systems of movements. The molecules of the living body, for instance, are constantly changing, yet the body remains the same, because the same relation continues to exist between the molecules. The set of movements remains the same. But the living body is itself part of a larger system of movements, of the terrestrial planet, for instance, and this in turn forms part of a still larger system, so that the isolated individuality of any one body is an illusion of the imagination. A comprehensive view, that is, an inadequate knowledge of any particular body, reveals it to be but part of the universal system of movements. But whence comes the order in this cosmic system of movements? Whence the adaptation of organ to function and of individual to environment? Spinoza has already answered, in general terms, that in the geometrical process of the finite from the infinite, there is no place for the concept of finality. So too, in the philosophy of body, he teaches that the extension modes of substance proceed from substance as extended, not as thinking. There can therefore be no intended adaptation. The processes of the cosmos proceed by an unconscious geometry, in the same way as the spider spins its web without any knowledge of the proportion and symmetry of figures. It is only by imagination that we distinguish objects, fancy them to be individual, group them in figures, and arrange them so as to produce beauty of form or colour. This arrangement was not intended in the processes themselves, so that if we see beauty and adaptation in the geometrical processes of nature, it is due to the illusions arising from the inadequacy of our knowledge. C. Philosophy of Mind Spinoza's psychology is partly foreshadowed in his doctrine of substance. Thought, as an infinite attribute of the infinite substance, is eternal and necessary. It is the thought of God by God. Minds, created minds as we commonly call them, and ideas are modes of substance under the aspect of thought, just as bodies are modes of substance under the aspect of extension. The order and connection of ideas is already determined by the order and connection of extension modes. Idum est auto, ideerum et auto rerum. To every thought mode corresponds an extension mode, and this parallelism, being universal, implies that everything thinks. Indeed, Spinoza openly teaches that animals, plants, and even inanimate objects think. For the essence of a thing is the self-maintaining impulse, and an impulse is a tendency, conatus, and tendency implies thought. Plant thought, however, and animal thought. Spinoza confesses to be thought of a very rudimentary kind. The human mind is, like every other mind, a mode of the divine substance. But what kind of mode? It is defined in the first place as the idea of the body. We commonly say that man is composed of body and soul. In reality, man is substance, determined to that particular mode of extension, which we call body, and to that particular mode of thought, which is the idea of body, and which we call soul. Body and soul are, therefore, one and the same thing, conceived under the aspects of extension and of thought, respectively. It will be observed, however, that although Spinoza reduces the soul to an idea, he is far from maintaining, with a phenomenal list, that the soul has no substantial reality, for he maintains that the soul is a mode of the great reality, which is the one substance. It will be observed also, that since the soul is the idea of the body, or in other words the consciousness of the organic states of the body, the conclusion that we must be aware of everything which takes place in the body, and that consequently every man must be an adept in physiology, appears at first sight inevitable. Spinoza, wishing toward against the reductio ad absurdum of his definition, teaches that the human mind does not involve an adequate knowledge of the parts of the body, and that the ideas of the affections of the body, insofar as they are related only to the human mind, are not clear and distinct, but confused. The human mind is defined, in the second place, as the idea of an idea, idae, idae, or idae, mentis. In other words, mind, after having been defined as consciousness, is now defined as self-consciousness. The second definition is supplementary of the first, and, like the first, defines mind with a distinct reference to body. For when we say that mind is the idea of an idea, we mean the idea of the idea of the body. Self-consciousness is consciousness of self, as revealed by bodily states, or the reflex consciousness of our perceptions of those states. Having defined mind, we next turn to the study of knowledge, which is the characteristic attitude of the mind towards things. In the first exercise of the mind, our knowledge is inadequate, fragmentary, and confused. The reason of this imperfection is the fact that at first our point of view is purely individual. The point of view of one who, being himself part of the world of reality, apprehends merely those portions of reality with which he comes in contact. The inadequacy of this kind of knowledge is increased by the tendency of the mind to form fictitious universals, such as being, man, etc., which are not a sign of the mind's strength, but rather of its weakness. That is to say, of its inability to keep impressions, apart from each other, when they reach a certain limit in number and complexity. From this imperfect and inadequate knowledge, man must pass to perfect and adequate knowledge by abandoning the individual and partial point of view, and by rising above himself and finite conditions. For perfect and adequate knowledge is untroubled by finite conditions, and by the peculiarities of individual temperament, in this development, from inadequate to adequate knowledge, Spinoza distinguishes two stages. A. Reason, Ratio, is the knowledge of the laws or principles which are common to all bodies, and which determine not their accidental but their essential relations. This kind of knowledge is acquired not immediately but by deduction. Arguing from effect to cause, we arrive at a knowledge of the permanent and essential properties of things, and of their unultrable laws and natures, a knowledge which is superior to the imperfect, individualistic knowledge, inasmuch as the latter reveals to us merely the illusory surface qualities of things. Studied from the point of view of reason, things assume a certain permanency, and consequently rational knowledge may be said to be a knowledge of things, subquadrame, specie, iternitatis. Rational knowledge is, however, necessarily incomplete. It enables us to arrive at generic and specific concepts, partial unifications, but it cannot lift us up to that point where knowledge is completely unified and all things are viewed, subspecie, iternitatis. This point we reach by means of B. Intuitive knowledge, schientia, intuitiva. In this stage of development, the mind, being farthest removed from the individual point of view, no longer proceeds inferentially from one part of reality to another, but taking a comprehensive intuitive view of all reality, apprehends all things in the light of the first principle, substance, and looking at all things, subspecie, iternitatis, sees all in God and God in all. From this point of view, space, time, difference are seen to disappear and to be swallowed up in the immensity of God. He who has reached this point evolves all his ideas from that which represents the origin and source of all nature, so that that idea appears to be the source of all others. He has arrived at the culminating point in the development of human knowledge. We may remark in this theory of development of knowledge, one, that whereas Descartes was content with making clearness and distinctness of perception the criterion of truth, Spinoza requires that, in addition to clearness and distinctness, our knowledge possesses also adequacy or comprehensiveness. Two, that Spinoza maintains the power of the human mind to comprehend infinite substance, that is, to know God adequately. Three, that error exists only where knowledge is confused and inadequate, that consequently the mind never errs if it views things subspecie, iternitatis, and that since it is the will which determines whether a man shall or shall not attain intuitive knowledge, will and not interact is the source of error. Four, that the three stages of development of knowledge may be described as sense knowledge, scientific knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. We must, however, always remember that Spinoza sets the practical above the theoretical, and that he considers the third to be the most perfect kind of knowledge, not because it implies greater speculative insight into the nature of things, but because it sets the soul at rest, and, like the ecstatic knowledge of which the mystics speak, enables us to despise the unrest and worry caused by the untoward events of life. This consideration brings us to the study of the ethical problems on which all Spinoza's philosophy converges, the moral nature of man. We have seen that the essence of finite things is the canatus existendae, the self-maintaining impulse. In man, this self-realising impulse accompanies each of the three stages of knowledge, assuming in each a different complexion. In the plane of confused knowledge it manifests itself as emotions, in the higher plane of rational knowledge it manifests itself as will, and in the highest plane, namely, that of intuitive knowledge, it manifests itself as the intellectual love of God, in which consists the blessed life of immortality. A. Let us consider the mind in the state of confused knowledge. Its being is thought. It is a diminished God, a God repressed as it were, by the modes which limit its thought on every side. Like every other finite being, it strives not only to maintain itself, but also to extend its being by breaking through the modes which hem it in. But, unlike other finite beings, the mind is conscious of this effort. It is conscious also of the modes which affect it through the body, and it knows whether such modes diminish or increase its power of thought. This consciousness is emotion. In the third definition of the third part of the ethical, emotion is defined. And in the eleventh proposition of the same part, Spinoza proves that whatever increases or diminishes the body's power of action, increases or diminishes the mind's power of thought. Emotion, then, is the obscure and inadequate consciousness of a transition from a less to a greater, or from a greater to a less, power of body or mind. The fundamental emotion is desire, cupiditas, which is perhaps more properly described as the mental prerequisite of all emotional activity. For it is the self-maintaining impulse itself. When a mode of the body, such as the sight of a flower, increases the mind's activity, there results the emotion of pleasure or joy. When, on the contrary, a mode of the body, such as the hearing of unwelcome news, diminishes the mind's activity, there results the emotion of sadness. Love is the idea of an external thing, which is the cause of joy, and hatred is the idea of an external thing, which is the cause of sadness. Hope is the fluttering in Constan's joy, and fear, the intermittent sadness, arising from the idea of an event, which is of doubtful occurrence. When the element of doubt is removed, hope becomes security, and fear passes into despair. The emotional state called Gaudium is joy arising from the remembrance of a certain event as past, while its opposite, regret. Conscientii mossus is sadness arising from the remembrance of a certain event which has occurred. Both these states imply previous doubt as to whether the event to which they refer did or did not occur. The emotions are associated by contiguity, resemblance and causation. This portion of Spinoza's ethical is replete with instances of acute psychological analysis. The greatest defect in his treatment of the emotions is the exclusion of all intellectual emotions, such as zeal, love of God, love of justice, love of country, etc. The emotional life of man belongs, according to Spinoza, to the condition of bondage. As long as we continue to look on the modes of the finite world as they affect us through the modes of our own bodies, so long are we merely part of nature and subject to nature's inevitable laws. We may imagine that we are free because we have no clear knowledge of the antecedents of the modes which affect us, but in reality every indistinct consciousness is itself physically determined, and we are no more free to act than the straw which floats down the river is free to turn and float against the current. In this condition of bondage man's moral life has not properly begun at all, for in this condition there is no right or wrong but only pleasure or pain. Man's moral life begins in the stage of rational knowledge in which the emotions give place to will, be. In the second stage of knowledge we possess adequate instead of inadequate ideas. Taking a broader view and contemplating the vast order of the universe and its eternal laws, we see that the objects of our love and aversion are really parts of the complex totality ruled by the inexorable laws of nature and the vehemence of our passions appears to us as it really is, no more reasonable than the child's anger at the stone which has hurt it. Reason can no more be moved by pleasure or pain, by love or hatred of any finite cause of our emotions than it can love or hate a triangle because the latter possesses three angles which are equal to two right angles. Thus the mind, when it has arrived at the plane of rational knowledge, having lifted itself above the cloud land of emotional life, having risen above the storm of passion, is no longer buffeted by every wind of feeling or constrained by pleasure and pain. In a word it passes from the state of bondage to the state of freedom. There is a rational element in every passion and when having acquired an adequate idea of the passion we recognize that rational element, blind impulse, gives way to deliberate pursuit or avoidance. Remark that in the stage of rational knowledge this rational element is not yet located in God but merely in the common properties of things or in universal law. The perfection of freedom and the final location of all the objects of will in God himself is attained by means of intuitive knowledge. It is somewhat surprising to find that Spinoza describes the moral emancipation of man as a process of intellectual development without distinct reference to will which is a proper subject of moral excellence. The explanation is to be found in the fact that Spinoza identifies will with intellect. Will and understanding he says are one and the same. Intelligence contains in itself that free voluntary activity which we are accustomed to regard as the exclusive function of will. For good or evil means whatever helps or hinders our power of thought. It is of great importance to note that freedom as understood by Spinoza is even in the sense of free understanding rather than a free will incompatible with his general concept of the universe and is maintained only at the expense of logical consistency. If man in the state of confused knowledge is a slave to passion because he is part of nature and is therefore subject to the iron rule of necessity which governs all things from substance down to the least of the modes of substance. It follows that man cannot become free except by ceasing to be part of nature and this he can never do. If in the state of bondage there is no germ of freedom, freedom cannot be developed by any development of knowledge. Spinoza cannot consistently avoid determinism. He should never have tried to emancipate man just as he should never have attempted to derive the manifold from the one. See we come now to the third stage in the moral emancipation of the human mind namely to that in which man attains to the intellectual love of God and the blessed immortality. In the fifth part of the ethical Spinoza teaches that the mind arriving at the culminating stage of intellectual development, schientia intuitiva wherein it sees all things in God can bring it about that all bodily affections and images of things are referred to the idea of God. When this state is reached all passion ceases and emotion and volition are absorbed in the knowledge and love of God. Amor intellectualis day. This intellectual love of God is the highest kind of virtue and it not only makes man free but also confers immortality for this love has no relation to the body or to bodily states and consequently it cannot be in any way affected by the destruction of the body. But here it naturally occurs to us to ask what has become of the principle that to every mode of thought there corresponds a mode of extension. When the body perishes what extension mode corresponds to the eternal thought which is bliss and immortality. Spinoza answers that while the mode of extension which is the human body conditioned by time and space perishes there remains the essence of the body which is conceived under a form of eternity. At the same time the sensitive and imaginative part of the soul perishes with the actual body so that the ultimate conclusion is that both body and soul are partly mortal and partly immortal. We must not overlook the fact that in his ethical Spinoza speaks of the eternity rather than of the immortality of the soul and by eternity he does not primarily mean an ending duration but a kind of rational necessity by which a thing forms once for all an integral part of the universe although of course what is necessarily a part of the universe cannot cease to exist. Moreover this eternity or deathlessness is a condition into which the soul enters in this life. The immortality which is sanctioned by Spinoza's principles is not a quantitative but a qualitative endowment not existence for indefinite time but the quality of being above all time. Spinoza does not conceive immortality as originally and equally inherent in all men he conceives it as something to be acquired by each man for himself and is capable of being acquired in different degrees. Finally we may ask whether the immortality of which Spinoza speaks is immortality at all is there in this concept of immortality a survival of the individual on the one hand Spinoza teaches that imagination and memory perish with the actual body and with these faculties perish all the recollections associations educated nerve processes and everything else which serves to perpetuate personal traits and characteristics. On the other hand Spinoza is careful to guard against the doctrine of absorption of the individual in God for he teaches that final happiness is a state in which man in attaining the highest unity with God attains at the same time the highest consciousness of self so that in this union the distinction between God and creature is not obliterated but rather accentuated. The conclusion seems to be that the blessed life is a state in which we shall retain our individuality but shall have apparently no means of recognizing ourselves as the same individuals historical position what first arrests our attention in the study of Spinoza's philosophy is the strict geometrical method which he adopted starting with the definition of substance he proceeds to deduce from a single truth a whole system of philosophy from this definition we follow him to the point where he first attempts to account for the diversity of things and there his first lapse into inconsistency occurs in order to account for the diversity of things he is forced to assume something besides the one inert substance and over and over again he surreptitiously introduces a principle which the logic of his premises can never justify the truth is that as has already been said if Spinoza had been perfectly consistent he should never have attempted to go beyond the definition of substance which is his starting point and should also have been the final goal of his system in attempting to explain away the inconsistencies of Spinoza's thought some have overlooked the individualistic elements in his system and represented him merely as a pantheist while others looking upon the pantheistic elements as mere formulas represent him as an empiricist to one he is a god intoxicated man to another he is a sordid and filthy atheist sordidus et nutulentus atheus both these views are in a certain sense correct and yet both are wrong for if we consider merely the speculative elements in Spinoza's philosophy we must pronounce him to be at once a pantheist and an empiricist an anomalous being reminding us of the winged bull of Assyrian art a creature of air and a creature of earth but as has been pointed out above Spinoza's aim was practical rather than theoretical we must not picture him as concerned merely with the speculative aspect of the problems of philosophy we must rather picture him as he represents himself and as we know him from the events of his life a poor persecuted Jew rejected by his co-religionists and despised by his Christian neighbors bearing impatience the sufferings which were his lot in life for him metaphysics was what it never had been even for Plato a religion and a refuge in it he hoped to find that view of the universe which would reconcile him to his own hard fate and enable him to rise to a plane where his enemies could not reach him we should bear these facts in mind when we criticize Spinoza and though they should not render us blind to his errors which are many and serious they should enable us to understand his thought which is often sublime and is always deserving of sympathetic attention end of chapter 56