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this, or that, or the other group of qualities, which must be present if anything shall be judged beautiful, good, or the like. But although reference to qualities is demanded, I think there is no good ground for regarding it as adequate. It might also be said that anything valued must enter into relations with other things, or that its parts should be set in certain relations one to another. Moreover, it may still be true that, although beauty, say, requires all this, yet the value may not be complete unless the qualities and relations enter also into relations with us who judge. Thus it is that fulfilment of interest, or of tendency, plays its part, and I do not see that we are ever justified in assuming that this part is not essential, before there may be value in any of its forms.

Neither the things which possess the qualities, nor the qualities themselves necessarily exist; and the relations do not. Whether in any case that which is valued is regarded as existent can be determined only by detailed consideration of the particular value concerned, such as was carried through in the second part of this paper. Finally "value itself," or mere worthiness, becomes, on close inspection, one or other of the particular forms of value. These may certainly possess common characteristics; but it is an error to take the latter as constituting all that is meant by value. Anything that is beautiful, for example, may have to possess certain properties, and yet beauty may require that the thing and its properties enter into relations with an individual. And this whole complex-the thing, the properties, the relation, and all the necessary characteristics of the relation-we cannot judge to exist, though we may judge to be real.

Thus, neither in the rudimentary attribution of value, nor in the developed value-judgment, is anything of necessity, in all cases, assumed or asserted with respect to existence.

VII. THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE AS CONCEIVED BY MALEBRANCHE.

By M. GINSBERG.

In this paper I propose, firstly, to state the views held by Malebranche regarding the nature of knowledge; secondly, to inquire whether, granting its presuppositions and within its own limits, his theory offers a consistent account of the way in which we arrive at a knowledge of the world of experience; and, thirdly, to determine and criticise the assumptions and presuppositions upon which it is based.

I.

No

Malebranche adopts Descartes' conception of mind and matter in all its sharpness. The essence of matter is extension, side-by-sideness, and the essence of mind is thought. Mind is a simple and individual substance, but in it there can be distinguished two faculties, viz. Understanding and Will. These two faculties, Malebranche points out,* are not to be conceived as entities different from the soul itself. one is more strenuous than Malebranche in protesting against the appeal to faculties, natures, virtues, in explaining mental or physical phenomena. These are dismissed by him as being vain phantoms of the human imagination, fictions of the philosophers, on a par with the substantial forms of the Schoolmen. Indeed, the faculties of the mind were no more distinct from the mind itself than the capacities of matter were distinct from matter. The capacities possessed by the latter of receiving movements and figures are not entities

* Ecl. II.

distinct from its essence, and, had we as clear an idea of the mind as we have of the body, we should see quite clearly that it is essentially a substance which thinks or is aware of all that affects it, but that it is the soul which is aware and not something distinct from the soul. Similarly the will is not a separate entity but is the soul itself in so far as it loves perfection, in so far as through the impression implanted in us by God towards the good, it is capable of loving what appears to it as good. Throughout this line of thought Malebranche reminds one very much of Locke's later protest against faculties. Like Locke, too, he points out that we ought not to speak of the will as active or as free, but that we ought rather to say that the soul is active or that the soul is free.

Malebranche develops the parallel just indicated between matter and mind very fully. Matter has two properties: in the first place it has the capacity of receiving figures, and in the second place the capacity of movement. So, too, mind has, firstly, understanding or the faculty of receiving ideas, and, secondly, will or the capacity of receiving inclinations. Further, just as matter is capable of receiving two sorts of figures, external and internal configuration, so, too, the mind has, on the one hand, pure perceptions which do not penetrate or modify the soul sensibly, and, on the other hand, sensible perceptions which do penetrate and affect the soul, e.g. pleasure, pain, light, colours, odours. Malebranche is sometimes anxious to restrict the parallel, especially when he finds difficulty in the problem of the freedom of the will, and then he urges that matter is purely passive and has only the capacity of being moved, whereas the will is at once active and passive. But, despite this restriction, it is clear that the whole object of the parallel is to bring out clearly that neither mind nor matter have any power or activity of their own, and that just as God is the ultimate and real cause of all movement in the sphere of extension, so He is the universal cause of all ideas and inclinations. Just as for Descartes, judgment means for Malebranche

acquiescence on the part of the will in what the understanding presents to it. The understanding does not judge but merely apperceives, and the will is free to give its consent or to refuse it to what is supplied by the understanding. The latter can know things in three ways. Firstly, by means of the pure understanding we know spiritual things, universals, common notions, ideas of perfection, e.g. that of the infinite perfection, that of extension and its properties. Secondly, by the imagination we know material things in their absence by means of images in the brain. Thirdly, by the senses we know sensible objects by impressions produced upon our sense organs by the objects themselves when present and by the animal spirits when absent.

Without entering as yet into the details of the various modes of knowledge distinguished by Malebranche, we can see clearly that in essence the mind is regarded by him as passive. It has, it is true, the faculty of volition, for just as the world would be an unformed mass, deprived of the infinite variety which constitutes its beauty, if matter were infinitely extended but without movement, so the understanding or intelligent mind would remain idle and useless, if it had not the active faculty of will which leads it towards the object of its perception and makes it love the good. Nevertheless, will is not included in the essence of mind; it is secondary in character, and our knowledge of it is so obscure that we are unable to deduce its properties. Finally, it should be remembered that even this active element is ultimately due to God, so that the finite mind is really left without any power of its own and is dependent upon the Infinite mind for all that appears to us to be the result of its own efficacy.

It is this idea of absolute dependence upon God, this intense desire of Malebranche to place all real activity in the Absolute Being and to deprive both matter and finite minds of any genuine efficacy of their own, which underlies Malebranche's whole metaphysic and above all his theory of knowledge. But, before

bringing this out more fully, it is necessary to draw attention to the fundamental assumptions made by Malebranche with regard to knowledge which followed from this attitude and from the sharp separation of mind and matter which he accepted from the teaching of Descartes. "Il est evident," he says, "que les corps ne sont pas visibles par eux-mêmes, qu'ils ne peuvent agir sur notre esprit ni se representer à lui. Cela n'a pas besoin de demonstration." So too in the Recherche, Bk. III, Pt. II, he says, "We are all agreed that we do not become aware of objects through themselves." All direct and immediate knowledge of an external world is thus assumed to be impossible from the outset. How can a body, he argues, which has not even the power to move itself, have the power to make itself known by the mind? On the other hand how can the soul have body for its object? It is not probable that "l'âme sorte du corps et qu'elle aille pour ainsi dire se promener dans les cieux pour y contempler tous ces objets." The immediate object of the mind must be something which is actually united with it, and this is what is meant by an idea. An idea is, that is to say," ce qui est l'objet immédiat ou le plus proche de l'esprit quand il aperçoit quelque objet.”

The ideas of which I am aware are something real, have une existence très réelle." There may be some doubt as to the existence of the objects of which by their means we imagine ourselves to be aware but the ideas at least must be real, for "le néant n'a pas de propriété," and one non-entity cannot be distinguished from another, whereas ideas differ from one another, the idea of a square, e.g., being plainly different from that of a triangle. The existence, on the other hand, of objects corresponding to the ideas and supposed to resemble them is problematic. If the created world were destroyed, or if it had never existed, the ideas would still remain. Visibility is not a property that belongs to objects, for what can extension, which

**

* Entr. I, 4.

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