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MALEBRANCHE. A separate niche must be made for the Cartesians, almost as great as Descartes, who filled the seventeenth century with their renown, the Frenchman Malebranche, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German Leibnitz. All the rest we see in Him, in His light, in the light He creates in our minds. When we see, it is that we are in Him. Evidence is divine light. He is the link of ideas.
The French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and especially of French materialism, was not only a struggle against the existing political institutions and against the existing religion and theology, but equally an open and outspoken campaign against all metaphysics, especially that of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz.
What will become of the Christian belief in the value of prayers, if God cannot adapt or modify, on any given occasion, the general order of nature to the needs of human beings? These are some of the arguments which we find in a treatise composed by Fenelon, with the assistance of Bossuet, to demonstrate that the doctrine of Malebranche is inconsistent with piety and orthodox religion.
I may add as an explanation that the use of mystery has been attempted even in philosophy; for example, when Pascal, who was pietest, mathematician, and philosopher in one, says in this threefold character: God is everywhere centre and nowhere periphery. Malebranche has also truly remarked, La libert� est un myst�re.
Malebranche and Locke, who dug deeper, found the difficulty of keeping out this enemy still to increase; but they laboured honestly in the design.
The growth of the "universal human reason" a Cartesian phrase, which had figured in the philosophy of Malebranche must assure a happy destiny to humanity.
Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies, and his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that it was more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine. We need not trouble about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes.
Paul's, published his very popular 'Practical Discourse concerning Death', in 1689. He died in 1707. Father Nicolas Malebranche, in the 'Spectator's' time, was living in enjoyment of his reputation as one of the best French writers and philosophers. The foundations of his fame had been laid by his 'Recherche de la Verite', of which the first volume appeared in 1673. He died in 1715, Aged 77.
The denial of the reciprocal dependence of matter and spirit leads to sharper accentuation of their common dependence upon God. Thus occasionalism forms the transition to the pantheism of Spinoza, Geulincx emphasizing the non-substantiality of spirits, and Malebranche the non-substantiality of bodies, while Spinoza combines and intensifies both.
It is thus that on every subject he touched he was continually new, and created sources of freshness. Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great poets, Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne!" How true it is of Montaigne! No French writer, including the poets proper, had so lofty an idea of poetry as he had.
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