Chapter XX (5)

[244] Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy. The word experiment
must be taken in the sense of observation. Stewart very early
took up his admiration for Descartes. “He was the first
philosopher who stated in a clear and satisfactory manner the
distinction between mind and matter, and who pointed out the
proper plan for studying the intellectual philosophy. It is
chiefly in consequence of his precise ideas with respect to this
distinction, that we may remark in all his metaphysical writings,
a perspicuity which is not observable in those of any of his
predecessors.” Elem. of Philos. of Human Mind, vol. i. (published
in 1792) note A. “When Descartes,” he says in the dissertation
before quoted, “established it as a general principle that
_nothing conceivable by the power of imagination could throw any
light on the operations of thought_, a principle which I consider
as exclusively his own, he laid the foundations of the
experimental philosophy of the human mind. That the same truth
had been previously perceived more or less distinctly by Bacon
and others, appears probable from the general complexion of their
speculations; but which of them has expressed it with equal
precision, or laid it down as a fundamental maxim in their
logic?” The words which I have put in italics seem too vaguely
and not very clearly expressed, nor am I aware that they are
borne out in their literal sense, by any position of Descartes;
nor do I apprehend the allusion to Bacon. But it is certain that
Descartes, and still more his disciples Arnauld and Malebranche,
take better care to distinguish what can be imagined from what
can be conceived or understood, than any of the school of
Gassendi in this or other countries. One of the great merits of
Descartes as a metaphysical writer, not unconnected with this, is
that he is generally careful to avoid figurative language in
speaking of mental operations, wherein he has much the advantage
over Locke.

[245] Vol. i., p. 470. Arnauld objected, in a letter to
Descartes, Comment se peut il faire que la pensée constitue
l’essence de l’esprit, puisque l’esprit est une substance, et que
la pensée semble n’en être qu’un mode? Descartes replied that
thought in general, la pensée, ou la nature que pense, in which
he placed the essence of the soul, was very different from such
or such particular acts of thinking, vol. vi., p. 153-160.

[246] Philosophy of Human Mind, vol. i., note A. See the
Principia, § 63.

|Paradoxes of Descartes.|

100. Several singular positions which have led to an undue depreciation of Descartes in general as a philosopher, occur in his metaphysical writings. Such was his denial of thought, and, as is commonly said, sensation to brutes, which he seems to have founded on the mechanism of the bodily organs, a cause sufficient, in his opinion, to explain all the phænomena of the motions of animals, and to obviate the difficulty of assigning to them immaterial souls;[247] his rejection of final causes in the explanation of nature, as far above our comprehension, and unnecessary to those who had the internal proof of God’s existence; his still more paradoxical tenet that the truth of geometrical theorems, and every other axiom of intuitive certainty, depended upon the will of God; a notion that seems to be a relic of his original scepticism, but which he pertinaciously defends throughout his letters.[248] From remarkable errors, men of original and independent genius are rarely exempt; Descartes had pulled down an edifice constructed by the labours of near two thousand years, with great reason in many respects, yet perhaps with too unlimited a disregard of his predecessors; it was his destiny, as it had been theirs, to be sometimes refuted and depreciated in his turn. But the single fact of his having first established, both in philosophical and popular belief, the immateriality of the soul, were we even to forget the other great accessions which he made to psychology, would declare the influence he has had on human opinion. From this immateriality, however, he did not derive the tenet of its immortality. He was justly contented to say that from the intrinsic difference between mind and body, the dissolution of the one could not necessarily take away the existence of the other, but that it was for God to determine whether it should continue to exist; and this determination, as he thought, could only be learned from his revealed will. The more powerful arguments, according to general apprehension, which reason affords for the sentient being of the soul after death, did not belong to the metaphysical philosophy of Descartes, and would never have been very satisfactory to his mind. He says, in one of his letters, that “laying aside what faith assures us of, he owns that it is more easy to make conjectures for our own advantage and entertain promising hopes, than to feel any confidence in their accomplishment.”[249]

[247] It is a common opinion that Descartes denied all life and
sensibility to brutes. But this seems not so clear. Il faut
remarquer, he says in a letter to More, where he has been arguing
against the existence in brutes of any thinking principle, que je
parle de la pensée, non de la vie, ou du sentiment; car je n’ôte
la vie à aucun animal, ne la faisant consister que dans la seule
chaleur du cœur. Je ne leur refuse pas même le sentiment autant
qu’il dépend des organes du corps, vol. x., p. 208. In a longer
passage, if he does not express himself very clearly, he admits
passions in brutes, and it seems impossible that he could have
ascribed passions to what has no sensation. Much of what he here
says is very good. Bien que Montaigne et Charron aient dit, qu’il
y a plus de différence d’homme à homme que d’homme à bête, il
n’est toutefois jamais trouvé aucune bête si parfaite, qu’elle
ait usé de quelque signe pour faire entendre à d’autres animaux
quelque chose que n’eût point de rapport à ses passions; et il
n’y a point d’homme si imparfait qu’il n’en use; en sorte que
ceux qui sont sourds et muets inventent des signes particuliers
par lesquels ils expriment leur pensées; ce qui me semble un très
fort argument pour prouver que ce qui fait que les bêtes ne
parlent point comme nous, est qu’elles n’ont aucune pensée, et
non point que les organes leur manquent. Et on ne peut dire
qu’elles parlent entre elles, mais que nous ne les entendons pas;
car _comme les chiens et quelques autres animaux nous expriment
leurs passions_, ils nous exprimeroient aussi bien leurs pensées
s’ils en avoient. Je sais bien que les bêtes font beaucoup de
choses mieux que nous, mais je ne m’en étonne pas; car cela même
sert à prouver qu’elles agissent naturellement, et par ressorts,
ainsi qu’un horloge; laquelle montre bien mieux l’heure qu’il
est, que notre jugement nous l’enseigne.... On peut seulement
dire que, bien que les bêtes ne fassent aucune action qui nous
assure qu’elles pensent, toutefois, à cause que les organes de
leurs corps ne sont pas fort differens des nôtres, on peut
conjecturer qu’il y a quelque pensée jointe à ces organes, ainsi
que nous experimentons en nous, bien que la leur soit beaucoup
moins parfaite; à quoi je n’ai rien à répondre, si non que si
elles pensoient aussi que nous, elles auroient une ame immortelle
aussi bien que nous; ce qui n’est pas vraisemblable, à cause
qu’il n’y a point de raison pour le croire de quelques animaux,
sans le croire de tous, et qu’il y en a plusieurs trop imparfaits
pour pouvoir croire cela d’eux, comme sont les huitres, les
éponges, &c. Vol. ix., p. 425. I do not see the meaning of une
ame immortelle in the last sentence; if the words had been une
ame immatérielle, it would be to the purpose. More, in a letter
to which this is a reply, had argued as if Descartes took brutes
for insensible machines, and combats the paradox with the
arguments which common sense furnishes. He would even have
preferred ascribing immortality to them, as many ancient
philosophers did. But surely Descartes, who did not acknowledge
any proofs of the immortality of the human soul to be valid,
except those founded on revelation, needed not to trouble himself
much about this difficulty.

[248] C’est en effet parler de Dieu comme d’un Jupiter ou d’un
Saturne, et l’assujettir au Styx et aux destinées, que de dire
que ces vérités sont indépendantes de lui. Ne craignez point, je
vous prie, d’assurer et de publier partout que c’est Dieu qui a
établi ces lois en la nature, ainsi qu’un roi établit les lois en
son royaume. Vol. vi., p. 109. He argues as strenuously the same
point in p. 132 and p. 307.

[249] Vol. ix., p. 369.

|His just notion of definitions.|

101. Descartes was perhaps the first who saw that definitions of words, already as clear as they can be made, are nugatory or impenetrable. This alone would distinguish his philosophy from that of the Aristotelians, who had wearied and confused themselves for twenty centuries with unintelligible endeavours to grasp by definition what refuses to be defined. “Mr Locke,” says Stewart, “claims this improvement as entirely his own, but the merit of it unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always sufficiently attended to it in his researches.”[250] A still more decisive passage to this effect, than that referred to by Stewart in the Principia will be found in the posthumous dialogue on the Search after Truth. It is objected by one of the interlocutors, as it had actually been by Gassendi, that, to prove his existence by the act of thinking, he should first know what existence and what thought is. “I agree with you,” the representative of Descartes replies, “that it is necessary to know what doubt is, and what thought is, before we can be fully persuaded of this reasoning; I doubt, therefore I am, or what is the same, I think, therefore I am. But do not imagine that for this purpose you must torture your mind to find out the next genus, or the essential differences, as the logicians talk, and so compose a regular definition. Leave this to such as teach or dispute in the schools. But whoever will examine things by himself, and judge of them according to his understanding, cannot be so senseless as not to see clearly, when he pays attention, what doubting, thinking, being, are, and as to have any need to learn their distinctions. Besides, there are things which we render more obscure, in attempting to define them, because, as they are very simple and very clear, we cannot know and comprehend them better than by themselves. And it should be reckoned among the chief errors that can be committed in science for men to fancy that they can define that which they can only conceive, and distinguish what is clear in it from what is obscure, while they do not see the difference between that which must be defined before it is understood and that which can be fully known by itself. Now, among things which can thus be clearly known by themselves, we must put doubting, thinking, being. For I do not believe any one ever existed so stupid as to need to know what being is before he could affirm that he is; and it is the same of thought and doubt. Nor can he learn these things except by himself, nor be convinced of them but by his own experience, and by that consciousness and inward witness which every man finds in himself when he examines the subject. And as we should define whiteness in vain to a man who can see nothing, while one can open his eyes and see a white object requires no more, so to know what doubting is, and what thinking is, it is only necessary to doubt and to think.”[251] Nothing could more tend to cut short the verbal cavils of the schoolmen, than this limitation of their favourite exercise, definition. It is due, therefore, to Descartes, so often accused of appropriating the discoveries of others, that we should establish his right to one of the most important that the new logic has to boast.

[250] Dissertation, ubi, suprá, Stewart, in his Philosophical
Essays, note A, had censured Reid for assigning this remark to
Descartes and Locke, but without giving any better reason than
that it is found in a work written by Lord Stair; earlier,
certainly, than Locke, but not before Descartes. It may be
doubtful, as we shall see hereafter, whether Locke has not gone
beyond Descartes, or at least distinguished undefinable words
more strictly.

[251] Vol. xi., p. 369.

|His notion of substances.|

102. He seems, at one moment, to have been on the point of taking another step very far in advance of his age. “Let us take,” he says, “a piece of wax from the honey-comb; it retains some taste and smell, it is hard, it is cold, it has a very marked colour, form, and size. Approach it to the fire; it becomes liquid, warm, inodorous, tasteless; its form and colour are changed, its size is increased. Does the same wax remain after these changes? It must be allowed that it does; no one doubts it, no one thinks otherwise. What was it then that we so distinctly knew to exist in this piece of wax? Nothing certainly that we observed by the senses, since all that the taste, the smell, the sight, the touch reported to us has disappeared, and still the same wax remains.” This something which endures under every change of sensible qualities cannot be imagined; for the imagination must represent some of these qualities, and none of them are essential to the thing; it can only be conceived by the understanding.[252]

[252] Méditation Seconde, i. 256.

|Not quite correct.|

103. It may seem almost surprising to us, after the writings of Locke and his followers on the one hand, and the chemist with his crucible on the other, have chased these abstract substances of material objects from their sanctuaries, that a man of such prodigious acuteness and intense reflection as Descartes should not have remarked that the identity of wax after its liquefaction is merely nominal, and depending on arbitrary language, which in many cases gives new appellations to the same aggregation of particles after a change of their sensible qualities; and that all we call substances are but aggregates of resisting moveable corpuscles, which by the laws of nature are capable of affecting our senses differently, according to the combinations they may enter into, and the changes they may successively undergo. But if he had distinctly seen this, which I do not apprehend that he did, it is not likely that he would have divulged the discovery. He had already given alarm to the jealous spirit of orthodoxy by what now appears to many so self-evident, that they have treated the supposed paradox as a trifling with words, the doctrine that colour, heat, smell, and other secondary qualities, or accidents of bodies, do not exist in them, but in our own minds, and are the effects of their intrinsic or primary qualities. It was the the tenet of the schools that these were sensible realities, inherent in bodies; and the church held as an article of faith, that the substance of bread being withdrawn from the consecrated wafer, the accidents of that substance remained as before, but independent, and not inherent in any other. Arnauld raised this objection, which Descartes endeavoured to repel by a new theory of transubstantiation; but it always left a shade of suspicion, in the Catholic church of Rome, on the orthodoxy of Cartesianism.

|His notions of intuitive truth.|

104. “The paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our reasonings concerning the human mind, he ascribes to the evidence of consciousness” is reckoned by Stewart among the great merits of Descartes. It is certain that there are truths which we know, as it is called, intuitively, that is, by the mind’s immediate inward glance. And reasoning would be interminable, if it did not find its ultimate limit in truths which it cannot prove. Gassendi imputed to Descartes, that, in his fundamental enthymem, Cogito, ergo sum, he supposed a knowledge of the major premise, Quod cogitat, est. But Descartes replied that it was a great error to believe that our knowledge of particular propositions must always be deduced from universals, according to the rules of logic; whereas, on the contrary, it is by means of our knowledge of particulars that we ascend to generals, though it is true that we descend again from them to infer other particular propositions.[253] It is probable that Gassendi did not make this objection very seriously.

[253] Vol. ii., p. 305. See too the passage, quoted above, in his
posthumous dialogue.

105. Thus the logic of Descartes, using that word for principles that guide our reasoning, was an instrument of defence both against the captiousness of ordinary scepticism, that of the Pyrrhonic school, and against the disputatious dogmatism of those who professed to serve under the banner of Aristotle. He who reposes on his own consciousness, or who recurs to first principles of intuitive knowledge, though he cannot be said to silence his adversary, should have the good sense to be silent himself, which puts equally an end to debate. But so far as we are concerned with the investigation of truth, the Cartesian appeal to our own consciousness, of which Stewart was very fond, just as it is in principle, _may_ end in an assumption of our own prejudices as the standard of belief. Nothing can be truly self-evident, but that which a clear, an honest, and an experienced understanding in another man acknowledges to be so.

|Treatise on art of logic.|

106. Descartes has left a treatise highly valuable, but not very much known, on the art of logic, or rules for the conduct of the understanding.[254] Once only, in a letter, he has alluded to the name of Bacon.[255] There are perhaps a few passages in this short tract that remind us of the Novum Organum. But I do not know that the coincidence is such as to warrant a suspicion that he was indebted to it; we may reckon it rather a parallel, than a derivative logic; written in the same spirit of cautious, inductive procedure, less brilliant and original in its inventions, but of more general application than the Novum Organum, which is with some difficulty extended beyond the province of natural philosophy. Descartes is as averse as Bacon to syllogistic forms. “Truth,” he says, “often escapes from these fetters, in which those who employ them remain entangled. This is less frequently the case with those who make no use of logic, experience showing that the most subtle of sophisms cheat none but sophists themselves, not those who trust to their natural reason. And to convince ourselves how little this syllogistic art serves towards the discovery of truth, we may remark that the logicians can form no syllogism with a true conclusion, unless they are already acquainted with the truth that the syllogism develops. Hence it follows that the vulgar logic is wholly useless to him who would discover truth for himself, though it may assist in explaining to others the truth he already knows, and that it would be better to transfer it as a science from philosophy to rhetoric.”[256]

[254] M. Cousin has translated and republished two works
of Descartes, which had only appeared in Opera Posthuma Cartesii,
Amsterdam, 1701. Their authenticity, from external and intrinsic
proofs, is out of question. One of these is that mentioned in the
text; entitled “Rules for the Direction of the Understanding;”
which, though logical in its subject, takes most of its
illustrations from mathematics. The other is a dialogue, left
imperfect, in which he sustains the metaphysical principles of
his philosophy. Of these two little tracts, their editor has
said, that “they equal in vigour and perhaps surpass in
arrangement the Meditations and Discourse on Method. We see in
these more unequivocally the main object of Descartes, and the
spirit of the revolution which has created modern philosophy, and
placed in the understanding itself the principle of all
certainty, the point of departure for all legitimate inquiry.
They might seem written but yesterday, and for the present age.”
Vol. xi. preface, p. 1. I may add to this, that I consider the
Rules for the direction of the Understanding as one of the best
works on logic (in the enlarged sense) which I have ever read;
more practically useful, perhaps, to young students than the
Novum Organum; and though, as I have said, his illustrations are
chiefly mathematical, most of his rules are applicable to the
general discipline of the reasoning powers. It occupies little
more than one hundred pages, and I think that I am doing a
service in recommending it. Many of the rules will, of course, be
found in later books; some possibly in earlier. This tract, as
well as the dialogue which follows it, is incomplete, a portion
being probably lost.

[255] Si quelqu’un de cette humeur vouloit entreprendre
d’écrire l’histoire des apparences célestes selon la méthode de
Verulamius. Vol. vi., p. 210.

[256] Vol. xi., p. 255.

|Merits of his writings.|

107. It would occupy too much space to point out the many profound and striking thoughts which this treatise on the conduct of the understanding, and indeed most of the writings of Descartes contain. “The greater part of the questions on which the learned dispute are but questions of words. These occur so frequently that, if philosophers would agree on the signification of their words, scarce any of their controversies would remain.” This has been continually said since; but it is a proof of some progress in wisdom, when the original thought of one age becomes the truism of the next. No one had been so much on his guard against the equivocation of words, or knew so well their relation to the operations of the mind. And it may be said, generally, though not without exception of the metaphysical writings of Descartes, that we find in them a perspicuity which springs from his unremitting attention to the logical process of inquiry, admitting no doubtful or ambiguous position, and never requiring from his reader a deference to any authority but that of demonstration. It is a great advantage in reading such writers that we are able to discern when they are manifestly in the wrong. The sophisms of Plato, of Aristotle, of the schoolmen, and of a great many recent metaphysicians, are disguised by their obscurity; and while they creep insidiously into the mind of the reader, are always denied and explained away by partial disciples.

|His notions of free will.|

108. Stewart has praised Descartes for having recourse to the evidence of consciousness in order to prove the liberty of the will. But he omits to tell us that the notions entertained by this philosopher were not such as have been generally thought compatible with free agency in the only sense that admits of controversy. It was an essential part of the theory of Descartes that God is the cause of all human actions. “Before God sent us into the world,” he says in a letter, “he knew exactly what all the inclinations of our will would be; it is he that has implanted them in us; it is he also that has disposed all other things, so that such or such objects should present themselves to us at such or such times, by means of which he has known that our free will would determine us to such or such actions, and he has willed that it should be so; but he has not willed to compel us thereto.”[257] “We could not demonstrate,” he says at another time, “that God exists, except by considering him as a being absolutely perfect; and he could not be absolutely perfect, if there could happen anything in the world which did not spring entirely from him.... Mere philosophy is enough to make us know that there cannot enter the least thought into the mind of man, but God must will and have willed from all eternity that it should enter there.”[258] This is in a letter to his highly intelligent friend, the princess Palatine Elizabeth, granddaughter of James I.; and he proceeds to declare himself strongly in favour of predestination, denying wholly any particular providence, to which she had alluded, as changing the decrees of God, and all efficacy of prayer, except as one link in the chain of his determinations. Descartes, therefore, whatever some of his disciples may have become, was far enough from an Arminian theology. “As to free will,” he says elsewhere, “I own that thinking only of ourselves we cannot but reckon it independent, but when we think of the infinite power of God we cannot but believe that all things depend on him, and that consequently our free will must do so too.... But since our knowledge of the existence of God should not hinder us from being assured of our free will, because we feel and are conscious of it in ourselves, so that if our free will should not make us doubt of the existence of God. For the independence which we experience and feel in ourselves, and which is sufficient to make our actions praiseworthy or blameable, is not incompatible with a dependence of another nature, according to which all things are subject to God.”[259]

[257] Vol. ix., p. 374.

[258] Id. p. 246.

[259] Vol. ix., p. 368. This had originally been stated
in the Principia with less confidence, the free will of man and
predetermination of God being both asserted as true, but their
co-existence incomprehensible. Vol. iii., p. 86.

|Fame of his system and attacks upon it.|

109. A system so novel, so attractive to the imagination by its bold and brilliant paradoxes as that of Descartes, could not but excite the attention of an age already roused to the desire of a new philosophy, and to the scorn of ancient authority. His first treatises appeared in French; and, though he afterwards employed Latin, his works were very soon translated by his disciples, and under his own care. He wrote in Latin with great perspicuity; in French with liveliness and elegance. His mathematical and optical writings gave him a reputation which envy could not take away, and secured his philosophy from that general ridicule which sometimes overwhelms an obscure author. His very enemies, numerous and vehement as they were, served to enhance the celebrity of the Cartesian system, which he seems to have anticipated by publishing their objections to his Meditations with his own replies. In the universities, bigoted for the most part to Aristotelian authority, he had no chance of public reception; but the influence of the universities was much diminished in France, and a new theory had perhaps better chances in its favour on account of their opposition. But the Jesuits, a more powerful body, were in general adverse to the Cartesian system, and especially some time afterwards, when it was supposed to have the countenance of several leading Jansenists. The Epicurean school, led by Gassendi and Hobbes, presented a formidable phalanx; since it in fact comprehended the wits of the world, the men of indolence and sensuality, quick to discern the many weaknesses of Cartesianism, with no capacity for its excellencies. It is unnecessary to say, how predominant this class was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in France and England.

|Controversy with Voet.|

110. Descartes was evidently in considerable alarm lest the church should bear with its weight upon his philosophy.[260] He had the censure on Galileo before his eyes, and certainly used some chicane of words as to the earth’s movement upon this account. It was, however, in the Protestant country, which he had chosen as his harbour of refuge, that he was doomed to encounter the roughest storm. Gisbert Voet, an eminent theologian in the university of Utrecht, and the head of the party in the church of Holland, which had been victorious in the synod of Dort, attacked Descartes with all the virulence and bigotry characteristic of his school of divinity. The famous demonstration of the being of God he asserted to be a cover for atheism, and thus excited a flame of controversy, Descartes being not without supporters in the university, especially Regius, professor of medicine. The philosopher was induced by these assaults to change his residence from a town in the province of Utrecht to Leyden. Voet did not cease to pursue him with outrageous calumny, and succeeded in obtaining decrees of the senate and university, which interdicted Regius from teaching that “new and unproved (præsumpta) philosophy” to his pupils. The war of libels on the Voetian side did not cease for some years, and Descartes replied with no small acrimony against Voet himself. The latter had recourse to the civil power, and instituted a prosecution against Descartes, which was quashed by the interference of the prince of Orange. But many in the university of Leyden, under the influence of a notable theologian of that age, named Triglandius, one of the stoutest champions of Dutch orthodoxy, raised a cry against the Cartesian philosophy as being favourable to Pelagianism and popery, the worst names that could be given in Holland; and it was again through the protection of the prince of Orange that he escaped a public censure. Regius, the most zealous of his original advocates, began to swerve from the fidelity of a sworn disciple, and published a book containing some theories of his own, which Descartes thought himself obliged to disavow. Ultimately he found, like many benefactors of mankind, that he had purchased reputation at the cost of peace; and, after some visits to France, where, probably from the same cause, he never designed to settle, found an honourable asylum and a premature death at the court of Christina. He died in 1651, having worked a more important change in speculative philosophy than any who had preceded him since the revival of learning; for there could be no comparison, in that age, between the celebrity and effect of his writings and those of Lord Bacon. The latter had few avowed enemies, till it was too late to avow enmity.[261]

[260] On a tellement assujetti la théologie à Aristotle,
qu’il est impossible d’expliquer une autre philosophie qu’il ne
semble d’abord qu’elle soit contre la foi. Et à propos de ceci,
je vous prie de me mander s’il n’y a rien de déterminé en la foi
touchant l’étendue du monde: savoir s’il est fini ou plutôt
infini, et si tout ce qu’on appelle espaces imaginaires soient
des corps créés et véritables. Vol. vi., p. 73.

[261] The life of Descartes was written, very fully and
with the warmth of a disciple, by Baillet, in two volumes quarto,
1691, of which he afterwards published an abridgment. In this we
find at length the attacks made on him by the Voetian
theologians. Brucker has given a long and valuable account of the
Cartesian philosophy, but not favourable, and perhaps not quite
fair. Vol. v., p. 200-334. Buhle is, as usual, much inferior to
Brucker. But those who omit the mathematical portion will not
find the original works of Descartes very long, and they are well
worthy of being read.

|Charges of plagiarism.|

111. The prejudice against Descartes, especially in his own country, was aggravated by his indiscreet and not very warrantable assumption of perfect originality.[262] No one, I think, can fairly refuse to own, that the Cartesian metaphysics, taken in their consecutive arrangement, form truly an original system; and it would be equally unjust to deny the splendid discoveries he developed in algebra and optics. But upon every one subject which Descartes treated, he has not escaped the charge of plagiarism; professing always to be ignorant of what had been done by others, he falls perpetually into their track; more, as his adversaries maintained, than the chances of coincidence could fairly explain. Leibnitz has summed up the claims of earlier writers to the pretended discoveries of Descartes; and certainly it is a pretty long bill to be presented to any author. I shall insert this passage in a note, though much of it has no reference to this portion of the Cartesian philosophy.[263] It may perhaps be thought by candid minds, that we cannot apply the doctrine of chances to coincidence of reasoning in men of acute and inquisitive spirits, as fairly as we may to that of style or imagery; but, if we hold strictly that the older writer may claim the exclusive praise of the philosophical discovery, we must regret to see such a multitude of feathers plucked from the wing of an eagle.

[262] I confess, he says in his logic, that I was born
with such a temper, that the chief pleasure I find in study is
not from the learning the arguments of others, but by inventing
my own. This disposition alone impelled me in youth to the study
of science; hence, whenever a new book promised by its title some
new discovery, before sitting down to read it, I used to try
whether my own natural sagacity could lead me to anything of the
kind, and I took care not to lose this innocent pleasure by too
hasty a perusal. This answered so often that I at length
perceived that I arrived at truth, not as other men do after
blind and precarious guesses, by good luck rather than skill, but
that long experience had taught me certain fixed rules, which
were of surprising utility, and of which I afterwards made use to
discover more truths. Vol. xi., p. 252.

[263] Dogmata ejus metaphysica, velut circa ideas a
sensibus remotas, et animæ distinctionem a corpore, et fluxam per
se rerum materialium fidem, prorsus Platonica sunt. Argumentum
pro existentia Dei, ex eo, quod ens perfectissimum, vel quo majus
intelligi non potest, existentiam includit, fuit Anselmi, et in
libro “Contra insipientem” inscripto extat inter ejus opera,
passimque a scholasticis examinatur. In doctrina de continuo,
pleno et loco Aristotelem noster secutus est, Stoicosque in re
morali penitus expressit, floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia
libant. In explicatione rerum mechina Leucippum et Democritum
præeuntes habuit, qui et vortices ipsos jam docuerant. Jordanus
Brunus easdem fere de magnitudine universi ideas habuisse
dicitur, quemadmodum et notavit V. CC. Stephanus Spleissius, ut
de Gilberto nil dicam, cujus magneticæ considerationes tum per
se, tum ad systema universi applicatæ, Cartesio plurimum
profuerunt. Explicationem gravitatis per materiæ solidioris
rejectionem in tangente, quod in physica Cartesiana prope
pulcherrimum est, didicit ex Keplero, qui similitudine palearum
motu aquæ in vase gyrantis ad centrum contrusarum rem explicuit
primus. Actionem lucis in distans, similitudine baculi pressi jam
veteres adumbravere. Circa iridem a M. Antonio de Dominis non
parum lucis accepit. Keplerum fuisse primum suum in dioptricis
magistrum, et in eo argumento omnes ante se mortales longo
intervallo antegressum, fatetur Cartesius in epistolis
familiaribus; nam in scriptis, quæ ipse edidit, longè abest a
tali confessione aut laude, tametsi illa ratio, quæ rationum
dictionem explicat, et compositione nimirum duplicis conatûs
perpendicularis ad superficiem et ad eandem paralleli, disertè
apud Keplerum extet, qui eodem, ut Cartesius, modo æqualitatem
angulorum incidentiæ et reflexionis hinc deducit. Idque gratam
mentionem ideo merebatur, quod omnis prope Cartesii ratiocinatio
huic innititur principio. Legem refractionis primum invenisse
Willebroodum Snellium, Isaacus Vossius patefecit, quanquam non
ideo negare ausim, Cartesium in eadem incidere potuisse de suo.
Negavit in epistolis Vietam sibi lectum, sed Thomæ Harrioti Angli
libros analyticos posthumos anno 1631 editos vidisse multi vix
dubitant; usque adeo magnus est eorum consensus cum calculo
geometriæ Cartesianæ. Sane jam Harriotus æquationem nihilo
æqualem posuit, et hinc derivavit, quomodo oriatur æquatio ex
multiplicatione radicum in se invicem, et quomodo radiorum
auctione, diminutione, multiplicatione aut divisione variari
æquatio possit, et quomodo proinde natura, et constitutio
æquationem et radicum cognosci possit ex terminorum habitudine.
Itaque narrat celeberrimus Wallisius, Robervalium, qui miratus
erat, unde Cartesio in mentem venisset palmarium illud,
æquationem ponere æqualem nihilo ad instar unius quantitatis,
ostenso sibi a Domino de Cavendish libro Harrioti exclamasse, il
l’a vu! il l’a vu! vidit, vidit. Reductionem quadratoquadratæ
æquationis ad cubicam superiori jam sæculo invenit Ludovicus
Ferrarius, cujus vitam reliquit Cardanus ejus familiaris. Denique
fuit Cartesius, ut a viris doctis dudum notatum est, et ex
epistolis nimium apparet, immodicus contemptor aliorum, et famæ
cupiditate ab artificiis non abstinens, quæ parum generosa videri
possunt. Atque hæc profecto non dico animo obtrectandi viro, quem
mirificè æstimo, sed eo consilio, ut cuique suum tribuatur, nec
unus omnium laudes absorbeat; justissimum enim est, ut
inventoribus suus honos constet, nec sublatis virtutum præmiis
præclara faciendi studium refrigescat. Leibnitz, apud Brucker, v.
v. 255.

|Recent increase of his fame.|

112. The name of Descartes as a great metaphysical writer has revived in some measure of late years; and this has been chiefly owing, among ourselves, to Dugald Stewart; in France, to the growing disposition of their philosophers to cast away their idols of the eighteenth century. “I am disposed,” says our Scottish philosopher, “to date the origin of the true philosophy of mind from the Principia (why not the earlier works?) of Descartes, rather than from the Organum of Bacon, or the Essays of Locke; without, however, meaning to compare the French author with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our stock of _facts_ relating to the intellectual phænomena, or as the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to which they may be referred.” The excellent edition by M. Cousin, in which alone the entire works of Descartes can be found, is a homage that France has recently offered to his memory, and an important contribution to the studious both of metaphysical and mathematical philosophy. I have made use of no other, though it might be desirable for the inquirer to have the Latin original at his side, especially in those works which have not been seen in French by their author.

SECT. IV.

_On the Metaphysical Philosophy of Hobbes._

|Metaphysical treatise of Hobbes.|

113. The metaphysical philosophy of Hobbes was promulgated in his treatise on Human Nature, which appeared in 1650. This, with his other works, De Cive, and De Corpore Politico, were fused into that great and general system, which he published in 1651 with the title of Leviathan. The first part of the Leviathan, “Of Man,” follows the several chapters of the treatise on Human Nature with much regularity; but so numerous are the enlargements or omissions, so great is the variance with which the author has expressed the same positions, that they should much rather be considered as two works, than as two editions of the same. They differ more than Lord Bacon’s treatise, De Augmentis Scientiarum, does from his Advancement of Learning. I shall, however, blend the two in a single analysis, and this I shall generally give, as far as is possible, consistently with my own limits, in the very words of Hobbes. His language is so lucid and concise, that it would be almost as improper to put an algebraical process in different terms as some of his metaphysical paragraphs. But, as a certain degree of abridgment cannot be dispensed with, the reader must not take it for granted, even where inverted commas denote a closer attention to the text, that nothing is omitted, although, in such cases, I never hold it permissible to make any change.

|His theory of sensation.|

|Coincident with Descartes.|

114. All single thoughts, it is the primary tenet of Hobbes, are representations or appearances of some quality of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. “There is no conception in a man’s mind, which hath not at first totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.”[264] In the treatise on Human Nature he dwells long on the immediate causes of sensation; and if no alteration had been made in his manuscript since he wrote his dedication to the Earl of Newcastle in 1640, he must be owned to have anticipated Descartes in one of his most celebrated doctrines. “Because the image in vision, consisting in colour and shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that sense, it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves; and for the same, cause, that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell, or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received, that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox; and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion), passing to and fro from the object, is worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall, therefore, endeavour to make plain these points: 1. That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing seen. 2. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an image or colour. 3. That the said image or colour is but an apposition unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some external substance of the head. 4. That, as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object, but the sentiment.”[265] And this he goes on to prove. Nothing of this will be found in the Discours sur la Méthode, the only work of Descartes then published; and, even if we believe Hobbes to have interpolated this chapter after he had read the Meditations, he has stated the principle so clearly and illustrated it so copiously, that, so far especially as Locke and the English metaphysicians took it up, we may almost reckon him another original source.

[264] Leviathan, c. 1.

[265] Hum. Nat., c. 2.

|Imagination and memory.|

115. The second chapter of the Leviathan, “On Imagination,” begins with one of those acute and original observations we often find in Hobbes: “That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves; and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord.” The physical principle had lately been established, but the reason here given for the contrary prejudice, though not the sole one, is ingenious and even true. Imagination he defines to be “conception remaining, and by little and little decaying after the act of sense.”[266] This he afterwards expressed less happily, “the gradual decline of the motion in which sense consists;” his phraseology becoming more and more tinctured with the materialism he affected in all his philosophy. Neither definition seems at all applicable to the imagination which calls up long past perceptions. “This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old and past, it is called memory. So that, imagination and memory are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath divers names.”[267] It is, however, evident that imagination and memory are distinguished by something more than their names. The second fundamental error of Hobbes in his metaphysics, his extravagant nominalism, if so it should be called, appears in this sentence, as the first, his materialism, does in that previously quoted.

[266] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

[267] Lev., c. 2.

116. The phænomena of dreaming and the phantasms of waking men are considered in this chapter with the keen observation and cool reason of Hobbes.[268] I am not sure that he has gone more profoundly into psychological speculations in the Leviathan than in the earlier treatise; but it bears witness more frequently to what had probably been the growth of the intervening period, a proneness to political and religious allusion, to magnify civil and to depreciate ecclesiastical power. “If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with its prognostics from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty and ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience. And this ought to be the work of the schools; but they rather nourish such doctrine.”[269]

[268] Hum. Nat., c. 3.

[269] Id. ibid.

|Discourse or train of imagination.|

117. The fourth chapter on Human Nature, and the corresponding third chapter of the Leviathan, entitled On Discourse, or the Consequence and Train of Imagination, are among the most remarkable in Hobbes, as they contain the elements of that theory of association, which was slightly touched afterwards by Locke, but developed and pushed to a far greater extent by Hartley. “The cause,” he says, “of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another is their first coherence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense: As, for instance, from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, from the same cause; from stone to foundation, because we see them together; and for the same cause from foundation to church, and from church to people, and from people to tumult; and, according to this example, the mind may run almost from anything to anything.”[270] This he illustrates in the Leviathan by the well-known question suddenly put by one, in conversation about the death of Charles I., “What was the value of a Roman penny?” Of this _discourse_, as he calls it, in a larger sense of the word than is usual with the logicians, he mentions several kinds; and after observing that the remembrance of succession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment, adds that “to have had many experiments, is what we call experience, which is nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by what consequents.”[271]

[270] Hum. Nat. c. 4, § 2.

[271] Id.

|Experience.|

118. “No man can have a conception of the future, for the future is not yet, but of our conceptions of the past we make a future, or rather call past future relatively.”[272] And again: “The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only; but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present, which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience, but not with certainty enough. And though it be called prudence, when the event answereth our expectation, yet in its own nature it is but presumption.”[273] “When we have observed antecedents and consequents frequently associated, we take one for a sign of the other, as clouds foretell rain, and rain is a sign there have been clouds. But signs are but conjectural, and their assurance is never full or evident. For though a man have always seen the day and night to follow one another hitherto, yet can he not thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so, eternally. Experience concludeth nothing universally. But those who have most experience conjecture best, because they have most signs to conjecture by; hence, old men, cæteris paribus, and men of quick parts, conjecture better than the young or dull.”[274] “But experience is not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit, though perhaps many young men think the contrary.” There is a presumption of the past as well as the future founded on experience, as when from having often seen ashes after fire, we infer from seeing them again that there has been fire. But this is as conjectural as our expectations of the future.[275]

[272] Human Nat. c. 4, § 7.

[273] Lev., c. 3.

[274] Hum. Nat.

[275] Lev.

|Unconceivableness of infinity.|

119. In the last paragraph of the chapter in the Leviathan, he adds, what is a very leading principle in the philosophy of Hobbes, but seems to have no particular relation to what has preceded. “Whatsoever we imagine is finite; therefore, there is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him, for he is incomprehensible and his greatness and power are inconceivable, but that we may honour him. Also, because whatsoever, as I said before, we conceive, has been perceived first by sense, either all at once, or by parts; a man can have no thought, representing anything, not subject to sense. No man therefore can conceive anything, but he must conceive it in some place, and indeed with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts, nor that anything is all in this place, and all in another place at the same time, nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once. For none of these things ever have, or can be incident to sense, but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit without any signification at all, from deceived philosophers, and deceived or deceiving schoolmen.” This, we have seen in the last section, had been already discussed with Descartes. The paralogism of Hobbes consists in his imposing a limited sense on the word idea or conception, and assuming that what cannot be conceived according to that sense has no signification at all.

|Origin of language.|

120. The next chapter, being the fifth in one treatise, and the fourth in the other, may be reckoned, perhaps, the most valuable as well as original, in the writings of Hobbes. It relates to speech and language. “The invention of printing,” he begins by observing, “though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters, is no great matter.... But the most noble and profitable invention of all others, was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connection, whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither commonwealth, nor society, nor content nor peace, no more than among lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this was sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use of the creatures should give him occasion, and to join them in such manner by degrees, as to make himself understood; and so by succession of time so much language might be gotten as he had found use for, though not so copious as an orator or philosopher has need of.”[276]

[276] Leviathan, c. 4.

|His political theory interferes.|

121. This account of the original of language appears in general as probable as it is succinct and clear. But the assumption that there could have been no society or mutual peace among mankind without language, the ordinary instrument of contract, is too much founded upon his own political speculations. Nor is it proved by the comparison to lions, bears, and wolves, even if the analogy could be admitted; since the state of warfare which he here intimates to be natural to man, does not commonly subsist in these wild animals of the same species. _Sævis inter se convenit_ _ursis_, is an old remark. But taking mankind with as much propensity to violence towards each other as Hobbes could suggest, is it speech, or reason and the sense of self-interest, which has restrained this within the boundaries imposed on it by civil society? The position appears to be, that man, with every other faculty and attribute of his nature, except language, could never have lived in community with his fellows. It is manifest, that the mechanism of such a community would have been very imperfect. But possessing his rational powers, it is hard to see why he might not have devised signs to make known his special wants, or why he might not have attained the peculiar prerogative of his species and foundation of society, the exchange of what he liked less for what he liked better.

|Necessity of speech exaggerated.|