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ence and consciousness, and the mediation of this opposition, which has been the problem of the whole modern philosophy, he first affirmed as the true philosophical problem. But with these ideas, which make an epoch in the history of philosophy, there are at the same time connected the defects of the Cartesian philosophizing. First. Descartes gained the content of his system, namely his three substances, empirically. True, the system which begins with a protestation against all existence would seem to take nothing for granted, but to derive every thing from the thinking. But in fact this protesting is not thoroughly carried out. That which seems to be cast aside is afterwards, when the principle of certainty is gained, taken up again unchanged. And so it happens that Descartes finds at hand not only the idea of God, but his two substances as something immediately given. True, in order to reach them, he abstracts every thing which lies immediately before him, but in the end the two substances are seen as that which remains when all else is abstracted. They are received empirically. The second defect is, that Descartes separates so wholly from each other the two sides of the opposition between thought and being. He posits both as "substances," i. e. as powers, which reciprocally exclude and negate each other. The essence of matter according to him consists only in extension, i. e. in the pure being extra se (Aussersichsein), and that of mind only in thought, i. e. in the pure being in se (Insichsein.) The two stand over against each other as centrifugal and centripetal. But with this apprehension of mind and matter, an inner mediation of the two is an impossibility; there must be a powerful act of creation, there must be the divine assistance in order that the two sides may ever come together, and be united as they are in man. Nevertheless Descartes demands and attempts such a mediation of the two sides. But the impossibility of truly overcoming the dualism of his stand-point is the third, and the chief defect of his system. In the proposition "I think, therefore I am," or "I am thinking," the two sides, being and thought, are indeed connected together, but only that they may become fixed independently in respect of each other. If the question is asked,

how does the Ego stand related to the extended? the answer can only be by thinking, i. e. negatively, by excluding it. The idea of God, therefore, is all that remains for the mediation of these two sides. The two substances are created by God, and through the divine will may be bound together; through the idea of God, the Ego attains the certainty that the extended exists. God is therefore in a certain degree a Deus ex machina, necessary in order to mediate the conflict of the Ego with the extended. It is obvious how external such a mediation is.

This defect of the Cartesian system operated as an impelling motive to those which succeeded.

SECTION XXV.

GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE.

Both,

1. Mind and matter, consciousness and existence, Descartes had fixed in the farthest separation from each other. with him, are substances, independent powers, reciprocally excluding oppositions. Mind (i. e. in his view the simple self, the Ego) he regarded as essentially the abstraction from the sensuous, the distinguishing itself from matter and the separating of matter from itself; matter was essentially the complete opposition to thought. If the relation of these two powers be as has been given, then the question arises, how can there ever be a filiation (Rapport) between them? How, on the one hand, can the affections of the body work upon the soul, and on the other hand, how can the volition of the soul direct the body, if the two are absolutely distinct and opposed to each other? At this point, Arnold Geulincx (a disciple of Descartes, born at Antwerp 1625, and died as professor of philosophy at Leyden 1669) took up the Cartesian system, and endeavored to give it a greater logical perfection. According to Geulinex neither the soul works immediately

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upon the body, nor the body immediately upon the soul. Certainly not the former: for though I can determine and move my body in many respects arbitrarily, yet I am not the cause of this movement; for I know not how it happens, I know not in what manner motion is communicated from my brain to the different parts of my body, and it is impossible that I should do that in respect of which I cannot see how it is done. But if I cannot produce motion in my body, much less can I do this outside of my body. I am therefore simply a contemplator of the world; the only act which is peculiarly mine is contemplation. But even this contemplation arises in a singular manner. For if we ask how we obtain our observations of the external world, we find it impossible that the external world should directly give them to us. however much we may say that, e. g. in the act of seeing, the external objects produce an image in my eye or an impression in my brain as in wax, yet this impression or picture is after all only something corporeal or material, and cannot therefore come into my mind, which is absolutely distinct from every thing material. There remains, therefore, only that we seek the mediation of the two sides in God. It is God alone who can unite the outer with the inner, and the inner with the outer; who can make the outer phenomena to become inner representations or notions of the mind; who can thus bring the world within the mind's observation, and the inner determinations of the will outward into deed. Hence every working, every act which unites the outer and inner, which brings the mind and the world into connection, is neither a working of the mind nor of the world, but only an immediate working of God. The movement of my limbs does not follow from my will, but only because it is the will of God that these movements should follow when I will. My will is an occasion by which God moves my body-an affection of my body is an occasion by which God brings within me a representation of the external world: the one is only the occasional cause of the other (hence the name occasionalism). My will, however, does not move God to move my limbs, but he who has imparted motion to matter and given it its laws, created also my will, and has so connected together the most

diverse things, the movement of matter and the arbitrium of my will, that when my will puts forth a volition, such a motion follows as it wills, and the motion follows the volition without any interaction or physical influence exerted by the one upon the other. But just as it is with two clocks which go exactly alike, the one striking precisely as the other, their harmony is not the result of any reciprocal interacting, but follows because both have been fashioned and directed alike,—so is it with the movements of the body and the will, they harmonize only through that exalted artist who has in this ineffable way connected them together. We see from this that Geulinex has carried to its limit the dualistic basis of Descartes. While Descartes called the union of mind and matter a conjunction through power, Geulinex named it a miracle. There is consequently in this view no immanent, but only a transcendent mediation possible.

2. Closely connected with this view of Geulincx, and at the same time a real consequence and a wider development of the Cartesian philosophizing, is the philosophic stand-point of Nicolas Malebranche. He was born at Paris in 1638, chosen a member of the "Congrégation de l'oratoire" in his twenty-second year, won over to philosophy through the writings of Descartes, and died, after numerous feuds with theological opposers, in 1715.

Malebranche started with the Cartesian view of the relation between mind and matter. Both are strictly distinct from each other, and in their essence opposed. How now does the mind, (i. e. the Ego) gain a knowledge of the external world and have ideas of corporeal things? For it comes to know things only by means of ideas,—not through itself, not immediately. Now the mind can neither gain these ideas from itself, nor from the things themselves. Not from itself, for it is absolutely opposed to the bodily world, and hence has no capacity to idealize, to spiritualize material things, though they must become spiritualized before they can be introduced to the mind; in a word, the mind, which in relation to the material world is only an opposition, has no power to destroy this opposition. Just as little has the mind derived these ideas from things: for matter is not visible

through itself, but rather as antithetic to mind is it that which is absolutely unintelligible, and which cannot be idealized, that which is absolutely without light and clearness.-It only remains, there fore, that the mind beholds things in a third that stands above the opposition of the two, viz., God. God, as the absolute substance, is the absolute ideality, the infinite power to spiritualize all things. Material things have no real opposition for God, to him they are no impenetrable darkness, but an ideal existence; all things are in him spiritually and ideally; the whole world, as intellectual or ideal, is God. God is, therefore, the higher mean between the Ego and the external world. In him we behold ideas, we being so strictly united with him, that he may properly be called the place of minds.

The philosophy of Malebranche, whose simple thought is this, that we know and see all things in God,-shows itself, like the occasionalism of Geulincx, to be a peculiar attempt to stand upon the basis of the Cartesian philosophy, and with its fundamental thought to overcome its dualism.

3. Two defects or inner contradictions have manifested themselves in the philosophy of Descartes. He had considered mind and matter as substances, each one of which excluded the other from itself, and had sought a mediation of the two. But with such conditions no mediation other than an external one is possible. If thought and existence are each one substance, then can they only negate and exclude each other. Unnatural theories, like those which have been mentioned, are the inevitable result of this. The simplest way out of the difficulty is to give up the principle first assumed, to strip off their independence from the two opposites, and instead of regarding them as substances, view them as accidents of one substance. This way of escape is moreover indicated by a particular circumstance. According to Descartes, God is the infinite substance, the peculiar substance in the proper sense of the word. Mind and matter are indeed substances, but only in relation to each other; in relation to God they are dependent, and not substances. This is, strictly taken, a contradiction. The true consequence were rather to say that neither the Ego (i.e. the

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