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He was always an amateur, never a man in bondage to the "authorities;" he seems, indeed, to have avowed a dislike for general reading: "Pascal avait peu lu, ainsi que Malebranche," was his excuse.
And yet history was not obliging enough to carry out this convenient and agreeable scheme of development with chronological accuracy, for she had Spinoza complete his pantheism before Malebranche had prepared the way.
There is indeed a noble paradox! Father Malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other measures. I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite seriously of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe, and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go.
It is on the perfection of God that Malebranche bases his argument that 'Dieu n'agit pas par des volontes particulieres. Yet every prayer affects to interfere with the divine purposes. It may here be urged that the divine purposes are beyond our comprehension. God's purposes may, in spite of the inconceivability, admit the efficacy of prayer as a link in the chain of causation; or, as Dr.
Let those who doubt this, read the metaphysical romances of LEIBNITZ, DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, CUDWORTH, and many others: let them coolly examine the ingenious, but fanciful systems entitled the pre-established harmony of occasional causes; physical pre-motion, &c.
Still their work rested upon that which had already been done by Spinoza and Malebranche, by Hobbes and Leibnitz, by Descartes and Bayle, by Locke and Wolff, by Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. With all of the contrasts among these men there are common elements.
Hence, first of all, the theory of "occasional causes," as taught by Father Malebranche, with the laudable, but, as we think, mistaken, design of vindicating the Divine agency in Providence by virtually superseding every other power in Nature; a theory which represents physical agencies as the mere occasions, and God as the sole cause of all changes, which teaches that a healthy eye, with the presence of light, is not the cause of vision, but the occasion only of that Divine interposition by which alone we are enabled to see, and that a man's desire or volition to walk is not the cause of his walking, but the occasion merely of that Divine interposition which alone puts the proper muscles in motion.
The laws of light have been most successfully explained by the great Newton, and the perception of visible objects has been ably investigated by the ingenious Dr. Berkeley and M. Malebranche; but these minute phenomena of vision have yet been thought reducible to no theory, though many philosophers have employed a considerable degree of attention upon them: among these are Dr.
Paley's classical illustration taken almost verbatim from Malebranche, but as old otherwise as the days of Greek philosophy, where a statute took its place was that of a watch.
The fame of Cicero flourishes at present; but that of Aristotle is utterly decayed. La Bruyere passes the seas, and still maintains his reputation: But the glory of Malebranche is confined to his own nation, and to his own age. And Addison, perhaps, will be read with pleasure, when Locke shall be entirely forgotten.
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