can still only will our restoration; i.e, salvation. If philosophy, by its own resources, can point out that the path of holiness alone can lead us to truth, Malebranche's object is accomplished; viz., the unity of philosophy and religion, of metaphysics and Christianity, of Cartesianism and Augustinianism. To understand Malebranche, we must realize with all clearness how in his mind the two parts meet, and with what important results the Christian religion and Augustinianism co-operate in his solution of the problem of knowledge.

Truth consists, as Descartes taught, in the clear and distinct conception of things. Obscure and confused conceptions are not true: our sensations are caused by our external impressions; our imaginations by our inner. Neither teach what things are in themselves, but only what they are for us. Neither the senses nor the imagination, therefore, give us knowledge; and, as Malebranche repeatedly urged, we must carefully distinguish between feeling (sentir) and knowing (connaître) if we wish to avoid error. Our sensations are not, as such, false, since only through them do we learn how other bodies are related to ours: they show what is useful or hurtful to our body, what tends to preserve or endanger our life; and as long as sensations are regarded only in this sense, they do not lead us into error. They do not lead us into error until we use them to attain a knowledge of things. "We should consider the senses as false witnesses in relation to the truth," said Malebranche, "but as true. counsellors in relation to the preservation and needs of life!"

To seek to know through the senses is nothing else than to make our judgment and thought dependent upon them. And that is the root of error. We err as soon as our thought falls under the control of the senses. But how is it possible to avoid this after the mind has once become dependent upon the body? Dependence is the penalty of

1 Entret., iv.

sin, in consequence of which thought comes under the dominion of the senses, takes them as guides to knowledge, and thereby falls completely under the power of error, and no longer distinguishes between feeling and knowing.

3. Knowledge as Illumination. — But if error is the penalty of sin, we can get rid of it only by a thorough eradication of sin; i.e., by salvation or the immediate union of the soul with. God. We err necessarily and inevitably while the soul depends upon the body with which it was united by God, but to which it was by no means subjected by God: we know the truth just as necessarily and inevitably when the soul depends upon God, when our mind. is immediately united with the divine. Error is the guilt of sin, the darkening of the soul by the body which controls it: knowledge is the illumination of the soul by the divine light. It is possible only through God, as error is possible only by turning from God, by subjection to the yoke of the body; i.e., by sin.

From this point we can get the clearest perception of the inmost motive and problem of Malebranche. He took the Cartesian Dualism for his foundation, and logically developed it into Occasionalism. This logically denies the activity of things, and admits only the causality of the divine will. Malebranche opposes this conception to the philosophy of the ancients, i.e., to Naturalism, and in this point agrees with Augustine. But even the divine causality cannot destroy the dualism of mind and body, since the foundation and principle of the doctrine would thereby be destroyed: the divine causality, therefore, cannot make the mind dependent upon body. This dependence is not possible in, and by means of, God, but it exists, nevertheless, in fact. It is, therefore, only possible through ourselves, through our es trangement from God, through sin which darkens our mind. and causes error. But if error is the result of sin or our estrangement from God, knowledge, or the destruction of error, is only possible through our union with God and his illumination.

Now, if it can be proved by purely philosophical arguments that our knowledge of things is only possible in and through God, that we see things in God, a very important regressive inference results. If knowledge is only possible through union with God, error can only arise by our fall from God: error is, therefore, a proof of sin; and since, as experience shows, we are inevitably involved in it, the same is true of the sin which causes it. The error in which we live, and which clings to us, is a proof of original sin. That is the central point of Augustinianism, which is, dogmatically, the acutest and completest expression of the Christian doctrine. The core of the doctrine of Malebranche now lies plainly before our eyes. The proposition that knowledge is only possible as illumination, that we see things in God, forms the connecting link between philosophy and religion, metaphysics and Christianity. Every thing, therefore, depends upon the philosophical proof of this proposition, and the vindication of it as the theory of knowledge. This is the problem which is still to be solved.

CHAPTER VI.

(b) SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM: THE INTUITION OF THINGS IN GOD.

A

I. OBJECTS AND KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE.

S different as are the objects of human knowledge, so different are its kinds. The objects of our knowledge are God, our own minds, other finite minds, and body. The perfect can never be evident from the imperfect, nor the infinite from the finite. Our knowledge of God is not, therefore, deduced, but original, and is of all our knowledge the clearest and most distinct. The consciousness of God is the light by which we know. Bodies, on the other hand, are not knowable of and through themselves: they are not of an

intelligible, but of a material, nature, extended substances, independent of us, and opposite to us in nature. It is as impossible for mind to go beyond the limits of its thinking nature as for body to go beyond extension. How can they affect each other? How can mind be acted upon by matter? How can matter make its way into mind? The objects of the mind are only conceived things (ideas). If there are ideas which present the nature of body clearly and distinctly, then, and only then, is a knowledge of things possible.

If we were not ourselves of a mental nature, we should never learn that there are other minds: if we did not know by our own experience what sensations, conceptions, and desires are, we would have no suspicion that similar facts exist in other beings. We know other minds only by means

of analogy, not, therefore, immediately, but by a comparison guided by our own inner experience. We suspect that they are similar to us: we know it, as Malebranche says, "par conjecture." We ourselves are the original with which we compare them the criterion for the knowledge of men is the knowledge of self. In what does this consist? We need no medium for it as we do for the knowledge of the nature of body; only a conception or idea could be such a medium: but in the knowledge of self, the being which we conceive coincides with the conceiving being; the knowledge of self, therefore, does not take place through ideas. It has the character of immediate certainty. Malebranche denotes it by the term "conscience." But this immediate consciousness does not extend beyond our inner experience: we know of ourselves nothing more or less than what we inwardly and directly perceive. Before we experience joy and pain, we do not know what emotions (affecte) are: we know ourselves only so far as we have experience of ourselves, only through inner perception, or, as Malebranche says, "par sentiment intérieur.” 1

We are not in a position to comprehend, to make clear to ourselves, to realize, all the possible modifications of our thought, all possible inner experiences in our consciousness. There is, therefore, no clear and distinct knowledge of self; but there is indeed an idea which presents to us the nature of body clearly and distinctly. Malebranche, therefore, does not admit the Cartesian assertion that the nature of mind is more clearly evident to us than that of body. Descartes saw that sensible qualities are our states of sensation, conceptions modifications of thought, but only because they could not be modifications of extension. He was by no means able to so evidently deduce the different sensations from the nature of thought as the different figures from that of extension. Mathematics is clearer than psychology, and that is a distinct proof that the nature of body is more

1 Rech, de la vérité, liv. iii. part ii. chap. 7.