Ideas and volitions as they are known by experience are held to be at bottom
activities
of the body also, and
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology.
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
405
deduction. Descartes discovered that all that can be experienced is a species either of spatial or of conscious Being or existence. Spa- tiality, or the quality of filling space, and consciousness (" extension " and "thought" according to the usual translation of extensio and cogi- tatio) are the ultimate, simple, original attributes of reality. All that is is either spatial or conscious. For these two prime predi cates are related disjunctively. What is spatial is not conscious ; what is conscious is not spatial. The self-certainty of mind is only that of the personality as a conscious being. Bodies are real in so far as they have in themselves the quantitative determinations of spatial existence and change, of extension and motion, All things are either bodies or minds ; substances are either spatial or con scious : res extensat and res cogitantes.
The world falls thus into two completely different and completely separated realms : that of bodies and that of minds. But in the background of this dualism there stands in the thought of Descartes the conception of the deity as the ens perfectissimum or perfect sub stance. Bodies and minds are finite things; God is infinite Being. 1 The Meditations leave no doubt as to the fact that Descartes ac cepted the conception of God quite in accordance with the inter
pretation of scholastic Realism. The mind in its own Being, which it recognises as a limited and imperfect one, apprehends with the same intuitive certainty the Reality of the perfect, infinite Being also (cf. above, $ 30, 5). To the ontological argument is added the relation of God and the world in the form brought forward by Nicolaus Cusanus, namely, that of the antithesis of the infinite and the finite. But the above-mentioned relationship with the Realism of the Middle Ages appears most distinctly in the development of metaphysics that succeeded Descartes : for the pantheistic conse quences of this presupposition, which had been carefully held back in the scholastic period, were now spoken out with complete clear ness and sureness. And if we find in the doctrines of Descartes' successors a strong similarity with those which in the Middle Ages could lead but a more or less repressed existence, this is intelligible »-ven without the assumption of a direct historical dependence, merely by the pragmatic connection and the logical necessity of the conclusions.
4- The common metaphysical name of "substance," applied to God in the infinite sense, and to minds and bodies in a finite sense, could not permanently cover the problems which were hidden be-
• So likewise Malebrancbe said (Rrrh. III. 2. 0 a. K. ) that Ood could properly ba called only Celui qui est, be is ritre sans restriction, tout ttre injlni tit vairertei.
406 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
neath it. The conception of substance had come into a state of flux, and needed " further re-shaping. It had almost lost touch with the idea of thing," the category of inherence ; for just the combi nation of a multiplicity of determinations into the idea of a unitary concrete entity, which is essential to this category, was completely lacking in Descartes' conception of finite substances, since these were held to be characterised by one fundamental quality, spatiality or consciousness. All else that was found in substances must there fore be regarded as a modification of its fundamental quality, of its attribute. All qualities and states of bodies are modes of their spa tiality or extension: all qualities and states of mind are modes of consciousness (modi cogitandi).
It is involved in this that all particular substances belonging to either class, all bodies on the one hand and all minds on the other, are alike in their essence, their constitutive attribute. But from this it is only a step farther to the idea in which this likeness is thought as metaphysical identity. All bodies are spatial, all minds are conscious ; individual bodies are distinguished from one another only by different modes of spatiality (form, size, situation, motion) ; individual minds are distinguished from one another only by differ ent modes of consciousness (ideas, judgments, activities of will). Individual bodies are modes of spatiality, individual minds are modes of consciousness. In this way the attribute obtains meta physical preponderance over individual substances, which now appear as its modifications ; the res extensas become modi extension's; the res cogitantes, modi cogitationis.
Descartes himself drew this conclusion only in the domain of natr ural philosophy, to which in general he restricted the carrying out of his metaphysical doctrine in its principles. Here, however, the general conception of modification took on, of itself, a definite sig nificance, and one capable of apprehension by perception or imagina tion, viz. that of limitation (determinatio) . Bodies are parts of space, limitations of the universal space-filling quality or extension. 1 Hence for Descartes the conception of body coincides with that of a limited spatial magnitude. A body as regards its true essence, a portion of space. The elements of the corporeal world are the " corpuscles,"
Cf. Print. Phil. II. f. , where, at the same time, appears quite clearly that this relation of the individual body to universal space made equivalent to that of individual and species.
For the corpuscular theory, Descartes found many suggestions in Bacon, Hobbes, Basso, Sennert, and others. The variety in the development of this theory, which rests upon the dialectic between the mathematical and the physi cal momenta, has more interest for natural science than for philosophy. An excellent exposition found in Lasswitz, GescMchte der Atomistik.
is
21
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9
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Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Malebrancfie. 407
i. e. the firm spatial particles which realiter are no longer divisible : as mathematical structures, however, they are infinitely divisible; that is, there are no atoms. From these presuppositions follow, likewise, for Descartes, the impossibility of empty space, and the infinitude of the corporeal world.
For the mental world the analogous claim was pronounced by Malebranche. In connection with the epistemological motives (cf. below, No. 8) which made it seem to him that no knowledge of things is possible except in God, he came ' to the conception of the raisou universelle, which, as being alike in all individual minds, can not belong to the modes of the finite mind, but is rather that of which finite minds are themselves modifications, and can, just on this account, be none other than an attribute of God. God is in so far the " place of minds " or spirits, just as space is the place of bodies. Here, also, as the expression proves, the relation which obtains in conceptions between the universal and the particular underlies the thought, and following the analogy of the Cartesian conception of space and body this relation is thought in percep tional or picturate terms as participation. * All human insight is a participation in the infinite Reason, all ideas of finite things are but determinations of the idea of God, all desires directed toward the particular object are but participations in that love toward God as the ground of its essence and life, which necessarily dwells in the finite mind. To be sure, Malebranche came into a very critical situation by thus making the finite mind disappear completely in the universal divine mind, as its modification. For how, in accord ance with this, should he explain the self-subsistence and self- activity which it seemed were quite notoriously present in those inclinations and volitions of man which opposed God ? In this difficulty nothing availed but the word " freedom," in using which Malebranche was indeed obliged to confess that freedom was an impenetrable mystery. 3
5. In this course of thought pursued by Malebranche appears clearly the inevitable logical consistency with which the attributes, which were regarded by Descartes as the common essence belonging to either of the two classes of finite substances, could ultimately be thought only as the attributes of the infinite substance or deity. Hut precisely in this point consists the fundamental motive of Spi- nozism, which developed along this line out of Cartesianism directly
and at the outset, and at the same time developed to the farthest
1 Rtck. de la Vtr. III. 2, 8 ; Sntret. I. 10.
> Recall tin- Platonic Wfefts I > Cf. above, p. 394, note 3.
408 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
consequence. Spinozism likewise holds as firmly to the qualitative as to the causal dualism of spatiality and consciousness. The spa tial and the spiritual worlds are entirely heterogeneous and abso lutely independent of each other. But the whole endless series of bodies, with their divisions, forms, and motions, are only the modes of extension, just as the endless series of minds with their ideas and volitions are only the modes of consciousness. Hence these finite " things " are no longer entitled to the name of " substance. " That only can be called substance, whose attributes are extension and consciousness themselves, viz. the infinite existence or Being, the deity. But its essence, in turn, cannot be exhausted in these two attributes which are accessible to human experience ; the ens realissimum involves within itself the actuality of the infinite num ber of all possible attributes.
The ultimate ground of this position also lies in the scholastic- realistic conception of the most real being. Spinoza's definition of substance or the deity, as the essence {essentia) which involves its own existence, is only the condensed expression of the ontological proof for the existence of God : the " asettas " is preserved in the term " causa sui " ; substance as that " quod in se est et per se con- cipitur" is again but another transcription of the same thought. Proceeding from these definitions, the proof for the oneness and infinitude of substance x followed as a matter of course.
That, however, we have here to do with an entirely realistic course of thought becomes clearly manifest from Spinoza's doctrine of the nature of substance itself and of its relation to the attributes. For the Spinozistic system says absolutely nothing of substance or of the deity farther than the formal determinations contained in the conception of the ens realissimum, of absolute Being. Every predi cate expressing any content on the contrary, expressly denied and in particular Spinoza especially careful to refuse to the divine essence the modifications of consciousness, such as intellectual cog nition [intellectus, Erkenntniss~\ and will. Just as little of course does he recognise the modifications of extension as being predicates of the divine essence, though he had no polemical inducement to express this especially. God himself therefore neither mind nor body of him can only be said, that he is. It evident that the old principle of negative theology here present with a changed form of expression. Knowledge of all finite things and states leads to two highest universal conceptions space-filling quality or exten sion, and consciousness. To both of these
higher metaphysical Eth. Props. 1-14. lb. 31.
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Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Spinoza. 409
dignity is ascribed than to finite things ; they are the attributes, and the things are their modes. But if the process of abstraction now rises from these two determinations, the last which contain any content, to the most general, to the ens generalissimum, then all definite content falls away from the conception of this being, and only the empty Form of substance is left. For Spinoza, also, the deity is all and thus — nothing. His doctrine of God lies quite along the path of Mysticism. 1
But if God is thus the general essence of finite things, he does not exist otherwise than in them and with them. This applies first of all to the attributes. God is not distinct from them, and they are not distinct from him, just as the dimensions of space are not dis tinct from space itself. Hence Spinoza can say also that God con sists of countless attributes, or Deus si ve omnia ejus attributa* And the same relation is afterwards repeated between the attributes and the modes. Every attribute, because it expresses the infinite essence of God in a definite manner, is again infinite in its own way ; but it does not exist otherwise than with and in its countless modifica tions. God then exists only in things as their universal essence, and they only in him as the modes of his reality. In this sense Spinoza adopts from Nicolaus Cusanus and Giordano Bruno the expressions natura naturans and natura naturata. God is Nature : as the universal world-essence, he is the natura naturans; as sum- total of the individual things in which this essence exists modified, he is the natura naturata. If in this connection the natura naturans is called occasionally also the efficient cause of things, this creative force must not be thought as something distinct from its workings ; this cause exists nowhere but in its workings. This is Spinoza's complete and unreserved pantheism.
Finally this relation is repeated yet again in the distinction which Spinoza establishes between the infinite and the finite modes. ' If each of the countless finite things is a mode of God, the infinite connection or coherence which exists between them must also be regarded as a mode, and, indeed, as an infinite mode. Spinoza affirms three of these. 4 The deity as the universal world-thing appears in individual things, which are finite modes ; to them corresponds as
1 To this"corresponds also hla theory of cognition with its three stages, which sets intuition," u the immediate apprehension of the eternal logical remitting of all thing* from God, an knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, above perception and the activity of the intellect.
* which, however, is in nowise to be interpreted aa if the attributes were •df-aabflistent prime realities and "God" only the collective name for them (a* K. Thomas supposed, Sp- ats itetaphy Biker, Konigxberg, 1840). Such a rraaaly nominalistic cap-stone would press the whole system out of joint.
» Ktk. I. 23 and 30 ff. « Sp. 64 (Op. II. HV).
410 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
infinite mode the universe. In the attribute of extension the finite modes are the particular space-forms ; the infinite mode is infinite space, or matter ' itself in its motion and rest. For the attribute of consciousness, the intellectus infinitus1 stands beside the particular functions of ideation and will. Here Spinoza reminds us imme diately of the realistic pantheism of David of Din ant (cf. § 27, 1). His metaphysics is the last word of mediaeval Realism. '
6. With these motives relating to the problem of the qualitative difference of substances modern philosophy struggled out of its dualistic presuppositions to a monistic adjustment ; but at the same time, still more powerful motives became mingled in the process, — motives which grew out of the real and causal separation of the spatial and the conscious worlds. At first, indeed, it was the principles of mechanics themselves which demanded the attempt to isolate completely the course of events in each of the two spheres of finite substances.
This succeeded in the corporeal world in a relatively simple manner. In this domain, the idea of cause had acquired a completely neiv significance through Galileo. According to the scholastic con ception (which even in Descartes' Meditations, in a decisive passage, was still presented with axiomatic validity) causes were substance* or things, while effects, on the other hand, were either their activities or were other substances and things which were held to come about only by such activities : this was the Platonic-Aristotelian concep tion of the oitux. Galileo, on the contrary, went back to the idea of the older Greek thinkers (cf. § 5), who applied the causal relation only to the states — that meant now to the motions of substances — not to the Being of the substances themselves. Causes are motions, and effects are motions. The relation of impact and counter-impact, of the passing over of motion from one corpuscle to another,* is the original fundamental form of the causal relation, the form which is clear to perception or imagination (anschaulich), is intelligible in
1 Tins equivalence holds good with Spinoza as well as with Descartes.
2 This intellectus infinitus appears again in the ethical part of the Spinozistic system as amor intellectuals quo deus se. ipsum amat. In both cases Male- branche's " raison universelle " amounts to the same thing.
8 Geulincx also, in a mauner similar to that of Spinoza and Malebranche, regards finite bodies and minds as only "limitations," " prcecisiones " of the universal infinite body and the divine mind. Cf. Met. p. 56. If we think away limitation from ourselves, he says, ib. 237 ff. , there is left — God.
4 Hence for Descartes the mechanical principle excluded possibility of action at a distance, just as it excluded empty space. This forced him to the artificial hypotheses of the vortex theory, by which he aimed to give a physical ground for the Copernican view of the world (popular exposition by Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondesi 1686). The grounds on which this doctrine was displaced by the Newtonian theory of gravitation are no longer philosophical, but purely physical in their nature.
Chap. 2, $ 31. ] Substance and Causality : Galileo, Descartes. 411
itself, and explains all others. And the question as to the nature of this fundamental relation was answered by the principle of math ematical equality, which, in turn, passed over into that of metaphysi cal identity. So much motion in the cause, so much in the effect also. Descartes formulated this as the law of the conservation of motion in Nature. The sum of motion in Nature remains always the same : what a body loses in motion it gives to another. As regards the amount of motion, there is in Nature nothing new, especially no impulse from the spiritual world. ' Even for the king dom of organisms this principle was carried through, at least as a postulate, though as yet with very weak grounds. Animals, also, are machines whose motions are evoked and determined by the mechanism of the nervous system. Descartes thought of this mechanism more precisely (and with him Hobbes and Spinoza) as a motion of finest (gaseous) substances, the so-called spirit us ani- males,* and sought the point of transition from the sensory to the motor nervous system in man, in a part of the brain which has no correlative, i. e. is a single and not a j>aired organ, the pineal gland or eonarium.
The other part of the task proved much more difficult : namely, that of understanding the mental life without any relation to the corporeal world. Easy and clear to perception as was the action of one body upon another, it did not yield a mode of representing an incorporeal connection between different minds, that could be used scientifically. Spinoza, for example, expressed the general meta physical postulate very energetically, when he promised in entering upon the third book of the Ethics, that he would treat the actions and desires of man as if lines, surfaces, and bodies were the subject of discussion ; for the important thing is neither to asperse them nor to deride them, but to understand them. But the solution of this problem was limited in advance to investigating the causal connec tion between the activities of consciousness in the individual mind : dualism demanded a psychology free from all physiological constitu ents. It is all the more characteristic of the predominance of the spirit of natural science in the seventeenth century, that it attained this psychology demanded by the theory, only in the most limited degree. And even the beginnings toward this are ruled by the endeavour to apply the methodical principle of mechanics, which
1 Henoe Hobbes excluded from physics the Aristotelian and ThomUtic concep tion of the unmoved mover, while Descartes, who in this point also proceeded mure metaphysically, made motion to have been communicated to matter at the beginning by God.
* An inheritance from the physiological psychology of the (ireeks, in particu lar from that of the l'eripatetics.
412 Tlie Renaissance: Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
was celebrating its triumphs in the theory of outer experience, to the comprehension of the inner world also.
For just as the investigation of Nature from Galileo to Newton directed its energies toward finding out the simple fundamental form of corporeal motion, to which all complex structures of outer experience could be reduced, so Descartes desired to establish the fundamental forms of psychical motion, out of which the multiplic ity of inner experiences would become explicable. In the theoreti cal domain this seemed attained by establishing the immediately evident truths (the innate ideas) ; in the practical field there grew out of this demand the new problem of a statics and a mechanics of the movements of feeling (Gemuthsbewegungen) . In this spirit Des cartes and Spinoza produced their natural history of the emotions (Affecte) and passions,1 the latter author by combining the thoughts of the former with those of Hobbes. Thus Descartes derives the whole host of particular passions, as species and sub-species, from the six fundamental forms of wonder (admiratio), love, and hate, desire {disir), pleasure and pain [or joy and sadness, Lust und
Unlust~\ (lostitia — tristitia) ; thus Spinoza develops his system of the emotions out of desire, pleasure, and pain (appetitus, Icetitia,
by pointing out the ideational processes in connection with which these emotions have become transferred from their original object, the self-preservation of the individual, to other " ideas. "
A peculiar side-attitude is taken in this regard by the two English thinkers. For Bacon and Hobbes, a mechanical conception of the mental is the more natural in proportion as they endeavour to draw the mental more closely into the circle of the physical. Both, that regard the empirical psychical life, and therefore, also, the sphere of consciousness which in Descartes' system was to have nothing to do with the corporeal world, as something which essen tially belongs thereto on the other hand, there set over against the whole world of perception rather something spiritual [spirit ual in the religious sense, Geistliches'] than something mental or intellectual [Geistiges].
Ideas and volitions as they are known by experience are held to be at bottom activities of the body also, and
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology. But according to this view the natural science theory cannot be characterised much otherwise than as an
Descartes, Lts Passions de VAme Spinoza, Eth. III. , and Tract. Brev. II. fl. Cl. below, No.
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Chat. 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Descartes, Hobbet. 413
anthropological materialism; for it aims to understand the entire series of empirical psychical activities as a mechanical process con nected with the bodily functions. This problem was propounded by Bacon ; Hobbes attempted to solve and in doing so became the father of the so-called associational psychology. With the same
sensualism as Campanella, of whose deductions his own frequently remind us, — especially with regard to the mechanism of ideas, — he seeks to show that sense-impressions give the only ele ments of consciousness, and that by their combination and trans formation memory and thought also come about. In the practical domain the impulse toward self-preservation and the feelings of pleasure and pain which arise in connection with impressions are then characterised analogously as the elements out of which all other feelings and activities of will arise. Hobbes, too, projected thus "natural history" of the emotions and passions, and this was not without influence upon that of Spinoza, whose theory of the emotions always looking towards the other attribute [i. e.
extension].
From these presuppositions of method the denial of the freedom
of the will in the sense of indeterminism followed with inexorable consistency for Hobbes and for Spinoza. Both attempted — and Spinoza did in the baldest form that can be conceived — to exhibit the strict necessity which prevails even in the course of the process of motivation they are types of determinism. For Spinoza, there for? , there no freedom in the psychological sense. Freedom can mean only, on the one hand, metaphysically, the absolute Being of the deity determined by nothing but itself, and, on the other hand, ethically, the ideal of the overcoming of the passions through reason.
In this became already evident that in the presence of the facts of psychology, that absolute separation between the corporeal and the mental world which metaphysics demanded was not to be maintained. But Descartes himself met quite the same experience. The nature of the mind itself might, indeed, explain the clear and distinct ideas and the forms of the rational will which resulted from these, but could not explain the obscure and confused ideas,
and the emotions and passions connected with them. These present themselves rather as a disturbance of the mind1 (perturbationes animi), and since this perturbation which gives occasion for the
This the interest, not only ethical, but also theoretical, which induced Des cartes to treat atates psychologically so different aa emotions and passions, from the same point of Tiew and in one line. Cf. for the following Pmston$ it Am*, L. and Med*. V. and VI.
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414 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
abuse of freedom (cf. above, § 30, 5) cannot be due to God, its origin must be sought ultimately in an influence exercised by tin body. In the disturbances of the feeling there is, therefore, for Descartes an indubitable fact, which cannot be explained from the fundamental metaphysical principles of his system. Here, there fore, the philosopher sees himself forced to recognise an exceptwmi relation, and he adjusts this for himself in a way that had been foreshadowed by the anthropology of the Victorines (cf. § 24, 2) The nature (natura) of man, he teaches, consists in the inner union of two heterogeneous substances, a mind and a body, and this marvel lous (i. e. metaphysically incomprehensible) union has been *o arranged by God's will that in this single case the conscious and the spatial substances act upon each other. Animals remain, for Descartes, bodies ; their " sensations " are only nervous movements, out of which stimulations of the motor system arise in accordance with the reflex mechanism. In the human body, however, the mental substance is present at the same time, and in consequence of this co-existence the storm of the animal spirits in the pineal gland excites a disturbance in the mental substance also, which manifests itself in the latter as an unclear and indistinct idea, •>. as sense-perception, as emotion, or as passion. 1
With the disciples, the systematic impulse was greater than with the master. They found in this influxus physicus between mind and body the vulnerable point in the Cartesian philosophy, and ex erted themselves to set aside the exception which the philosopher had been obliged to assert in the anthropological facts. This, how ever, did not go on without effecting a new, and in a certain sense regressive, alteration in the conception of causality, in that the metaphysical moment once more gained preponderance over the me chanical. The immanent causal processes of the spatial and of the conscious worlds were regarded as intelligible in themselves ; but the transcendent causal process from one of these worlds into the other formed a problem. No difficulty was found in the idea that one motion transformed itself into another or that one function of
1 On this Descartes then builds his Ethics. In such perturbations the mind occupies a passive attitude, and it is its task to free itself from these in clear and distinct knowledge. Spinoza carried out this intellectualistic morals in an extremely grand and impressive manner (Elk. IV. and V. ). The antithesis of an active and passive attitude of the finite mind is indeed gained from the stand point of his metaphysics only artificially (Sth. III. , Def. 2) : but he carried through with compelling consistency the thought, that the overcoming of Um passions follows from a knowledge of them, from the insight into the necessary divine system of all things ; he taught that human nature must perfect itself in the blessedness of the active emotions which consist only in the activity of the pure impulse toward knowledge ( Kth. V. 15 ff. ), and thus set up an ideal of life which reaches the height of the Greek ttupl*.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Geulincx. 415
consciousness — for example, a thought — should pass over into an other: but it seemed impossible to understand how sensation should come out of motion, or motion out of will. Physical and logical caus ality seemed to offer no difficulty ; so much the greater was that presented by psycho-physical causality. In the case of the latter the consciousness dawned that the relation of equality or identity between cause and effect, by means of which mechanical and logi cal dependence seemed intelligible, does not exist. Hence an inquiry must here be made for the principle by which the two ele ments of the causal relation, cause and effect, which do not in them selves belong together, are connected with each other. 1 Where this principle was to be sought could not be a matter of doubt for the disciples of Descartes : God, who produced the union of the two substances in man's nature, has also so arranged them that the functions of the one substance are followed by the corresponding functions of the other. But on this account these functions in their causal relation to one another are not properly, and in their own nature, efficient causes, but only occasions in connection with which the consequences determined by divine contrivance appear in the other substance, — not causae efflcientes, but causa: occasionales. The true "cause" for the causal connection between stimuli and sensations, and between purposes and bodily movements, is God.
Such considerations are multiplied in the whole development of the Cartesian school. Clauberg brings them into use for the theory of perceptions, Cordemoy for that of purposive motion ; their full development is attained in the " Ethics " of Geulincx. Yet in the latter author doubt is not entirely excluded as to whether God's causality in this connection is regarded as a special intervention in each individual case, or as a general and permanent arrangement. In some passages, indeed, the former is the case,1 but the spirit of the doctrine, taken as a whole, doubtless involves the latter. Geu lincx expresses himself most clearly in the illustration of the clocks:' as two clocks which have been made alike by the same artificer continue to move in perfect harmony, " absque ulla causalitate qua alterum hoc in altero causat, sed propter meram dependentiam, qua utrumque ab eadem arte et simili industria constitutum est," so the
> That the fundamental difficulty in all causal relations was in this actually •tumbled upon, first became clear at a later time through Hume. Cf. f 34.
' Kor example, in the analogy of the child in the cradle, Eth. 123. It seems, bnides, that the first edition of the Ethics (16(16), in fact, introduced more the dnu tz maehina, while the annotations added in the second edition (1676) pre sent throughout the profounder view.
• Kth. , p. 134, note 19.
il6 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV
corresponding functions of mind and body follow each other in accordance with the world-order once determined by God. 1
8. This anthropological rationale of Occasionalism fits from the beginning into a more general metaphysical course of thought. The Cartesian system already contained the premises for the inference that in the case of all that takes place in finite substances, the effi cient principle derives, not from these substances themselves, but from the deity. Thinking in minds takes place by means of the inborn ideas which God has given them; to the corporeal world he has communicated a quantum of motion which changes only in its dis tribution among the individual corpuscles, but in the case of the individual body it is, so to speak, only temporarily concealed Minds can create new ideas as little as bodies can create new mo tion ; the sole cause is God.
The Cartesians had all the more occasion to emphasise the sole causality of God, as their doctrine encountered violent contradiction in the orthodoxy of both Confessions, and became involved in the theological controversies of the time. Friend and foe had quickly recognised the relationship of Cartesianism with the doctrine of Augustine;1 and while on this account the Jansenists and thk
Fathers of the Oratory, who lived in the Augustinian-Scotist atmos phere, were friendly to the new philosophy, the orthodox Peripa tetics, and especially the Jesuits, made war upon it all the more violently. Thus the old opposition between Augustianism and Thorn- ism came out in the controversy over Cartesianism. The conse quence was that the Cartesians brought into the foreground as far as possible those elements in which their doctrine was allied to the Augustinian. * So Louis de la Forge * attempted to prove the com plete identity of Cartesianism with the doctrine of the Church Father, and emphasised especially the fact that according to both thinkers the sole ground of all that takes place in bodies as well as minds is God. Just this was later designated by Malebranche* as the sure mark of a Christian philosophy, while the most dangerous
1 If,"therefore, Leibniz, when he later claimed for his "pre-established har mony (Eclairc. 2 and 3) this same analogy in frequent use at that time, charac terised the Cartesian conception by an immediate dependence of the two clocks upon one another, and the Occasionalistic by a constantly renewed regulation of the clocks on the part of the clock-maker, this was applicable at most to some passages In the first edition of the Ethics of Geulincx.
1 Kinship and opposition apply also to still other points. Descartes and the priests of the Oratory (Gibieuf, Malebranche) are at one against Thomism in the Augustinian and Scotist doctrine of the boundless freedom of the deity ; they maintain again that the good is good because God so willed it, not per u (cf. § 26, 2, 3), etc.
• Trait, de VEtpr. Hum. , Prtf. * Becherche, VI. 2, 3.
Chu\ 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Occasionalism. 417
error of heathen philosophy consists in the assumption of metaphys ical self-subsistence and capacity for spontaneous action on the part of finite things.
With Geulincx, likewise, all finite things are deprived of the causal moment or element of substantiality. In this he proceeds from the principle ' that one can himself do that only of which he knows how it is done. From this it follows in the anthropological field, that the mind cannot be the cause of the bodily movements — no one knows how he sets to work even but to raise his arm ; it follows farther in the cosmological field, that bodies which have no ideas whatever cannot operate at all, and finally, for the theory of knowledge, that the cause of perceptions is to be sought not in the finite mind — for this does not know how it comes to perceive — nor in bodies; therefore it is to be sought only in God. He pro duces in us a world of ideas which in its wealth of qualities is much richer and more beautiful than the actual corporeal world itself. "
The e piste mological motif finds finally with Malebranche * a still more profound apprehension. Cartesian dualism makes a direct
« knowledge of the body by mind absolutely impossible : such a knowl edge is excluded not only because no utfluxus physicus is possible between the two, but also because, in view of the total heterogeneity of the two substances, it is not possible to see how even an idea of the one is thinkable in the other. In this respect, also, mediation is possible only through the deity, and Malebranche takes refuge in the Neo- Platonic world of Ideas in God. Man does not know bodies ; he knows their Ideas in God. This intelligible corporeal world in God is, on the one hand, the archetype of the actual corporeal world cre ated by God, and on the other hand, the archetype of those ideas which God has communicated to us of this actual corporeal world. Our knowledge is like the actual bodies, just as two magnitudes which are equal to a third are equal also to each other. In this sense Malebranche understood that philosophy teaches that we behold ail things in God.
9. Quite different was the solution which Spinoza gave to the Occasional istic problems. The explanation of any mode of the one attribute by a mode of the other was excluded by the conception of
» Bth. . p. 113; Met. , p. 26.
» The remnant of self-activity In finite beings thai remain* in the system of
Grulinex consists in the immanent mental activity of man. I'f. Kth. 121 f. The "sutology," or intpertio mi, Is, therefore, not only the epistemological ■carting-point of the syntern, but also It* ethical conclusion. Man nan nothing to do in the outer world. I'M nihil valet, ibi nihil relis. The highest virtue la a modest contentment, submission to tJod'n will — humility, deiperiw tut.
• Btch. HI. 2.
418 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Pabt IV.
the attribute as he had denned it (see above, No. 5) ; it held of the attribute as of substance,1 in se est et per se concipitur. Accordingly there could be no question of the dependence of the spatial upon consciousness, or vice versa; the appearance of such a dependence which presents itself in the anthropological facts needed, therefore, another explanation, and as a matter of course this was to be sought by the aid of his conception of God. If, however, the doctrine that God is the sole cause of all that takes place is for this reason found also with Spinoza, his agreement with the Occasionalists exists only in the motive and the word, but not in the meaning or spirit of the doctrine. For according to Geulincx and Malebranche, God is the creator ; according to Spinoza, he is the universal essence or nature of things ; according to the former, God creates the world by his will ; according to the latter, the world follows necessarily from the nature of God [or is the necessary consequence of the nature of God]. In spite of the likeness in the word causa, therefore, the causal rela tion is really thought here in a sense entirely different from that which it has there. With Spinoza it means not, " God creates the world," but, " he is the world. "
Spinoza always expresses his conception of real dependence, of causality, by the word " follow " (sequi, consequi) and by the addi tion, " as from the definition of a triangle the equality of the sum of its angles to two right angles follows. " The dependence of the
world upon God therefore, thought as mathematical consequence. 1 This conception of the causal relation has thus completely stripped off the empirical mark of " producing " or " creating " which played so important a part with the Occasionalists, and replaces the percep tional idea of active operation with the logico-mathematical relation of ground and consequent [or reason and consequent Grand und Folge~\. Spinozism a consistent identification of the relation of cause and effect with that of ground and consequent. The causality of the deity therefore, not in time, but eternal, that is, timeless and true knowledge consideration of things sub quadam ceterni- talis specie. This conception of the relation of dependence resulted of itself from the conception of the deity as the universal essence or nature from this nature all its modifications follow timelessly, just as all propositions of geometry follow from the nature of space. The geometrical method knows no other causality than that of the " eternal consequence " for rationalism, only that form of depend ence which peculiar to thought itself, namely, the logical proced-
u Eth. I. , Prop. 10.
Cf. Schopenhauer, Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vorn zureichenden
Qrunde, ch. 6. [Fourfold Soot, etc. , Bohn Lib. ]
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lire of the consequent from its antecedent reason, passes as in itself intelligible, and on this account as the schema also for events or cosmic processes : ' real dependence also should be conceived neither mechanically nor teleologically, but only logico-mathematically.
But now, as in geometry, all follows indeed from the nature of space, and yet each particular relation is fixed by other particular determinations, so, too, in the Spinozistic metaphysics the neces sary procedure of things forth from God consists in the determina tion of every individual finite entity by other finite things. The sum of finite things and the modes of each attribute form a chain of strict determination, a chain without beginning and without end. The necessity of the divine nature rules in all ; but no mode is nearer to the deity, or farther from the deity, than is any other. In this the thought of Nicolaus Cusanus of the incommensurability of the finite with the infinite asserts itself — no series of stages of emana tion leads from God down to the world : everything finite is deter mined again by the finite, but in all God is the sole ground of their essence or nature.
If this is the case, the unity of essence must appear also in the relation of the attributes, however strictly these may be separated qualitatively and causally. It is still the same divine essence which exists here in the form of extension, and there in the form of con sciousness. The two attributes are then necessarily so related to each other that to every mode of the one a definite mode of the other corresponds. This correspondence or parallelism of the attri butes solves the enigma of the connection of the two worlds: ideas are determined only by ideas, and motions only by motions ; but it is the like cosmic content of the divine essence which forms the con nection of the one class, and also that of the other ; the same con tent is in the attribute of consciousness as in the attribute of extension. This relation is presented by Spinoza in accordance with the scholastic conceptions of the esse in intellect u and the esse m re. The same that exists in the attribute of consciousness as object (objective), as the content of our ideas, exists in the attribute of extension as something actual, independent of any idea or mental representation
1 Spinoza's pantheism has therefore the closest resemblance to the scholastic mystical Jtealium of Scotus Erigena (cf. $ 23, 1), only that in the latter'i system it Is still more the case that the logical relation of the general to the particular forms the only schema ; from this resulted, in his case, the emanistic •haracter which is lacking in Spinoza.
1 But neither of these two modes of existence is more original than the other, or forms a prototype for the other : both express equally the nature of God (nprimere). Hence an idealistic interpretation of Spinoza is as incorrwt as a materialistic, although both might he developed out of hi* system.
(formaliter). *
420 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
Spinoza's conception, then, is this : every finite thing as a mode of the divine essence, e. g. man, exists in like measure in both attri butes, as mind and as body: and each of its particular functions belongs also in like measure to both attributes, as idea and as motion. As idea, it is determined by the connection of ideas, as motion by that of motions ; but in both, the content is the same by virtue of the correspondence of the attributes. The human mind it the idea (Idee) of the human body, both as a whole and in detail. 1
10. The conclusion of this movement of thought which had passed through so many divarifications was reached in the meta physical system of Leibniz, —a system which is equalled by none in the entire history of philosophy in all-sidedness of motives and in power of adjustment and combination. It owes this importance not only to the extensive learning and the harmonising mind of its author, but especially to the circumstance that he was at home in the ideas of ancient and mediaeval philosophy with as deep and fine an understanding of their significance as he had for the conceptions formed by the modern study of Nature. * Only the inventor of the differential calculus, who had as much understanding for Plato and Aristotle as for Descartes and Spinoza, who knew and appreciated Thomas and Duns Scotus as well as Bacon and Hobbes, —only he could become the creator of the " pre-established harmony. "
The reconciliation of the mechanical and the teleological views of the world, and with this the uniting of the scientific and the religious interests of his time, was the leading motive in the thought of Leib niz. He wished to see the mechanical explanation of Nature, the formulation of which in its scientific conceptions he himself essen tially furthered, carried through to its full extent, and at the same time he cast about for thoughts by the aid of which the purposeful living character of the universe might nevertheless remain compre hensible. The attempt must therefore be made — an attempt for which there were already intimations in the doctrine of Descartes — to see whether the whole mechanical course of events could not be ultimately traced back to efficient causes, whose purposeful nature should afford an import and meaning to their working taken as a whole. The whole philosophical development of Leibniz has the aim to substitute for the corpuscles, " entelechies," and to win back for the indifferent God of the geometrical method the rights of the Platonic curia. The ultimate goal of his philosophy is to under-
1 The difficulties which arose in this connection from self-consciousness, and thoBe also from the postulate of the countless attributes, Spinoza did not solve : cf. the correspondence with Tschirnhausen, Op. II.
deduction. Descartes discovered that all that can be experienced is a species either of spatial or of conscious Being or existence. Spa- tiality, or the quality of filling space, and consciousness (" extension " and "thought" according to the usual translation of extensio and cogi- tatio) are the ultimate, simple, original attributes of reality. All that is is either spatial or conscious. For these two prime predi cates are related disjunctively. What is spatial is not conscious ; what is conscious is not spatial. The self-certainty of mind is only that of the personality as a conscious being. Bodies are real in so far as they have in themselves the quantitative determinations of spatial existence and change, of extension and motion, All things are either bodies or minds ; substances are either spatial or con scious : res extensat and res cogitantes.
The world falls thus into two completely different and completely separated realms : that of bodies and that of minds. But in the background of this dualism there stands in the thought of Descartes the conception of the deity as the ens perfectissimum or perfect sub stance. Bodies and minds are finite things; God is infinite Being. 1 The Meditations leave no doubt as to the fact that Descartes ac cepted the conception of God quite in accordance with the inter
pretation of scholastic Realism. The mind in its own Being, which it recognises as a limited and imperfect one, apprehends with the same intuitive certainty the Reality of the perfect, infinite Being also (cf. above, $ 30, 5). To the ontological argument is added the relation of God and the world in the form brought forward by Nicolaus Cusanus, namely, that of the antithesis of the infinite and the finite. But the above-mentioned relationship with the Realism of the Middle Ages appears most distinctly in the development of metaphysics that succeeded Descartes : for the pantheistic conse quences of this presupposition, which had been carefully held back in the scholastic period, were now spoken out with complete clear ness and sureness. And if we find in the doctrines of Descartes' successors a strong similarity with those which in the Middle Ages could lead but a more or less repressed existence, this is intelligible »-ven without the assumption of a direct historical dependence, merely by the pragmatic connection and the logical necessity of the conclusions.
4- The common metaphysical name of "substance," applied to God in the infinite sense, and to minds and bodies in a finite sense, could not permanently cover the problems which were hidden be-
• So likewise Malebrancbe said (Rrrh. III. 2. 0 a. K. ) that Ood could properly ba called only Celui qui est, be is ritre sans restriction, tout ttre injlni tit vairertei.
406 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
neath it. The conception of substance had come into a state of flux, and needed " further re-shaping. It had almost lost touch with the idea of thing," the category of inherence ; for just the combi nation of a multiplicity of determinations into the idea of a unitary concrete entity, which is essential to this category, was completely lacking in Descartes' conception of finite substances, since these were held to be characterised by one fundamental quality, spatiality or consciousness. All else that was found in substances must there fore be regarded as a modification of its fundamental quality, of its attribute. All qualities and states of bodies are modes of their spa tiality or extension: all qualities and states of mind are modes of consciousness (modi cogitandi).
It is involved in this that all particular substances belonging to either class, all bodies on the one hand and all minds on the other, are alike in their essence, their constitutive attribute. But from this it is only a step farther to the idea in which this likeness is thought as metaphysical identity. All bodies are spatial, all minds are conscious ; individual bodies are distinguished from one another only by different modes of spatiality (form, size, situation, motion) ; individual minds are distinguished from one another only by differ ent modes of consciousness (ideas, judgments, activities of will). Individual bodies are modes of spatiality, individual minds are modes of consciousness. In this way the attribute obtains meta physical preponderance over individual substances, which now appear as its modifications ; the res extensas become modi extension's; the res cogitantes, modi cogitationis.
Descartes himself drew this conclusion only in the domain of natr ural philosophy, to which in general he restricted the carrying out of his metaphysical doctrine in its principles. Here, however, the general conception of modification took on, of itself, a definite sig nificance, and one capable of apprehension by perception or imagina tion, viz. that of limitation (determinatio) . Bodies are parts of space, limitations of the universal space-filling quality or extension. 1 Hence for Descartes the conception of body coincides with that of a limited spatial magnitude. A body as regards its true essence, a portion of space. The elements of the corporeal world are the " corpuscles,"
Cf. Print. Phil. II. f. , where, at the same time, appears quite clearly that this relation of the individual body to universal space made equivalent to that of individual and species.
For the corpuscular theory, Descartes found many suggestions in Bacon, Hobbes, Basso, Sennert, and others. The variety in the development of this theory, which rests upon the dialectic between the mathematical and the physi cal momenta, has more interest for natural science than for philosophy. An excellent exposition found in Lasswitz, GescMchte der Atomistik.
is
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Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Malebrancfie. 407
i. e. the firm spatial particles which realiter are no longer divisible : as mathematical structures, however, they are infinitely divisible; that is, there are no atoms. From these presuppositions follow, likewise, for Descartes, the impossibility of empty space, and the infinitude of the corporeal world.
For the mental world the analogous claim was pronounced by Malebranche. In connection with the epistemological motives (cf. below, No. 8) which made it seem to him that no knowledge of things is possible except in God, he came ' to the conception of the raisou universelle, which, as being alike in all individual minds, can not belong to the modes of the finite mind, but is rather that of which finite minds are themselves modifications, and can, just on this account, be none other than an attribute of God. God is in so far the " place of minds " or spirits, just as space is the place of bodies. Here, also, as the expression proves, the relation which obtains in conceptions between the universal and the particular underlies the thought, and following the analogy of the Cartesian conception of space and body this relation is thought in percep tional or picturate terms as participation. * All human insight is a participation in the infinite Reason, all ideas of finite things are but determinations of the idea of God, all desires directed toward the particular object are but participations in that love toward God as the ground of its essence and life, which necessarily dwells in the finite mind. To be sure, Malebranche came into a very critical situation by thus making the finite mind disappear completely in the universal divine mind, as its modification. For how, in accord ance with this, should he explain the self-subsistence and self- activity which it seemed were quite notoriously present in those inclinations and volitions of man which opposed God ? In this difficulty nothing availed but the word " freedom," in using which Malebranche was indeed obliged to confess that freedom was an impenetrable mystery. 3
5. In this course of thought pursued by Malebranche appears clearly the inevitable logical consistency with which the attributes, which were regarded by Descartes as the common essence belonging to either of the two classes of finite substances, could ultimately be thought only as the attributes of the infinite substance or deity. Hut precisely in this point consists the fundamental motive of Spi- nozism, which developed along this line out of Cartesianism directly
and at the outset, and at the same time developed to the farthest
1 Rtck. de la Vtr. III. 2, 8 ; Sntret. I. 10.
> Recall tin- Platonic Wfefts I > Cf. above, p. 394, note 3.
408 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
consequence. Spinozism likewise holds as firmly to the qualitative as to the causal dualism of spatiality and consciousness. The spa tial and the spiritual worlds are entirely heterogeneous and abso lutely independent of each other. But the whole endless series of bodies, with their divisions, forms, and motions, are only the modes of extension, just as the endless series of minds with their ideas and volitions are only the modes of consciousness. Hence these finite " things " are no longer entitled to the name of " substance. " That only can be called substance, whose attributes are extension and consciousness themselves, viz. the infinite existence or Being, the deity. But its essence, in turn, cannot be exhausted in these two attributes which are accessible to human experience ; the ens realissimum involves within itself the actuality of the infinite num ber of all possible attributes.
The ultimate ground of this position also lies in the scholastic- realistic conception of the most real being. Spinoza's definition of substance or the deity, as the essence {essentia) which involves its own existence, is only the condensed expression of the ontological proof for the existence of God : the " asettas " is preserved in the term " causa sui " ; substance as that " quod in se est et per se con- cipitur" is again but another transcription of the same thought. Proceeding from these definitions, the proof for the oneness and infinitude of substance x followed as a matter of course.
That, however, we have here to do with an entirely realistic course of thought becomes clearly manifest from Spinoza's doctrine of the nature of substance itself and of its relation to the attributes. For the Spinozistic system says absolutely nothing of substance or of the deity farther than the formal determinations contained in the conception of the ens realissimum, of absolute Being. Every predi cate expressing any content on the contrary, expressly denied and in particular Spinoza especially careful to refuse to the divine essence the modifications of consciousness, such as intellectual cog nition [intellectus, Erkenntniss~\ and will. Just as little of course does he recognise the modifications of extension as being predicates of the divine essence, though he had no polemical inducement to express this especially. God himself therefore neither mind nor body of him can only be said, that he is. It evident that the old principle of negative theology here present with a changed form of expression. Knowledge of all finite things and states leads to two highest universal conceptions space-filling quality or exten sion, and consciousness. To both of these
higher metaphysical Eth. Props. 1-14. lb. 31.
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Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Spinoza. 409
dignity is ascribed than to finite things ; they are the attributes, and the things are their modes. But if the process of abstraction now rises from these two determinations, the last which contain any content, to the most general, to the ens generalissimum, then all definite content falls away from the conception of this being, and only the empty Form of substance is left. For Spinoza, also, the deity is all and thus — nothing. His doctrine of God lies quite along the path of Mysticism. 1
But if God is thus the general essence of finite things, he does not exist otherwise than in them and with them. This applies first of all to the attributes. God is not distinct from them, and they are not distinct from him, just as the dimensions of space are not dis tinct from space itself. Hence Spinoza can say also that God con sists of countless attributes, or Deus si ve omnia ejus attributa* And the same relation is afterwards repeated between the attributes and the modes. Every attribute, because it expresses the infinite essence of God in a definite manner, is again infinite in its own way ; but it does not exist otherwise than with and in its countless modifica tions. God then exists only in things as their universal essence, and they only in him as the modes of his reality. In this sense Spinoza adopts from Nicolaus Cusanus and Giordano Bruno the expressions natura naturans and natura naturata. God is Nature : as the universal world-essence, he is the natura naturans; as sum- total of the individual things in which this essence exists modified, he is the natura naturata. If in this connection the natura naturans is called occasionally also the efficient cause of things, this creative force must not be thought as something distinct from its workings ; this cause exists nowhere but in its workings. This is Spinoza's complete and unreserved pantheism.
Finally this relation is repeated yet again in the distinction which Spinoza establishes between the infinite and the finite modes. ' If each of the countless finite things is a mode of God, the infinite connection or coherence which exists between them must also be regarded as a mode, and, indeed, as an infinite mode. Spinoza affirms three of these. 4 The deity as the universal world-thing appears in individual things, which are finite modes ; to them corresponds as
1 To this"corresponds also hla theory of cognition with its three stages, which sets intuition," u the immediate apprehension of the eternal logical remitting of all thing* from God, an knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, above perception and the activity of the intellect.
* which, however, is in nowise to be interpreted aa if the attributes were •df-aabflistent prime realities and "God" only the collective name for them (a* K. Thomas supposed, Sp- ats itetaphy Biker, Konigxberg, 1840). Such a rraaaly nominalistic cap-stone would press the whole system out of joint.
» Ktk. I. 23 and 30 ff. « Sp. 64 (Op. II. HV).
410 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
infinite mode the universe. In the attribute of extension the finite modes are the particular space-forms ; the infinite mode is infinite space, or matter ' itself in its motion and rest. For the attribute of consciousness, the intellectus infinitus1 stands beside the particular functions of ideation and will. Here Spinoza reminds us imme diately of the realistic pantheism of David of Din ant (cf. § 27, 1). His metaphysics is the last word of mediaeval Realism. '
6. With these motives relating to the problem of the qualitative difference of substances modern philosophy struggled out of its dualistic presuppositions to a monistic adjustment ; but at the same time, still more powerful motives became mingled in the process, — motives which grew out of the real and causal separation of the spatial and the conscious worlds. At first, indeed, it was the principles of mechanics themselves which demanded the attempt to isolate completely the course of events in each of the two spheres of finite substances.
This succeeded in the corporeal world in a relatively simple manner. In this domain, the idea of cause had acquired a completely neiv significance through Galileo. According to the scholastic con ception (which even in Descartes' Meditations, in a decisive passage, was still presented with axiomatic validity) causes were substance* or things, while effects, on the other hand, were either their activities or were other substances and things which were held to come about only by such activities : this was the Platonic-Aristotelian concep tion of the oitux. Galileo, on the contrary, went back to the idea of the older Greek thinkers (cf. § 5), who applied the causal relation only to the states — that meant now to the motions of substances — not to the Being of the substances themselves. Causes are motions, and effects are motions. The relation of impact and counter-impact, of the passing over of motion from one corpuscle to another,* is the original fundamental form of the causal relation, the form which is clear to perception or imagination (anschaulich), is intelligible in
1 Tins equivalence holds good with Spinoza as well as with Descartes.
2 This intellectus infinitus appears again in the ethical part of the Spinozistic system as amor intellectuals quo deus se. ipsum amat. In both cases Male- branche's " raison universelle " amounts to the same thing.
8 Geulincx also, in a mauner similar to that of Spinoza and Malebranche, regards finite bodies and minds as only "limitations," " prcecisiones " of the universal infinite body and the divine mind. Cf. Met. p. 56. If we think away limitation from ourselves, he says, ib. 237 ff. , there is left — God.
4 Hence for Descartes the mechanical principle excluded possibility of action at a distance, just as it excluded empty space. This forced him to the artificial hypotheses of the vortex theory, by which he aimed to give a physical ground for the Copernican view of the world (popular exposition by Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondesi 1686). The grounds on which this doctrine was displaced by the Newtonian theory of gravitation are no longer philosophical, but purely physical in their nature.
Chap. 2, $ 31. ] Substance and Causality : Galileo, Descartes. 411
itself, and explains all others. And the question as to the nature of this fundamental relation was answered by the principle of math ematical equality, which, in turn, passed over into that of metaphysi cal identity. So much motion in the cause, so much in the effect also. Descartes formulated this as the law of the conservation of motion in Nature. The sum of motion in Nature remains always the same : what a body loses in motion it gives to another. As regards the amount of motion, there is in Nature nothing new, especially no impulse from the spiritual world. ' Even for the king dom of organisms this principle was carried through, at least as a postulate, though as yet with very weak grounds. Animals, also, are machines whose motions are evoked and determined by the mechanism of the nervous system. Descartes thought of this mechanism more precisely (and with him Hobbes and Spinoza) as a motion of finest (gaseous) substances, the so-called spirit us ani- males,* and sought the point of transition from the sensory to the motor nervous system in man, in a part of the brain which has no correlative, i. e. is a single and not a j>aired organ, the pineal gland or eonarium.
The other part of the task proved much more difficult : namely, that of understanding the mental life without any relation to the corporeal world. Easy and clear to perception as was the action of one body upon another, it did not yield a mode of representing an incorporeal connection between different minds, that could be used scientifically. Spinoza, for example, expressed the general meta physical postulate very energetically, when he promised in entering upon the third book of the Ethics, that he would treat the actions and desires of man as if lines, surfaces, and bodies were the subject of discussion ; for the important thing is neither to asperse them nor to deride them, but to understand them. But the solution of this problem was limited in advance to investigating the causal connec tion between the activities of consciousness in the individual mind : dualism demanded a psychology free from all physiological constitu ents. It is all the more characteristic of the predominance of the spirit of natural science in the seventeenth century, that it attained this psychology demanded by the theory, only in the most limited degree. And even the beginnings toward this are ruled by the endeavour to apply the methodical principle of mechanics, which
1 Henoe Hobbes excluded from physics the Aristotelian and ThomUtic concep tion of the unmoved mover, while Descartes, who in this point also proceeded mure metaphysically, made motion to have been communicated to matter at the beginning by God.
* An inheritance from the physiological psychology of the (ireeks, in particu lar from that of the l'eripatetics.
412 Tlie Renaissance: Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
was celebrating its triumphs in the theory of outer experience, to the comprehension of the inner world also.
For just as the investigation of Nature from Galileo to Newton directed its energies toward finding out the simple fundamental form of corporeal motion, to which all complex structures of outer experience could be reduced, so Descartes desired to establish the fundamental forms of psychical motion, out of which the multiplic ity of inner experiences would become explicable. In the theoreti cal domain this seemed attained by establishing the immediately evident truths (the innate ideas) ; in the practical field there grew out of this demand the new problem of a statics and a mechanics of the movements of feeling (Gemuthsbewegungen) . In this spirit Des cartes and Spinoza produced their natural history of the emotions (Affecte) and passions,1 the latter author by combining the thoughts of the former with those of Hobbes. Thus Descartes derives the whole host of particular passions, as species and sub-species, from the six fundamental forms of wonder (admiratio), love, and hate, desire {disir), pleasure and pain [or joy and sadness, Lust und
Unlust~\ (lostitia — tristitia) ; thus Spinoza develops his system of the emotions out of desire, pleasure, and pain (appetitus, Icetitia,
by pointing out the ideational processes in connection with which these emotions have become transferred from their original object, the self-preservation of the individual, to other " ideas. "
A peculiar side-attitude is taken in this regard by the two English thinkers. For Bacon and Hobbes, a mechanical conception of the mental is the more natural in proportion as they endeavour to draw the mental more closely into the circle of the physical. Both, that regard the empirical psychical life, and therefore, also, the sphere of consciousness which in Descartes' system was to have nothing to do with the corporeal world, as something which essen tially belongs thereto on the other hand, there set over against the whole world of perception rather something spiritual [spirit ual in the religious sense, Geistliches'] than something mental or intellectual [Geistiges].
Ideas and volitions as they are known by experience are held to be at bottom activities of the body also, and
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology. But according to this view the natural science theory cannot be characterised much otherwise than as an
Descartes, Lts Passions de VAme Spinoza, Eth. III. , and Tract. Brev. II. fl. Cl. below, No.
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Chat. 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Descartes, Hobbet. 413
anthropological materialism; for it aims to understand the entire series of empirical psychical activities as a mechanical process con nected with the bodily functions. This problem was propounded by Bacon ; Hobbes attempted to solve and in doing so became the father of the so-called associational psychology. With the same
sensualism as Campanella, of whose deductions his own frequently remind us, — especially with regard to the mechanism of ideas, — he seeks to show that sense-impressions give the only ele ments of consciousness, and that by their combination and trans formation memory and thought also come about. In the practical domain the impulse toward self-preservation and the feelings of pleasure and pain which arise in connection with impressions are then characterised analogously as the elements out of which all other feelings and activities of will arise. Hobbes, too, projected thus "natural history" of the emotions and passions, and this was not without influence upon that of Spinoza, whose theory of the emotions always looking towards the other attribute [i. e.
extension].
From these presuppositions of method the denial of the freedom
of the will in the sense of indeterminism followed with inexorable consistency for Hobbes and for Spinoza. Both attempted — and Spinoza did in the baldest form that can be conceived — to exhibit the strict necessity which prevails even in the course of the process of motivation they are types of determinism. For Spinoza, there for? , there no freedom in the psychological sense. Freedom can mean only, on the one hand, metaphysically, the absolute Being of the deity determined by nothing but itself, and, on the other hand, ethically, the ideal of the overcoming of the passions through reason.
In this became already evident that in the presence of the facts of psychology, that absolute separation between the corporeal and the mental world which metaphysics demanded was not to be maintained. But Descartes himself met quite the same experience. The nature of the mind itself might, indeed, explain the clear and distinct ideas and the forms of the rational will which resulted from these, but could not explain the obscure and confused ideas,
and the emotions and passions connected with them. These present themselves rather as a disturbance of the mind1 (perturbationes animi), and since this perturbation which gives occasion for the
This the interest, not only ethical, but also theoretical, which induced Des cartes to treat atates psychologically so different aa emotions and passions, from the same point of Tiew and in one line. Cf. for the following Pmston$ it Am*, L. and Med*. V. and VI.
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414 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
abuse of freedom (cf. above, § 30, 5) cannot be due to God, its origin must be sought ultimately in an influence exercised by tin body. In the disturbances of the feeling there is, therefore, for Descartes an indubitable fact, which cannot be explained from the fundamental metaphysical principles of his system. Here, there fore, the philosopher sees himself forced to recognise an exceptwmi relation, and he adjusts this for himself in a way that had been foreshadowed by the anthropology of the Victorines (cf. § 24, 2) The nature (natura) of man, he teaches, consists in the inner union of two heterogeneous substances, a mind and a body, and this marvel lous (i. e. metaphysically incomprehensible) union has been *o arranged by God's will that in this single case the conscious and the spatial substances act upon each other. Animals remain, for Descartes, bodies ; their " sensations " are only nervous movements, out of which stimulations of the motor system arise in accordance with the reflex mechanism. In the human body, however, the mental substance is present at the same time, and in consequence of this co-existence the storm of the animal spirits in the pineal gland excites a disturbance in the mental substance also, which manifests itself in the latter as an unclear and indistinct idea, •>. as sense-perception, as emotion, or as passion. 1
With the disciples, the systematic impulse was greater than with the master. They found in this influxus physicus between mind and body the vulnerable point in the Cartesian philosophy, and ex erted themselves to set aside the exception which the philosopher had been obliged to assert in the anthropological facts. This, how ever, did not go on without effecting a new, and in a certain sense regressive, alteration in the conception of causality, in that the metaphysical moment once more gained preponderance over the me chanical. The immanent causal processes of the spatial and of the conscious worlds were regarded as intelligible in themselves ; but the transcendent causal process from one of these worlds into the other formed a problem. No difficulty was found in the idea that one motion transformed itself into another or that one function of
1 On this Descartes then builds his Ethics. In such perturbations the mind occupies a passive attitude, and it is its task to free itself from these in clear and distinct knowledge. Spinoza carried out this intellectualistic morals in an extremely grand and impressive manner (Elk. IV. and V. ). The antithesis of an active and passive attitude of the finite mind is indeed gained from the stand point of his metaphysics only artificially (Sth. III. , Def. 2) : but he carried through with compelling consistency the thought, that the overcoming of Um passions follows from a knowledge of them, from the insight into the necessary divine system of all things ; he taught that human nature must perfect itself in the blessedness of the active emotions which consist only in the activity of the pure impulse toward knowledge ( Kth. V. 15 ff. ), and thus set up an ideal of life which reaches the height of the Greek ttupl*.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Geulincx. 415
consciousness — for example, a thought — should pass over into an other: but it seemed impossible to understand how sensation should come out of motion, or motion out of will. Physical and logical caus ality seemed to offer no difficulty ; so much the greater was that presented by psycho-physical causality. In the case of the latter the consciousness dawned that the relation of equality or identity between cause and effect, by means of which mechanical and logi cal dependence seemed intelligible, does not exist. Hence an inquiry must here be made for the principle by which the two ele ments of the causal relation, cause and effect, which do not in them selves belong together, are connected with each other. 1 Where this principle was to be sought could not be a matter of doubt for the disciples of Descartes : God, who produced the union of the two substances in man's nature, has also so arranged them that the functions of the one substance are followed by the corresponding functions of the other. But on this account these functions in their causal relation to one another are not properly, and in their own nature, efficient causes, but only occasions in connection with which the consequences determined by divine contrivance appear in the other substance, — not causae efflcientes, but causa: occasionales. The true "cause" for the causal connection between stimuli and sensations, and between purposes and bodily movements, is God.
Such considerations are multiplied in the whole development of the Cartesian school. Clauberg brings them into use for the theory of perceptions, Cordemoy for that of purposive motion ; their full development is attained in the " Ethics " of Geulincx. Yet in the latter author doubt is not entirely excluded as to whether God's causality in this connection is regarded as a special intervention in each individual case, or as a general and permanent arrangement. In some passages, indeed, the former is the case,1 but the spirit of the doctrine, taken as a whole, doubtless involves the latter. Geu lincx expresses himself most clearly in the illustration of the clocks:' as two clocks which have been made alike by the same artificer continue to move in perfect harmony, " absque ulla causalitate qua alterum hoc in altero causat, sed propter meram dependentiam, qua utrumque ab eadem arte et simili industria constitutum est," so the
> That the fundamental difficulty in all causal relations was in this actually •tumbled upon, first became clear at a later time through Hume. Cf. f 34.
' Kor example, in the analogy of the child in the cradle, Eth. 123. It seems, bnides, that the first edition of the Ethics (16(16), in fact, introduced more the dnu tz maehina, while the annotations added in the second edition (1676) pre sent throughout the profounder view.
• Kth. , p. 134, note 19.
il6 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV
corresponding functions of mind and body follow each other in accordance with the world-order once determined by God. 1
8. This anthropological rationale of Occasionalism fits from the beginning into a more general metaphysical course of thought. The Cartesian system already contained the premises for the inference that in the case of all that takes place in finite substances, the effi cient principle derives, not from these substances themselves, but from the deity. Thinking in minds takes place by means of the inborn ideas which God has given them; to the corporeal world he has communicated a quantum of motion which changes only in its dis tribution among the individual corpuscles, but in the case of the individual body it is, so to speak, only temporarily concealed Minds can create new ideas as little as bodies can create new mo tion ; the sole cause is God.
The Cartesians had all the more occasion to emphasise the sole causality of God, as their doctrine encountered violent contradiction in the orthodoxy of both Confessions, and became involved in the theological controversies of the time. Friend and foe had quickly recognised the relationship of Cartesianism with the doctrine of Augustine;1 and while on this account the Jansenists and thk
Fathers of the Oratory, who lived in the Augustinian-Scotist atmos phere, were friendly to the new philosophy, the orthodox Peripa tetics, and especially the Jesuits, made war upon it all the more violently. Thus the old opposition between Augustianism and Thorn- ism came out in the controversy over Cartesianism. The conse quence was that the Cartesians brought into the foreground as far as possible those elements in which their doctrine was allied to the Augustinian. * So Louis de la Forge * attempted to prove the com plete identity of Cartesianism with the doctrine of the Church Father, and emphasised especially the fact that according to both thinkers the sole ground of all that takes place in bodies as well as minds is God. Just this was later designated by Malebranche* as the sure mark of a Christian philosophy, while the most dangerous
1 If,"therefore, Leibniz, when he later claimed for his "pre-established har mony (Eclairc. 2 and 3) this same analogy in frequent use at that time, charac terised the Cartesian conception by an immediate dependence of the two clocks upon one another, and the Occasionalistic by a constantly renewed regulation of the clocks on the part of the clock-maker, this was applicable at most to some passages In the first edition of the Ethics of Geulincx.
1 Kinship and opposition apply also to still other points. Descartes and the priests of the Oratory (Gibieuf, Malebranche) are at one against Thomism in the Augustinian and Scotist doctrine of the boundless freedom of the deity ; they maintain again that the good is good because God so willed it, not per u (cf. § 26, 2, 3), etc.
• Trait, de VEtpr. Hum. , Prtf. * Becherche, VI. 2, 3.
Chu\ 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Occasionalism. 417
error of heathen philosophy consists in the assumption of metaphys ical self-subsistence and capacity for spontaneous action on the part of finite things.
With Geulincx, likewise, all finite things are deprived of the causal moment or element of substantiality. In this he proceeds from the principle ' that one can himself do that only of which he knows how it is done. From this it follows in the anthropological field, that the mind cannot be the cause of the bodily movements — no one knows how he sets to work even but to raise his arm ; it follows farther in the cosmological field, that bodies which have no ideas whatever cannot operate at all, and finally, for the theory of knowledge, that the cause of perceptions is to be sought not in the finite mind — for this does not know how it comes to perceive — nor in bodies; therefore it is to be sought only in God. He pro duces in us a world of ideas which in its wealth of qualities is much richer and more beautiful than the actual corporeal world itself. "
The e piste mological motif finds finally with Malebranche * a still more profound apprehension. Cartesian dualism makes a direct
« knowledge of the body by mind absolutely impossible : such a knowl edge is excluded not only because no utfluxus physicus is possible between the two, but also because, in view of the total heterogeneity of the two substances, it is not possible to see how even an idea of the one is thinkable in the other. In this respect, also, mediation is possible only through the deity, and Malebranche takes refuge in the Neo- Platonic world of Ideas in God. Man does not know bodies ; he knows their Ideas in God. This intelligible corporeal world in God is, on the one hand, the archetype of the actual corporeal world cre ated by God, and on the other hand, the archetype of those ideas which God has communicated to us of this actual corporeal world. Our knowledge is like the actual bodies, just as two magnitudes which are equal to a third are equal also to each other. In this sense Malebranche understood that philosophy teaches that we behold ail things in God.
9. Quite different was the solution which Spinoza gave to the Occasional istic problems. The explanation of any mode of the one attribute by a mode of the other was excluded by the conception of
» Bth. . p. 113; Met. , p. 26.
» The remnant of self-activity In finite beings thai remain* in the system of
Grulinex consists in the immanent mental activity of man. I'f. Kth. 121 f. The "sutology," or intpertio mi, Is, therefore, not only the epistemological ■carting-point of the syntern, but also It* ethical conclusion. Man nan nothing to do in the outer world. I'M nihil valet, ibi nihil relis. The highest virtue la a modest contentment, submission to tJod'n will — humility, deiperiw tut.
• Btch. HI. 2.
418 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Pabt IV.
the attribute as he had denned it (see above, No. 5) ; it held of the attribute as of substance,1 in se est et per se concipitur. Accordingly there could be no question of the dependence of the spatial upon consciousness, or vice versa; the appearance of such a dependence which presents itself in the anthropological facts needed, therefore, another explanation, and as a matter of course this was to be sought by the aid of his conception of God. If, however, the doctrine that God is the sole cause of all that takes place is for this reason found also with Spinoza, his agreement with the Occasionalists exists only in the motive and the word, but not in the meaning or spirit of the doctrine. For according to Geulincx and Malebranche, God is the creator ; according to Spinoza, he is the universal essence or nature of things ; according to the former, God creates the world by his will ; according to the latter, the world follows necessarily from the nature of God [or is the necessary consequence of the nature of God]. In spite of the likeness in the word causa, therefore, the causal rela tion is really thought here in a sense entirely different from that which it has there. With Spinoza it means not, " God creates the world," but, " he is the world. "
Spinoza always expresses his conception of real dependence, of causality, by the word " follow " (sequi, consequi) and by the addi tion, " as from the definition of a triangle the equality of the sum of its angles to two right angles follows. " The dependence of the
world upon God therefore, thought as mathematical consequence. 1 This conception of the causal relation has thus completely stripped off the empirical mark of " producing " or " creating " which played so important a part with the Occasionalists, and replaces the percep tional idea of active operation with the logico-mathematical relation of ground and consequent [or reason and consequent Grand und Folge~\. Spinozism a consistent identification of the relation of cause and effect with that of ground and consequent. The causality of the deity therefore, not in time, but eternal, that is, timeless and true knowledge consideration of things sub quadam ceterni- talis specie. This conception of the relation of dependence resulted of itself from the conception of the deity as the universal essence or nature from this nature all its modifications follow timelessly, just as all propositions of geometry follow from the nature of space. The geometrical method knows no other causality than that of the " eternal consequence " for rationalism, only that form of depend ence which peculiar to thought itself, namely, the logical proced-
u Eth. I. , Prop. 10.
Cf. Schopenhauer, Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vorn zureichenden
Qrunde, ch. 6. [Fourfold Soot, etc. , Bohn Lib. ]
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Chat. 2, § 31 . ] Substance and Causality : Spinoza. 419
lire of the consequent from its antecedent reason, passes as in itself intelligible, and on this account as the schema also for events or cosmic processes : ' real dependence also should be conceived neither mechanically nor teleologically, but only logico-mathematically.
But now, as in geometry, all follows indeed from the nature of space, and yet each particular relation is fixed by other particular determinations, so, too, in the Spinozistic metaphysics the neces sary procedure of things forth from God consists in the determina tion of every individual finite entity by other finite things. The sum of finite things and the modes of each attribute form a chain of strict determination, a chain without beginning and without end. The necessity of the divine nature rules in all ; but no mode is nearer to the deity, or farther from the deity, than is any other. In this the thought of Nicolaus Cusanus of the incommensurability of the finite with the infinite asserts itself — no series of stages of emana tion leads from God down to the world : everything finite is deter mined again by the finite, but in all God is the sole ground of their essence or nature.
If this is the case, the unity of essence must appear also in the relation of the attributes, however strictly these may be separated qualitatively and causally. It is still the same divine essence which exists here in the form of extension, and there in the form of con sciousness. The two attributes are then necessarily so related to each other that to every mode of the one a definite mode of the other corresponds. This correspondence or parallelism of the attri butes solves the enigma of the connection of the two worlds: ideas are determined only by ideas, and motions only by motions ; but it is the like cosmic content of the divine essence which forms the con nection of the one class, and also that of the other ; the same con tent is in the attribute of consciousness as in the attribute of extension. This relation is presented by Spinoza in accordance with the scholastic conceptions of the esse in intellect u and the esse m re. The same that exists in the attribute of consciousness as object (objective), as the content of our ideas, exists in the attribute of extension as something actual, independent of any idea or mental representation
1 Spinoza's pantheism has therefore the closest resemblance to the scholastic mystical Jtealium of Scotus Erigena (cf. $ 23, 1), only that in the latter'i system it Is still more the case that the logical relation of the general to the particular forms the only schema ; from this resulted, in his case, the emanistic •haracter which is lacking in Spinoza.
1 But neither of these two modes of existence is more original than the other, or forms a prototype for the other : both express equally the nature of God (nprimere). Hence an idealistic interpretation of Spinoza is as incorrwt as a materialistic, although both might he developed out of hi* system.
(formaliter). *
420 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
Spinoza's conception, then, is this : every finite thing as a mode of the divine essence, e. g. man, exists in like measure in both attri butes, as mind and as body: and each of its particular functions belongs also in like measure to both attributes, as idea and as motion. As idea, it is determined by the connection of ideas, as motion by that of motions ; but in both, the content is the same by virtue of the correspondence of the attributes. The human mind it the idea (Idee) of the human body, both as a whole and in detail. 1
10. The conclusion of this movement of thought which had passed through so many divarifications was reached in the meta physical system of Leibniz, —a system which is equalled by none in the entire history of philosophy in all-sidedness of motives and in power of adjustment and combination. It owes this importance not only to the extensive learning and the harmonising mind of its author, but especially to the circumstance that he was at home in the ideas of ancient and mediaeval philosophy with as deep and fine an understanding of their significance as he had for the conceptions formed by the modern study of Nature. * Only the inventor of the differential calculus, who had as much understanding for Plato and Aristotle as for Descartes and Spinoza, who knew and appreciated Thomas and Duns Scotus as well as Bacon and Hobbes, —only he could become the creator of the " pre-established harmony. "
The reconciliation of the mechanical and the teleological views of the world, and with this the uniting of the scientific and the religious interests of his time, was the leading motive in the thought of Leib niz. He wished to see the mechanical explanation of Nature, the formulation of which in its scientific conceptions he himself essen tially furthered, carried through to its full extent, and at the same time he cast about for thoughts by the aid of which the purposeful living character of the universe might nevertheless remain compre hensible. The attempt must therefore be made — an attempt for which there were already intimations in the doctrine of Descartes — to see whether the whole mechanical course of events could not be ultimately traced back to efficient causes, whose purposeful nature should afford an import and meaning to their working taken as a whole. The whole philosophical development of Leibniz has the aim to substitute for the corpuscles, " entelechies," and to win back for the indifferent God of the geometrical method the rights of the Platonic curia. The ultimate goal of his philosophy is to under-
1 The difficulties which arose in this connection from self-consciousness, and thoBe also from the postulate of the countless attributes, Spinoza did not solve : cf. the correspondence with Tschirnhausen, Op. II.
