The § 46. The most important of the followers of Descartes was Malebranche (1638-1715). doctrine by which he is best known is only a further development of a principle belonging to Cartesianism. Mind and body are two absolutely distinct and heterogeneous entities, and it is absolutely impossible that there can be any natural connection between them; consequently Descartes said that our ideas of material bodies must really be produced by God. In the researches of Malebranche, this feature of Cartesianism is brought out into still greater prominence. He teaches that we, as spirits, exist in a manner in God, who is the place of spirits, and, participating in His knowledge," we see all things in God." As God is omniscient, the ideas of all things in the universe must be in His mind; and since we, as spirits, are also in Him, we perceive the Divine ideas of material bodies. It is interesting and amusing to see what wonderful contrivances are invented to overcome the difficulty assumed to exist, that the mind, because unextended, cannot directly perceive extended body. And it is probable that most readers in modern times will regard the explanation as still more incomprehensible than the original difficulty to be explained. Waiving, therefore, any general criticism of the doctrine as unnecessary, we shall point out a certain characteristic of the ideas of Descartes and Malebranche which must be noticed. § 47. Both of these philosophers use the word idea to indicate some object of thought which is distinct from the activity of the mind in perceiving or CHAP. III. Malebranche. Cartesian idea. meaning of SECT. II. * CHAP. III. thinking it, and which appears to have attributed to it an independent existence. For example, Descartes says: "Further, I cannot doubt but that there is in me a certain passive faculty of perception, that is, of receiving and taking knowledge of the ideas of sensible things; but this would be useless to me if there did not also exist in me, or in some other thing, another active faculty capable of forming and producing those ideas." And he soon concludes that the active power of producing these ideas is in corporeal objects. The cardinal doctrine of Malebranche's psychology is that ideas of material objects can be directly perceived only by the mind of God; but since we exist in Him, we participate in His knowledge and perceive His ideas. Thus, in Cartesianism the idea is a distinct entity, contained in some mind either Divine or human, and existing quite independently of the mental activity involved in the perception of it. But a careful analysis of consciousness might have led these philosophers to the conclusion that the distinction between the act of thinking and that which is thought, the act of perceiving and the percept, the act of conceiving and the concept, is only a logical one. Any conscious activity of the mind is on one side an act, on the other side an object or idea; the act is the idea, the idea is the act, but viewed in another relation. The greatest confusion in psychology has arisen from the use in different senses and for different purposes of the word idea; and it is necessary now either to banish * Meditationes,' vi. SECT. II. the word altogether from use, or to employ it in a CHAP. III. clearly defined meaning. In the meantime, it should be noted that all mental phenomena are objects of consciousness, and cannot exist apart from the consciousness in which they are apprehended. And to speak of ideas as if they could pass from objects to the mind, or as if one mind could be conscious of the ideas of another, is either an abuse of language or the illegitimate attribution of independent existence to an abstraction. This error of Cartesianism long continued to cause confusion in psychology, but it is now long since it was perceived and abandoned. § 48. The philosophy of Spinoza (1632-1677) was, Spinoza. in a sense, the result of Cartesianism. The chief differences between the doctrines of Spinoza and Descartes had reference not to the psychological process of knowledge, with which only we are now concerned, but to the nature of the real existence which underlies all phenomena. Descartes had postulated the existence of two substances, thought and extension, as the necessary constituents of mind and matter; but it appeared to Spinoza that thought and extension are both themselves phenomena, and cannot therefore be the substances in which other phenomena inhere. Descartes' psychological analysis had discovered only those attributes which were found to be essential to the mind and material body respectively; but Spinoza thought that all attributes must have a substance in which they inhere, and rejecting the dualism which had hitherto prevailed, he asserted that thought and extension are attributes CHAP. III. Locke's of one common substance which underlies them both. There is thus only one substance, self-existent, infinite, and eternal; and that substance is God. The qualities, however, of mind and matter are phenomenally distinct, so that, as in Descartes, there can be no direct causal or cognitive relation between them. But both are phenomena of one substance; there is a correspondence between them. The thought corresponds to the thing; the idea to the object. To enter into any detailed examination of Spinoza's pantheistic Ontology would take us altogether aside from our subject. The only important correction which he made in the Cartesian psychology was the assertion that thought and extension, being only essential attributes, cannot be considered as substances. We shall now leave Descartes and his followers for the present, and give our attention to the beginning of another philosophical movement in England. SECTION III. LOCKE. § 49. Locke, in his psychology, begins with the principle. principle that there is nothing in the mind except what comes into it from without; it is like a sheet of white paper, upon which experience writes our ideas. The experience which gives us our ideas is of two kinds, sensation and reflection. By the former, we perceive the qualities of bodies; by the latter, the ideas we have derived from sense are variously modified, repeated, or combined. Our ideas are thus either simple or complex. "But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before-mentioned; nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there."* CHAP. III. SECT. III. There are some ideas, such as those of colours or sounds, which gain admittance to the mind through one sense specially adapted for them. There are other ideas, such as of space or extension, which convey themselves into the mind by more senses than one. Whatever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, Locke calls idea; and the power to produce any idea in the mind he calls quality of the subject wherein that power is. Qualities are of two kinds; First, those which are utterly inseparable Primary from the conception of body, such as solidity, extension, figure, &c.; and Second, those which are nothing Secondary in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities. Bodies produce ideas in us; qualities, by impulse, and in qualities, by the operation of insensible particles on our senses. "The ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves; but the in the case of primary * Essay,' bk, ii., ch. ii., § 2. qualities. qualities. |