But these considerations have not disposed of the sceptical arguments which threw doubt on the existence of the external world. This can only be done by first proving the existence of God.
Descartes’s proofs of the existence of God are not very original; in the main they come from scholastic philosophy. They were better stated by Leibniz, and I will omit consideration of them until we come to him.
When God’s existence has been proved, the rest proceeds easily. Since God is good, He will not act like the deceitful demon whom Descartes has imagined as a ground for doubt. Now God has given me such a strong inclination to believe in bodies that He would be deceitful if there were none; therefore bodies exist. He must, moreover, have given me the faculty of correcting errors. I use this faculty when I employ the principle that what is clear and distinct is true. This enables me to know mathematics, and physics also, if I remember that I must know the truth about bodies by the mind alone, not by mind and body jointly.
The constructive part of Descartes’s theory of knowledge is much
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less interesting than the earlier destructive part. It uses all sorts of scholastic maxims, such as that an effect can never have more perfection than its cause, which have somehow escaped the initial critical scrutiny. No reason is given for accepting these maxims, although they are certainly less self-evident than one’s own existence, which is proved with a flourish of trumpets. Plato’s Theaetetus, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas contain most of what is affirmative in the Meditations.
The method of critical doubt, though Descartes himself applied it only half-heartedly, was of great philosophic importance. It is clear, as a matter of logic, that it can only yield positive results if scepticism is to stop somewhere. If there is to be both logical and empirical knowledge, there must be two kinds of stopping points: indubitable facts, and indubitable principles of inference. Descartes’s indubitable facts are his own thoughts–using “thought” in the widest possible sense. “I think” is his ultimate premiss. Here the word “I” is really illegitimate; he ought to state his ultimate premiss in the form “there are thoughts.” The word “I” is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum. When he goes on to say “I am a thing which thinks,” he is already using uncritically the apparatus of categories handed down by scholasticism. He nowhere proves that thoughts need a thinker, nor is there reason to believe this except in a grammatical sense. The decision, however, to regard thoughts rather than external objects as the prime empirical certainties was very important, and had a profound effect on all subsequent philosophy.
In two other respects the philosophy of Descartes was important. First: it brought to completion, or very nearly to completion, the dualism of mind and matter which began with Plato and was developed, largely for religious reasons, by Christian philosophy. Ignoring the curious transactions in the pineal gland, which were dropped by the followers of Descartes, the Cartesian system presents two parallel but independent worlds, that of mind and that of matter, each of which can be studied without reference to the other. That the mind does not move the body was a new idea, due explicitly to Geulincx but implicitly to Descartes. It had the advantage of making it possible to say that the body does not move the mind. There is a considerable discussion in the Meditations as to why the mind feels “sorrow” when the body is thirsty. The correct Cartesian answer was that the body and the mind were like two clocks, and that when one indicated “thirst” the other
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indicated “sorrow.” From the religious point of view, however, there was a grave drawback to this theory; and this brings me to the second characteristic of Cartesianism that I alluded to above.
In the whole theory of the material world, Cartesianism was rigidly deterministic. Living organisms, just as much as dead matter, were governed by the laws of physics; there was no longer need, as in the Aristotelian philosophy, of an entelechy or soul to explain the growth of organisms and the movements of animals. Descartes himself allowed one small exception: a human soul could, by volition, alter the direction though not the quantity of the motion of the animal spirits. This, however, was contrary to the spirit of the system, and turned out to be contrary to the laws of mechanics; it was therefore dropped. The consequence was that all the movements of matter were determined by physical laws, and, owing to parallelism, mental events must be equally determinate. Consequently Cartesians had difficulty about free will. And for those who paid more attention to Descartes’s science than to his theory of knowledge, it was not difficult to extend the theory that animals are automata: why not say the same of man, and simplify the system by making it a consistent materialism? This step was actually taken in the eighteenth century.
There is in Descartes an unresolved dualism between what he learnt from contemporary science and the scholasticism that he had been taught at La Flèche. This led him into inconsistencies, but it also made him more rich in fruitful ideas than any completely logical philosopher could have been. Consistency might have made him merely the founder of a new scholasticism, whereas inconsistency made him the source of two important but divergent schools of philosophy.
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CHAPTER X Spinoza
Spinoza ( 1634-77) is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme. As a natural consequence, he was considered, during his lifetime and for a century after his death, a man of appalling wickedness. He was born a Jew, but the Jews excommunicated him. Christians abhorred him equally; although his whole philosophy is dominated by the idea of God, the orthodox accused him of atheism. Leibniz, who owed much to him, concealed his debt, and carefully abstained from saying a word in his praise; he even went so far as to lie about the extent of his personal acquaintance with the heretic Jew.
The life of Spinoza was very simple. His family had come to Holland from Spain, or perhaps Portugal, to escape the Inquisition. He himself was educated in Jewish learning, but found it impossible to remain orthodox. He was offered 1000 florins a year to conceal his doubts; when he refused, an attempt was made to assassinate him; when this failed, he was cursed with all the curses in Deuteronomy and with the curse that Elisha pronounced on the children who, in consequence, were torn to pieces by the she-bears. But no she-bears attacked Spinoza. He lived quietly, first at Amsterdam and then at the Hague, making his living by polishing lenses. His wants were few and simple, and he showed throughout his life a rare indifference to money. The few who knew him loved him, even if they disapproved of his principles. The Dutch government, with its usual liberalism, tolerated his opinions on theological matters, though at one time he was in bad odour politically because he sided with the De Witts against the House of Orange. At the early age of forty-three he died of phthisis.
His chief work, the Ethics, was published posthumously. Before considering it, a few words must be said about two of his other books,
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the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Tractatus Politicus. The former is a curious combination of biblical criticism and political theory; the latter deals with political theory only. In biblical criticism Spinoza partially anticipates modern views, particularly in assigning much later dates to various books of the Old Testament than those assigned by tradition. He endeavours throughout to show that the Scriptures can be interpreted so as to be compatible with a liberal theology.
Spinoza’s political theory is, in the main, derived from Hobbes, in spite of the enormous temperamental difference between the two men. He holds that in a state of nature there is no right or wrong, for wrong consists in disobeying the law. He holds that the sovereign can do no wrong, and agrees with Hobbes that the Church should be entirely subordinate to the State. He is opposed to all rebellion, even against a bad government, and instances the troubles in England as a proof of the harm that comes of forcible resistance to authority. But he disagrees with Hobbes in thinking democracy the “most natural” form of government. He disagrees also in holding that subjects should not sacrifice all their rights to the sovereign. In particular, he holds freedom of opinion important. I do not quite know how he reconciles this with the opinion that religious questions should be decided by the State. I think when he says this he means that they should be decided by the State rather than the Church; in Holland the State was much more tolerant than the Church.
Spinoza Ethics deals with three distinct matters. It begins with metaphysics; it then goes on to the psychology of the passions and the will; and finally it sets forth an ethic based on the preceding metaphysics and psychology. The metaphysic is a modification of Descartes, the psychology is reminiscent of Hobbes, but the ethic is original, and is what is of most value in the book. The relation of Spinoza to Descartes is in some ways not unlike the relation of Plotinus to Plato. Descartes was a many-sided man, full of intellectual curiosity, but
