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Updated: June 12, 2025
On the other hand, the philosophical tenet of the Cartesians, which denied a mind to the brutes, resulted in no little cruelty. The treatment of drunkards, and of the mentally defective, has, at times, been based upon the notion that they are possessed by god or demon, and, hence, have a right to peculiar consideration, or may be treated with extreme rigor.
He brought back into philosophy while modifying it and carrying it on to another plane that essential element of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned by the Cartesians. Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition.
But it was easy to see that his aim was to demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse philosophical terms. Divers of them held the opinion that the Cartesians, in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to philosophy. On the other hand Herr Vogelsang, Herr van der Weye and some other anti-Cocceïans also assailed the same book with much acrimony.
This supposition is rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see other men do.
Now, as these instances can never be discovered in body, the Cartesians, proceeding upon their principle of innate ideas, have had recourse to a supreme spirit or deity, whom they consider as the only active being in the universe, and as the immediate cause of every alteration in matter.
When he began negotiations for the publication of the Ethics a rumor spread that he had in press a book proving that God does not exist. Complaint was lodged with the prince and magistrates. "The stupid Cartesians," Spinoza wrote Oldenburg "being suspected of favoring me, endeavored to remove the aspersion by abusing every where my opinions and writings, a course which they still pursue."
It is true that here there is no question of a mystery, but only of natural religion. This is how M. Bayle combats those inward experiences, whereon the Cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which I cannot agree.
Again, and conversely, the action of mind upon matter (which, we are now told, not only needs no explanation itself, but is the explanation of all other effects), has appeared to some thinkers to be itself the grand inconceivability. It was to get over this very difficulty that the Cartesians invented the system of Occasional Causes. They could not conceive that thoughts in a mind could produce movements in a body, or that bodily movements could produce thoughts. They could see no necessary connexion, no relation
It is on account of the injustice there would be in the sufferings of beasts that divers Cartesians wished to prove that they are only machines, quoniam sub Deo justo nemo innocens miser est: it is impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy under such a master as God.
Thus, the Doctrine of Signatures was, that substances showed their uses as medicines by external resemblance, either to their supposed effect, or to the disease. So, the Cartesians, and even Leibnitz, argued, that nothing physical but previous motion could account for motion, explaining the human body's voluntary motions by Nervous Vibrations or by Animal Spirits.
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