MALEBRANCHE 



to excite in our minds certain thoughts, when the 

 movement produced in our organs by contact with 

 foreign bodies will be communicated to certain parts 

 of our brain. Thence it follows that God alone is 

 the cause of all the movements of our body, and 

 of all the affections of our mind, and that He only, 

 speaking absolutely, can render us happy or un- 

 happy. 



The doctrine to which the name of Malebranche 

 is attached is that by which man sees all in God, 

 and that it is God alone that acts in him. It has 

 thus liens uniting it with Spinoza's pantheism, 

 which considers that all in the world moves by neces- 

 sity from the nature of God, in whom he sees only 

 the general and the absolute. This is in reality 

 the theory of St. Augustine, who perceives in God 

 only that which is unchangeable, and which modern 

 Philosophy calls necessitarianism. Malebranche's 

 doctrine is equivalent to a negation of free will. 

 Man is an automaton ; the fall of man original 

 sin conferred on him the liberty of committing evil, 

 and this liberty is man's punishment. As to the 

 animals it is entirely different. Having neither in- 

 telligence nor will, they do not know what evil is. 



In accordance with Malebranche's necessitarian 

 doctrine, he was led to deny individual providence 

 and even all finite existence. It is not conformable 



79 



