ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON". 



539 



matter was a world by itself, beyond the reach 

 of the Cogito. Mind with Descartes was a sub- 

 stance possessed of the property of thinking, if 

 we use that word in its largest sense, so as to 

 comprehend perceiving, willing, and imagining. 

 Matter was a substance possessed of the property 

 of extension — extension comprehending the qual- 

 ities of divisibility, form, and movement. Hav- 

 ing put asunder these two substances, how was 

 he to join them together again ? And, even if he 

 could have joined them, how was he to prove that 

 the knowledge which mind seemed to possess of 

 matter was correct ? 



Descartes's solution sounds strange to our 

 ears, yet it can be translated into modern philo- 

 sophic thought. He starts with the conception 

 of God, which he finds impressed on his mind ; 

 and, as the conception of God involves the con- 

 ception of a perfect being, Descartes considers 

 that every possibility of delusion in the world 

 which he has created, is ipso facto removed. 

 This step, which changed the uncompromising 

 skepticism with which Descartes begins his phi- 

 losophy into an equally uncompromising faith, 

 was influenced no doubt by the theological atmos- 

 phere of his time. But we must guard against 

 suspecting in it a mere concession to the preju- 

 dices of the day, or, as many have done, a com- 

 promise with his own convictions. Every man, 

 even the greatest philosopher, is a slave of the 

 language in which he has been brought up. He 

 may break some of its fetters ; he wiil never 

 break them all. If Descartes lived now, he might 

 have expressed ail that he really wished to say 

 on the character of our cognition in the words of 

 Dr. Martineau : " Faith in the veracity of our 

 faculties, if it means anything, requires us to 

 believe that things are as they appear — that is, 

 appear to the mind in the last and highest resort; 

 and to deal with the fact that they ' only ap- 

 pear ' as if it constituted an eternal exile from 

 their reality, is to attribute lunacy to universal 

 reason." 



" Trust in God as a perfect being," and " an 

 unwillingness to attribute lunacy to universal 

 reason," sound very different ; but their intention 

 is the same. 



Noire takes his first step with Descartes. He 

 s'arts from the Cogito, as what is certain above 

 everything else, and as that without which noth- 

 ing can be certain ; but he protests against the 

 rupture between the subject and object of knowl- 

 edge, and still more against any attempt to heal 

 it by means of the concursus divhvus, maintained 

 by Descartes and his followers. One of the most 



distinguished Cartesians, Malebranche, went so 

 far as to maintain that when our soul wills, it 

 does not act on the body, but that God intervenes 

 to produce the desired effect ; while, when the 

 soul perceives, it is not influenced by outward 

 objects, but again by God only, calling forth in 

 the soul the sensations which we ascribe to the 

 action of the material world. Here we have the 

 true precursor of Bishop Berkeley. 



SPINOZA. 



At this point Noire, like all modern philoso- 

 phy, becomes for a time and up to a certain point 

 Spinozistic. The very fact that we cannot bridge 

 the gulf between two heterogeneous substances, 

 such as mind and matter, shows us that there can 

 be no such gulf. Thus Spinoza was led on to 

 admit, in place of the two, or, in reality, three, 

 substances of Descartes's philosophy, one sub- 

 stance only, of which mind and matter, or, as he 

 would say, thought and extension, are inherent 

 qualities. Body and soul being the same sub- 

 stance under two different aspects, the problem 

 of body acting on soul, or soul on body, van- 

 ishes. Individual souls and bodies are modes or 

 modifications, whatever that may mean, of the 

 one eternal substance, and every event in them 

 is at the same time both material and spiritual. 



Noire goes hand-in-hand with Spinoza, but 

 only for a part, though a very important part, of 

 his journey. The permanent gain from Spinoza's 

 philosophy, in which we all share, is the clear 

 perception that spirit cannot be the product of 

 matter (materialism), nor matter the product of 

 spirit (idealism), but that both are two sides of 

 one and the same substance. 



LEIBNITZ. 



Noire parts company with Spinoza where 

 Leibnitz diverged from the great monistic thinker, 

 viz., when it became a question whether all ex- 

 isting things, material or spiritual, could be satis- 

 factorily explained as so-called modes of one eter- 

 nal substance. What are these modes ? Whence 

 did they arise? What would the eternal sub- 

 stance be without such modes ? Such questions 

 led Leibnitz to postulate, as an explanation of the 

 given universe, not one substance, like Spinoza, 

 nor three, like Descartes, but an infinite number 

 of individual monads. Each monad was to him 

 a universe in itself, each was endowed with two 

 qualities of thought and force. The two impor- 

 tant differences between Spinoza and Leibnitz 

 were, first, Leibnitz's recognition of the individ- 

 ual as something independent, not derivative ; 



