An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes [4] 1138692336, 9781138692336

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AN ESSAY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF DESCARTES

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AN ESSAY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF DESCARTES

MARTHINUS VERSFELD

First published in 1940 by Methuen & Co. Ltd. This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1940 Marthinus Versfeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

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AN ESSAY ON

THE METAPHYSICS OF DESCARTES by MARTHINUS VERSFELD

METHUEN & CO. LTD., LONDON 36 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2

First published in 1940

PRINTED IN

GR~AT

BRITAIN

CONTENTS PAGB

CHAPTER

I

DESCARTES' METAPHYSICAL WRITINGS

,

I

m

THE STRUCTURE OF THE METAPHYSIC

9 28

IV

THE CARTESIAN CIRCLE

38

COGITO ERGO SUM

57

THE NATURE OF THE SELF

70

DESCARTES' DEFINITIONS OF SUBSTANCE

88

THE IDEA OF A THINKING SUBSTANCE

99

II

V

VI VII VIII

DESCARTES

ATTITUDE TO METAPHYSICS

THE FIRST PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE

119

X

THE SIXTH MEDITATION

133

XI

CONCLUDING REMARKS

148

NOTES

171 189

IX

INDEX

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Chapter I DESCARTES' METAPHYSICAL WRITINGS OF ALL his writings upon metaphysical matters there is only one work to wInch Descartes refers as his Metaphysic, and that work is his Meditations on First Philosophy.l To the end of his life he showed no inclination to add to nor subtract from what he had written there. Though he reached his conclusions at a fairly early age, he seems to have remained quite satisfied with them. The fourth book of the Discourse on Method can be called metaphysics only by using the word inexactly. The Discourse is a Discourse on Method. But for Descartes methodology is not Metaphysics, since metaphysics presupposes principles of method. The first aim of the Discourse, therefore, is not metaphysics nor any other branch of science. It is not an exposition of metaphysics for its own sake. The Discourse was written against Descartes's will, at a period of his life when he ardently desired seclusion, and wished to avoid publication. The author's· motive for writing them is known. That Descartes possessed a wonderful new method of conducting his thought with which he had secured extraordinary results became public after his famous meeting with Berulle, the Neo-Platonist cardinal, at the house of the Papal Nuncio. 2 The importunities of Berulle, and his own desire not to appear to have done more than he really had,3 forced Descartes to give an account of himself, and 1

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An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

this he undertook in the Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason, and seeking truth in the sciences, which describes how this method was come by, and contains examples of its fruits. The Discourse is, first and foremost, a description of results, not a treatise which has the actual attainment of truth as its proper end. The fourth book contains an account of what Descartes believes he has achieved by the help of his method in the sphere of metaphysics, but he asserts that from a strictly scientific standpoint the account is imperfect. 4 There is another fact which goes to confirm this. The Discourse on Method is also an autobiography. Descartes calls it the history of his mind, 6 written in fulftlment of a promise and undertaking no more than to describe the fashion in which he has conducted his own reason. It is thus historical. It is intended to tell what in the main a certain man believed, and not actually to reveal the whole chain of reasoning by which his knowledge was acquired. Furthermore, the aim of the Discourse is to give an account of a method which enjoins a universal doubt. To be methodical, metaphysics must commence by doubting rigorously everything that can be doubted, and this for the majority of people must mean the loss of their mental stability. But the Discourse is meant for the majority as much as for the learned: that is why it is written in French, the vulgar tongue, and not in Latin.6 The hyperbolical doubt, indispensable fIrst step in a cogent and scientific metaphysic is, therefore, not mentioned in the Discourse which is consequently, not an accurate treatment of its subject matter. Descartes had, however, the intention of writing a complete, scientific metaphysic; and to fulftl it he composed the Meditations. Their purpose is systematic exposition. They elaborate the fourth book of the Discourse

Descartes'Metaphysical Writings

3

which can be properly understood only from them. 7 Furthermore, they are complete. 8 They are unaffected both in form and content by the Objections, of which the only purpose for Descartes was to give him the opportunity to clear away the adventitious impediments which prevented the reader from seeing what was in itself perfectly luminous. 9 It was to the Meditations only that Descartes referred those who wished, or required, to be informed of his metaphysical doctrine. It is true that the first book of the Principles of Philosophy is frequently regarded as an attenlpt to supplement the Meditations. It appears to be the Meditations reduced to dry formulae, their verve dissipated and their charm lost. But there is no evidence for believing that Descartes considered the Meditations to be in any way inadequate to meet the demands of pure truth and pure science. His intention in writing the Principles he has himself plainly stated. It is to present his philosophy in a form in which it can easily be taught,IO for it must be remembered that it was his ambition to take the place of Aristotle in the Schools. What we fmd, consequently, is not so much the strict order of proof of the Meditations, as a statement of the principles which emerge from them; and an elaboration of those matters which, suppressed for the purpose of rigorous proof, nevertheless require some expansion if they are to be easily grasped. The first part of the Principles, he writes to Mersenne, contains much the same matters as the Meditations, except that the style is quite different, what is stated at length in the one being curtailed in the other, and vice versa. 11 His preoccupation now is not so much with the order of proof as with the infirmities of the apprehending intellect. In this, Principles I shares in the motives which led to the collection of the Objections, which probably influenced the content

4

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

of the Principles. Thus the difficulties for Hobbes and Arnauld of the doctrine of substance, and the real distinction of mind and body, may account for the careful statement of the conception of substance, and the classification of the kinds of distinctions.12 But that he thought the Principles in any way to have superseded the Meditations is clearly not true. They contain, he declares, the principles of knowledge, and this we can call First Philosophy or Metaphysics. That is why to understand them well one must first read the Meditations. 13 The Recherche de la Verite remains somewhat of a mystery. It appears to belong to the last years of .Descartes' life. His intentions in writing it are unknown. Though in dialogue form, it is largely lacking in the literary graces of dialogue, since Descartes had not enough sympathy with the minds of others to succeed in dramatic representation. Epistemon is no more than a heavy dummy, the attacks on whom indicate that period in which Descartes was increasingly occupied in defending his position. It has this in common with the Principles that it is at pains to lay bare the principles underlying the arguments of the Meditations. It contains reflexions of Descartes' own on the [lIst stages of the Metaphysic which occur nowhere else, so that it is strange that the Recherche has been so little used to determine what Descartes' method in Metaphysics was. In brief it is sufficiently clear that of the Discourse, the Meditations, the frrst book of the Principles, and the Recherche, it is the Meditations only which Descartes considered to be his scientific work on metaphysics. The Recherche is critical and polemical, Principles I cannot be understood without the Meditations, and the Discourse is an incomplete exposition the arguments of which are

Descartes' Metaphysical Writings

5

said to receive their full statement only in the Meditations. The student of Descartes' metaphysics, therefore, must concentrate on the Meditations using the other writings simply as aids to interpretation. But to read the "first philosophy" with understanding, it is necessary to know how Descartes conceived metaphysics. The Scholastics had defmed metaphysics as the science which determined the fundamental characteristics of Being. But as Descartes' main problem is to prove that anyt~g at all exists this conception is not possible for him, and since he cannot define metaphysics in terms of its object, he has to distinguish it by a subjective mark. It is the most certain of the sciences, and the one of the conclusions of which we must be certain before we can be assured of those of the others. What bestows on it its certainty is not primarily the nature of its object but the method by which it is pursued. In the Regulae we read: "We must not fancy that one kind of knowledge is more obscure than another, since all knowledge is of the same kind throughout, and consists solely in combining what is self-evident."14 Or again: "Mankind has no roads towards certain knowledge open to it, other than those of self-evident intuition and necessary deduction."ls Metaphysics also must follow the road of self-evident intuition and necessary deduction, the rules for which are established by the Method. The Method which determines the structure of the Metaphysics, is that which Descartes has come by through observing the procedure of mathematics. We must study "the logic which teaches the right conduct of the reason, with the view to discovering the truths of which we are ignorant; and because it greatly depends on usage, it is desirable we should exercise ourselves for a length of time in practising its rules on easy and simple questions, as those

6

An Essay

011

the Metaphysics of Descartes

of Mathematics. Then, when we have acquired some skill in discovering the truth in these questions, we should commence to apply ourselves in earnest to true Philosophy, of which the first part is Metaphysics."I6 Mathematics, says Descartes, accustoms the mind to discovering truth, since in mathematics are found those right reasonings which are found nowhere else. The man who has accustomed his mind to the operatiol1s of mathematics will be fit for investigating other truths since the procedure of thought is everywhere one and the same. I? The Regulae and the Discourse on Method prescribe the procedure of the metaphysician as rigidly as that of the geometer or physicist. Metaphysics is, therefore, an exact science, the propositions of which are demonstrated with mathematical certainty. In the famous letter of April 15th, 1630, Descartes announces that he has discovered "how one can demonstrate metaphysical truths in a manner more evident than the demonstrations of geometry." "Be assured," he says on another occasion, "that there is nothing in my Metaphysic which I do not believe to be perfectly clear to the natural light, nor accurately demonstrated."I8 Metaphysics is thus a knowled'ge of the same kind as, and even more evident than, geometry. It is more evident because a large body of metaphysical truths can be discovered before the doubt is lifted from the truths of Mathematics: "And hence the sceptics, etc., believed that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, and many up to this date consider it' indemonstrable, though on the contrary it is highly demonstrable, and (like all metaphysical truths), can be more surely demonstrated than the demonstrations of Mathematics. For if the mathematicians were to call into doubt all which the author called

Descartes' Metaphysical Writings

7

into doubt in the Metaphysics, no mathematical denlonstration could be made with certainty, though the author nevertheless then gave metaphysical demonstrations. Therefore the latter are more certain than the former."19 We can, then, conclude without fear of error at least this much that for Descartes metaphysics is a science the method of which is the same as that of mathematics, and that he believed it to be the most certain because it is rationally tIle most demonstrable of all the purely human' sciences. Its proofs have complete objectivity. Not only are the existence of God, and the real nature of mind and matter demonstrable with mathematical precision, but the Metaphysic is intelligible to all who sufficiently attend to its proofs "with minds abstracted from the senses."20 One cannot understand these proofs without the will's being conlpelled to assent to them. In the matter of the certainty of metaphysics he would seem still to have been influenced by his scholastic training. "Ad perfectionenl autem cognitionis," says St. Thomas following Aristotle "requiritur certitudo; unde scire aliquid non dicimur nisi cognoscamus quod impossihile est aliter se hahere."21 Hence it is that Descartes never saw fit to augnlent nor revise the Meditations. Since they contain a complete and perfect demonstration of metaphysical truths they are when once completed, completed for ever. There is no more to be said on the matters there treated. He was not able to doubt that his alone was the true metaphysic, and that mankind would need none after his. "I consider that all those to whom God has given the use of reason are obliged to employ it principally for trying to know Him, and for knowing themselves--; this is ,the matter to which I have devoted the nlost study, and in which by God's grace, I am entirely satisfied."22 "I believe," he says in another place, "that I have

8

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

omitted practically nothing of what is necessary for demonstrating the truth; and when the truth is once well grasped, all the particular objections that can be made have no force."23 Like Eudoxus in the Recherche he considers that it is a diseased state of mind perpetually to be worked on by an insatiable curiosity.21 He himself no longer feels any desire to learn anything at al1. 25 Hence too, his statement that his metaphysical demonstrations could equally well have been discovered by somebody else. He considers his metaphysics, he says, to be the only road for arriving at truth in the matters of which he treats, but it is a road which could equally well have been discovered by another. 26 No more glory is due to him for having discovered any truths than is due to a casual passer-by for having accidentally discovered under his feet a rich treasure which had for long successfully eluded the searches of many.27

Chapter II DESCARTES' ATTITUDE TO METAPHYSICS DESCARTES' CONCEPTION of the place of metaphysics among the sciences has given rise to a great deal of dispute. From one point of view, the metaphysics is the maid-servant of the rest of the sciences. It is merely the root of the tree of knowledge, the key to the rest of the sciences. 28 The proofs of the existence of God must be grasped before we can be sure that mathematical propositions are true. The six meditations, Descartes whispers to a friend, contain all the foundations of his physics. 29 M. Liard was the [lIst fully to pose the problem of the significance of his metaphysics to Descartes, and to suggest that it was very small. 30 Setting aside Descartes' oWn statement that metaphysics is the root of the sciences, on the grounds that the physics is self-sufficient and capable ofindependent exposition, M. Liard affirms that Descartes pursued physical investigations before metaphysical, and that the explanation of physical phenomenon was the dominant and perpetual interest of his life. His physics differs from medieval physics in being free from "metaphysical" ideas. Finally, it arises directly out of his method. But Descartes, M. Liard continues, was not entirely free from Scholastic influences. Accepting the medieval idea of philosophy as the total of all we know, he had to construct a metaphysic to retain the unity of his 9

10

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

system. Physics and metaphysics being traditionally united, a physicist was bound to take the precaution of supporting his physics by a metaphysic. Descartes submitted to a necessity external to his proper ends, and explicable by the pressure of tradition. The Metaphysic can be removed from the Cartesian philosophy without leaving any wound. But there are vital objections to this view. In the first place, it does not appear to be true that physics actually was Descartes' first love. A design to cultivate metaphysics seems to have had a defmite place in his early purposes, for M. Gouhier has traced the development of the Meditations from an early plan for a "little treatise on divinity". It is very doubtful exegesis flatly to contradict Descartes' own statements, that all further knowledge depends on the knowledge of ourselves and of God, questions peculiarly those of metaphysics. The arrangement of the Discourse and the Principles is an earnest of the professions of the P~eface to the Principles since in both works the conclusions of metaphysics are stated before those of the other sciences. It is probable, too, that the picture of a Descartes given to precauti0!ls and ruled by expedients has been overdrawn to meet the demands of nineteenth century rationalism. Regarding a character of such complexity the question, tactician or not? may be a gross over-simplification. The philosopher who in 'the Regulae (VIII) affirmed that all the sciences united were but the human understanding was hardly the man to give a merely apparent unity to his works. The contention that the physics has its immediate source in the method is weakened by the quantity of metaphysics included, it seems inseparably, in the Regulae. 31 Indeed, the method appears actually to preclude the immediate rise from it of physics, for it enjoins

Descartes' Attitude to Metaphysics

II

a doubt which leads to uncertainty about the existence of the objects of physics. But physics cannot demonstrate the existence of its own objects, so that the direct rise of the physics from the method is forbidden by the method itsel£ It is just this which thoroughly distinguishes Descartes' position from the traditional. No medieval physicist needed to demonstrate the existence of the objects of his science, since Scholastic metaphysics depended on physics, proving God's existence from the nature of material things as revealed by a physics which took their existence for granted. So far, then, from being influenced by the traditional conception of the role of metaphysics, Descartes reverses the part which metaphysics must play in the system of our knowledge. His contemporaries, indeed, were thoroughly surprised at his originality. You may perhaps believe, says one of them, that what has persuaded M. Descartes of the existence of God is the beauty, the expanse, the order, the movement, the uniformity, the usefulness, and the mutual adaptation of the principal parts of the world, so that created things have served him as degrees for coming to a knowledge of their Creator, according to the apostle's words: For the invisible things of him are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made? But all that is of no importance for Descartes. Behold this proof of God's existence drawn from the profundity of his Meditations! Behold the existent Deity, proved to exist, with the force of a demonstration! If anyone cannot remember that he had an idea of God in his mother's belly so much the worse for him, for the Cartesians remember it perfectly well. 32 The reversal of the roles of physics and metaphysics was thus sufficient to arouse the odium theologicum. It must be noticed, however, that this reversal was not as 2

12

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

simple as it may at first appear. There is room to doubt seriously whether Descartes' physics actually requires that the material world should exist. In declaring that he desired to reduce physics to geometry, he required of its objects no more than possible existence. The real difficulty for physics, raised by the doubt, is not so mucll the difficulty of the correspondence of our ideas with the existent, or world of essences. It is the essences of things which are for Descartes the proper objects of knowledge, but physics cannot prove that we have true knowledge of them. Physics requires metaphysics not to prove that its objects exist but that it is true of the possible. The fact that the medieval relationship of physics and metaphysics was changed by Descartes has led more recent writers to suppose that he believed the latter to have a real priority to the former, but that precisely for that reason, it was no fundamental interest of his. The metaphysics came into being solely for the physics. It was something to construct and have done with. As evidence for this opinion, it is pointed out that in the Preface to the Principles, Descartes compares philosophy to a tree of which metaphysics is the root, physics the 'trunk, and medicine, mechanics and morals the branches. 33 That he is in ea~est with this arrangement, the Discourse and Principles bear witness. Metaphysics raises the doubt about mathematical truths, on which physics and mechanics depend, and establishes the mechanism necessary for the study of the human body. It rids us of the substantial forms. In short, the conclusions of the metaphysics have no significance except as laying the foundations of the other sciences. In the discussion whether Descartes was primarily a physicist or a metaphysician, however, an important distinction has too often been ignored. A confusion has

Descartes' Attitude to Metaphysics

13

been made between two questions which should be kept apart. (I) We may ask what the significance of the Meditations is from the viewpoint of architectonics. What function does it perform in the system of Descartes ? What contribution does it make to the necessary demands of thought? What is its purely philosophic relation to the method on the one hand, and the rest of the sciences on the other? Or (II) there is a psychological question. Where did metaphysics stand in the order of Descartes' interests? Did he enjoy it as much as physics? Was he prouder of his achievements in that domain than in any other? Clearly these are matters entirely distinct, and it will be impossible to argue from the answer of either question to that of the other. The first can be answered on strictly philosophic grounds, by taking the writings apart from the man, and simply studying their internal connections. The second inquiry is biographical and psychological and much more uncertain to afford a defmite answer. His interest in metaphysics might vary from day to day, or at any rate, from one period of his life to another, but that would not alter its philosophic relations to the rest of his inquiries. He tired of mathematics later in life but we should not conclude anything from that about the role of mathematics in the system of Descartes. Let us take the first question first. In turn it can be divided into two: can (a) the method, and (b) the physics stand without the metaphysics? Even if the method is logically anterior to the metaphysics, it is impossible to hold that it precedes it in time. In order to discover rules for rightly conducting the reason, we must be able to examine the reason scientifically at work. It is only because the method is descriptive that it can be prescriptive. And that in fact the

14

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

method was not constructed by Descartes upon purely abstract considerations, but from observing the reason at its work of inventio.n, already appears in his Cogitationes Privatae. Here he says that as a young man, certain clever discoveries being adduced, he tried to frnd them out for himself without having read the author; whence he noticed little by little that he was proceeding according to fixed rules. 34 It would be impossible to hold that the method was formulated by his watching the mind thinking metaphysically. It grew out of Descartes' earlier physical and mathematical researches. But all the more significant for that is the mixture of methodology and metaphysics in the Regulae. The Regulae show that at the time when they were written, Descartes was already in possession of some of the main conclusions of his metaphysics. It might perhaps be argued that the mixture was due to the immaturity of his thought, and that it is absent in Discourse II, were it not for what appears at first to be a striking inconsistency in his last work, the Recherche de la Verite. Asked by Polyander what order there is in things in so far as they are objects of knowledge, Eudoxus replies that one must start with a knowledge of the rational soul, passing thence to a knowledge of God, and fmally to physical nature. 35 It is only then that we come by a method. Apparently we can arrive without it at a knowledge of the soul and of God. Yet Polyander, after being shown by Eudoxus what his nature is, says: "It makes me marvel at the exactitude of your method whereby you conduct us little by little by simple and easy paths;"36 and Epistemon is made to remark that "All that Polyander has learnt by the help of this wonderful method ... consists solely of the fact that he doubts, that he thinks, and that he is a thinking thulg."37 We must conclude that Descartes could put the method both

Descartes' Attitude to Metaphysics

15

before and after the metaphysic only because he thought them parallel. 38 It could hardly be otherwise. A nlethod for finding the truth must depend upon our conception of what knowledge is, and what the characteristics of true knowledge are. This requires that we should know both the structure of the knowing mind and of the things known, and be able to determine their suitability to each other. These questions were especially pressing for Descartes because of his conception ofphysics: he wished to make nature the object of mathenlatics. But why a chain of reasonings in our heads, connected by pure logical necessity, should be a true transcription of the real, and why there should be a harmony between the laws of nature and those of the mind, was a problem which could not be avoided. The problem is, of course, metaphysical, yet Descartes fmds himself compelled to treat of it in Regulae XII, where he commences by resolving the question into its essential elements. "Ad rerum cognitionem duo tantum spectanda sunt, nos scilicet qui cognoscimus, et res ipsae cognoscendae." 39 On the one hand we must show that we have minds that can have knowledge, and on the other that the constitution of things is such that they can be known. This means for Descartes that we must show that we have clear and distinct ideas which are true; and that reality is compounded of "simple natures" which we can apprehend in thought. The same distinction appears in Regulae VIII, where after saying that science is attainable by the understanding alone, Descartes goes on to say that "things themselves must next be considered. These can be investigated only in so far as they are amenable to the intellect; and accordingly we divide them into natures the most simple, and into complex or composite."40 To construct a method we must know that nature will

16

An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

receive the procedure of a mind thinking methodically, and that means that we must know what both mind and body are. It is very far indeed from being self-evident that our clear and distinct ideas are true. From my having used clear and distinct ideas "successfully" in some physical and mathematical researches I may formulate a method enjoining me to· use only such ideas, but its justification thus far is merely pragmatic. I can neither know that these ideas are true now, nor if tIley are, that they always will be. But Descartes' science and his method are not separable and grew up side by side. The reasons why his physics and mathematics depend on his metaphysics are in the ~nd the same as those for the method's dependence. The latter has metaphysical preoccupations because it grows by watching the procedure and demands of science. It is a right method if the sciences which employ it are true of the real, and conversely the sciences are true if the method is right, but the information which will satisfy either condition is the same: we must know whether we can have knowledge and of what. To show why the metaphysics -is necessary for the method is to show why it is l1ecessary ·for the physics. It is not the existence of its object which Descartes' physics most requires to be proved. As has been remarked, it is a physics of "as if", because of its mathematical character.41 Descartes is preoccupied with the problem of certitude. It is of primary concern to him to show that the nlathematics are trustworthy. When Descartes asserts that no atheist can be a geometer he means that the truths of geometry are not self-evident, but that metaphysics must find us their ultimate guarantee. 42 The fmal proof of the necessity of his metaphysics for his science must therefore be the demonstration that

Descartes' Attitude to Metaphysics

I7

geometry cannot guarantee its own truth, and that Descartes knew it. When stating the reasons for the hyperbolical doubt" Descartes points out that mathematicians also can make mistakes. What grounds have they for supposing that all their knowledge is not erroneous? None, except their felt conviction that they have grasped a truth at the moment that they are grasping it. But this conviction is merely a psychological state contemporaneous with the act of apprehension. When this has died away we have a right to say that we remembered that we thought some or other proposition true, but no reason except our past conviction for thinking it true now. The mere apprehension of a mathematical truth is not enough to assure me that my mind is of such a nature that the truth it discovers is true independent of time and circumstances, and true not only for me but also for others.43 A similar difficulty arises in the very course of a geometrical proof My reasoning proceeds by long chains of deductions, the later stages of which depend on "truths" reached earlier. But the steps by which these earlier truths are reached are not immediately present to my mind in the later stages. They are remembered, not intuited, so that my belief in their truth depends entirely on the trustworthiness of my memory for its justification. But what right have I to trust a faculty which so often deceives me, even if I had a right to believe that what I truly remembered was really true? And fmally, is the demand of geometry for clear and distinct knowledge a demand which is justifiable? That confused knowledge is false is not an analytic proposition, since in my youth I was convinced it was true. Similarly, some people distrust clear and distinct knowledge. I need a proof other than its clearness and distinctness to be assured of the truth of an idea. But this in·

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An Essay on the Metaphysics of Descartes

turn drives me to investigate the ultimate constitution of its objects. Geometry, then, on several counts requires the aid of metaphysics. Whether Descartes' metaphysics is successful in giving this support is quite another question, and one which does not in the least affect the fact that he thought it an essential part of his system. It may well be that his certainty is as hyperbolical as his doubt. Why should we not doubt the conclusions which we remember our metaphysics to have reached? Because we remember that our memory cannot play us false? But how can we know that we are right in remembering that our memory cannot play us false? Writing to Elizabeth, Descartes says that though it is necessary to grasp the demonstrations of metaphysics once in one's life, one should not meditate on them excessively. It is better to remember having grasped them, than continually to raise these matters." The proof of the trustworthiness of memory in Meditation V gives the ground for this, since it is there shown that I should not doubt of a truth providing that I remember that I once possessed a clear and distinct comprehension of it. Descartes thus thought it advisable not only for other people but also for himself to take his metaphysical conclusions on trust. We require not only the power of intellectual invention but also of intellectual faith, "for to perceive clearly is one thing, to know with certainty another; for we now know many things with certainty not only by the faith which comes from God, but also because we have perceived them clearly before, though at present we do not clearly perceive them."45 This is not a position with which one can be as wholly satisfied as Descartes would have it. We may take it, then, that Descartes' Metaphysic is necessary for his system, chiefly on account of the need to

Descartes' Attitude to Metaphysics

19

guarantee the certitude of our knowledge. The so-called Cartesian hierarchy of the sciences differs from the Scholastic because it is determined by epistemological demands. For scholasticism, on the other hand, the relation of the sciences to each other was determined by the nature of the objects of these sciences. The highest science was that which had the noblest object; the lowest, that which had the least. The hierarchy of the sciences was, therefore, flXed by an immovable criterion, and the order in which they were to be pursued determined by absolute" objective standards. This order was above the interference of the individual, since it was divinely appointed from the Creation. Implied by this doctrine was the connaturality of the mind with its objects. It was the very essence of man's rational nature to know objects in a certain order. There was no question whether man was primarily a physicist, a metaphysician or a theologian, for this was determined by his definition. In his scientific activities he was first a physicist and fmally a theologian. Descartes takes the first step towards the conceptjon that the order in the real is something relative to the individual's mind. The very fact that there is a question whether Descartes was primarily a physicist or a metaphysician is incompatible with the doctrine of connaturality.48 Descartes conceives thought to be anterior to things. Hitherto a man had been what he was by defmition, fitting into the eternal order of things by a supernatural necessity. Now it was he who could determine this order conformably to the demands of his own intellect. It is here that Descartes' historical significance lies. Speaking generally, philosophy since his day has tended to become psychological rather than metaphysical. The characteristic of medieval philosophy was its genius for metaphysics, because its dominating conviction was the

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objectivity of Being. Thus Aquinas sees God as the supreme reality, and the created universe as an order of beings each representing God in its own way and to its own capacity. Half-way down the scale of created beings is man. He is higher than dead matter and the lower forms oflife , lower than the pure created spirits, or angels. The function of the philosopher is to know or describe the real, and since the main concern of philosophy is the nature of Being or what is, and since man is but a part and not the most important part of the order of created things, he is not the chief concern of philosophy. He has an importance which corresponds exactly with his ontological status. The main interest of philosophy is God, since the object of philosophy is reality, and God is the highest reality. During the Renascence, the centre of interest shifts. It may very well be that man is but a subordinate fragment of reality, but it is he who tells himself this. His knowledge of the real is something which is determined by his own capacity to know it, so that to know whether he knows it truly, he must frrst know what he himself is. The first step, then, in answering the question: what is the real? is to ask: what is the nature of man and of his powers? Is he such that he can know the real at all, and ifhe can, to what extent is his view of it modified by what he himself is ? "Nothing can be known before the understanding, because the knowledge of all other things depends on the knowledge of it, and not inversely."47 "We should once in our life have examined with care to what cognitions human reason is suitable."48 As the first man to give a formulation of genius to this standpoint, Descartes gave the impulse to modern philosophy. We call this philosophy critical because its main emphasis lies upon the knowing agent and ~is capacity

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to know, but in the vastness of its main assumption the critical period is thoroughly uncritical. The Schoolmen assumed that to know what man is one must know what he is not. He must be-taken in a context. To know what he is one must first know what the real is, since what he is and is capable of is determined by his place in the real and the nature of that with which he is continuous. Whether the human mind can know God, or discover the characteristics of the created world, must be determined primarily by asking whether God and the world are such that they can be known. Knowableness is an objective characteristic of the real, and the question whether the mind knows can be answered only by showing that the structure of the universe is congenial to knowledge. The difficulty that, in the meantime, we cannot tell whether the mind is truly determining the characteristics of the real, is no greater than that for critical philosophy: whether the mind is truly determining its own characteristics during its critical examination of itsel£ For if scholastic philosophy begs the question of the capabilities of the human mind, critical philosophy equally begs the question of man's ontological status. Abstract man from his context, and you cannot tell what he is. There is no more reason for believing that we can know what the mind is taken by itself, than for believing that we can know what Being is, taken apart from the knowing mind. The critical philosophy did not supersede the scholastic: it stated the other side of a problem the answer to which will have to do justice to both formulations. It was remarked above that the question, physicist or metaphysician? had two meanings. Whether or not it be granted that his metaphysics are integral in his philosophy, it remains an entirely distinct question, to what degree

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Descartes was interested in his metaphysics; and this is the more difficult question. To discuss it with the fullness it requires is impossible here, but the question cannot be entirely avoided in an attempt, however brief, to place the Metaphysic in its proper environment. It will not be unprofitable here to continue the comparison of Descartes with his adversary, St. Thomas Aquinas. The Thomistic doctrine of connaturality forbids the separation of the question of the place of a science in the hierarchy of the sciences, from the question of its place in the hierarchy of the individual's interests. Man becomes himself by conforming his whole nature to the objective order of the real. He is not and cannot truly be a physicist, or a metaphysician, or a theologian, unless he gives himself to these sciences in the degree which their position in the scale of human knowledge demands. Their study requires the conversion of the whole man towards the real of which he seeks the knowledge, an orientation in one direction, not only of the intellect but also of the will and desires. Theology is the highest of the sciences only because and only when the whole life of man is in God, and its study is a foretaste of the eternal beatitude. In Descartes, however, the rift between the intellect and the affects which is so abhorrent to Aristotelianism, and which was to lead Hume to say that reason is and ought to be the servant ofdesire, had already begun to form. Sensationalism and abstract intellectualism are born at one birth, and the manner of their coming into the world is exemplified by Descartes' conception of theology, which well illustrates the character ofhis mind. This conception is, indeed, somewhat confused in his writings. For St. Thomas, theology is a science which reason, perfected by faith, constructs by developing revealed truths. A trace of this conception reveals itselfin

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Descartes' remark that theologians "need to have some extraordinary assistance from heaven and to be more than men."49 Thus his friend Nicholas Poisson can be convinced that Descartes would not pursue theology because it is a saint exercice. 50 The second strain in his thought is the conception that if theology is a science, the natural light, unaided by grace, is sufficient for its pursuit. It is elaborated by the natural reason from the truths of revelation. It is an application ofphilosophy to a given subject matter. Both these conceptions retain the distinction between faith and theology, the latter being conceived of as a discursive elaboration of the former on the plane of reason. But in the third and perhaps fmal stage of his thought this distinction is lost, theology is identified with the truths of faith, and Descartes is at one with the fipeism of his age. 51 The most striking statement of this position is to be found in the celebrated conversation with Burman, which occurred in 1648. Here Descartes declares that the philosophic reason is not fit to deal with the problems of theology. He would repent of his own philosophy, he says, if it were applied in matters of theology. Uncultured men and rustics can attain to salvation as easily as we, by a simple knowledge of the truths offaith. 52 We should keep our theology as simple as theirs, rather than vex the world with quarrels and disputes, for doing which the Scholastic theology must be exterminated. 53 The human sciences require more ability (plus d' esprit) than the usual, but anybody can be saved. The reason for his desire to simplify theology is that Descartes values it for its practical use alone. For him it is not a theoretical activity valuable for itself: it must be reverenced because it points the way to heaven. 54 It must be estimated less for itself than for its results. But further,

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it is to be valued as much for its results in this life as in the next; for the knowledge and love of God is a sovereign regulator of the passions in which our whole felicity consists. Thus in his correspondence with Elizabeth, Descartes, in telling how the best life is to be lived on earth, says that the first things needful are the knowledge of the greatness and goodness of God, and of the soul's immortality. As God alone knows all things, we must content ourselves with knowing those which are of the greatest use to us: His existence, since the love of Him elevates our spirits and relieves our afHictions; and the soul's capacity to enjoy an infmite number of contentments in a future life, since this belief rids us of the discomfort of the fear of death and elevates us to a selfsufficiency from which we can despise the buffets of the world. 55 Hence it is that he can tell Chanut that the love of God is "in respect of this life the most consuming and the most useful passion which we can have."56 This is the letter referred to by de la Forge, the physician, where he declares that "the final and most efficacious of all the remedies for the passions is the love of God,"57 The attitude is that ofWaterland when, in his third sermon on self-love he says: "It is with reference to ourselves and for our own sakes that we love even God Himself" Theology, in Descartes' thought, tends to become ancillary to, or identical with, his "perfect science of morals" which has the right tendance of the passions as its aim. Descartes' attitude to theology gives an important clue to the structure ofhis mind. His elevation of the practical is a deep-rooted characteristic, and one of the main aspects ofhis revolt against Aristotelianism. For Aristotle the activity of the appetitive soul is ordered to the activity ofthe rational soul, in which the proper perfection ofman

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consists. One cannot ask whether rational activity is useful since in respect of it alone do all other activities have their usefulness. But Descartes reverses this order, declaring in the Preface to the Principles that the end ofall philosophy is practical.58 It is here that know ledge is compared to a tree of which metaphysics is the root, physics the trunk, and medicine, mechanics and morals the branches. Science must make us the masters and possessors of nature, to the end that we may enjoy nature. Our felicity arises from the satisfaction of our appetitive nature. "The philosophy which I cultivate is not so barbarous nor so uncivilized that it rejects the use of the passions; on the contrary, it is in that alone that I place all the sweetness and felicity of this life."59 Our first care, he says, should be to live well, 60 and good living consists in the right use of the emotions. It was this which his uncompleted "parfaite morale" was to achieve, and to which all his science was orientated. Baillet has left it on record that his greatest preoccupation was moral philosophy,61 a moral philosophy which was in the words of M. Leroy born of physiology, useful for the conduct of life, and tending to the rehabilitation of the passions. 62 That the human good thus conceived was the aim of his physics has been brought out so well by M. Boutroux as to render it unnecessary to repeat his arguments. 63 Thus the Dioptrics are justified on the grounds "that the whole conduct of our life depends on our senses, that of sight being the most universal of these, and the most noble, there is no doubt that the inventions which serve to increase its powers are the most useful possible."64 Mathematics came to tire him because it was barren. It is of very little use "especially when one cultivates it only for itself, without applying it to anything."65 Baillet declares that by 1638 he had neglected geometry for

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fifteen years. His interests were turning more and more towards physiology and medicine; in the first place, because the body and the mind are so closely connected that one can act on the latter through the former; and in the second, because he wanted to prolong human life, so that humanity might have a longer enjoyment of the fruits of its mastery of nature. 66 The treatise on the passions, with its account of their physiological basis, and its practical intention of teaching their regulation is the fruit of this belie£ Of any kind of knowledge, thus, Descartes always asked the question whether or not it was useful to life. True knowledge is better than false because it is more useful. It is useful in two ways. First, it puts us in a position to make use of the object known. And secondly, it is useful because we are so constituted that its possession affords us satisfaction. We may, accordingly, attempt to estimate Descartes' valuation of his metaphysics in terms of his conception of their usefulness. Now the metaphysic gives us knowledge of the nature of God, and thus renders Him utilizable in controlling our passions. It lays the foundation of physics on which all the arts of life depend, and prepares the ways for the treatise on the passions. It is in fact thoroughly useful, and to that extent thoroughly estimable. In the second place, he writes to Elizabeth that the possession of truth has itself a moral sublimity. It is a very great perfection to know the truth, so great indeed, that it is better to know the truth and be saddened, than not to know it and be cheerful. But since metaphysics is the science of immaterial things, and since immaterial things can be better known than material, it is clear that metaphysics has a higher moral value as truth than the science of material things. On the basis of the rational satisfaction which it offers one must suppose there-

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fore that Descartes was fond of metaphysical speculation. It teaches us to think clearly and avoid error and thus to proceed with confidence in this life. It is the chief remedy against that inaccuracy of thought which we are told at the commencement of the Port-Royal Logic leads not merely to errors in the sciences-and after all these are "totally useless considered in themselves and for themselves alone. Men are not born to employ their time in measuring lines, in examining the relation of angles, and considering the movements of matter; their minds are too great, their life too short, their time too precious, to be engrossed with such petty objects"-but to the majority of the offences we commit in civil life. Whether one can by arguments of this kind satisfactorily answer the question physicist or metaphysician in the second meaning which that question may have is open to serious doubt. It is worth calling attention to and giving an example of them, however, to show how necessary it is to sever considerations of this kind from demonstrations of the architectonic position of the metaphysics in the philosophy of Descartes.

3

Chapter III THE STRUCTURE OF THE METAPHYSIC

IF THE demands of the Method largely determine the

content of the Metaphysic, its rules determine its structure and form. The formal characteristics of the Metaphysic are very important for understanding it. In all branches of philosophy, it was the structure rather than the content ofknowledge which appeared ofimportance to Descartes, since the first and chief requirement for reaching truth is that we should search for it in that orderly and methodical fashion of which we are told in the Regulae and in the Discourse on Method. The test of a science, and the channel through which it compels our will and our understanding, is that its proofs should proceed with perfect consequence from simple, self-evident truths. It is in the careful observation of the innumerable examples of system (ordines) in the real, all different from one another and yet regular, that the whole of human wisdom consists.67 It is not the fact of formulating a truth which counts for Descartes, remarks M. Milhaud, it is the fact of demonstrating it, of grasping it, of unfolding it. 68 He set no value on truth merely because it happened to be new, and could not abide those who were merely innovators and no more. 69 "I am by no means of a like mind with those wilo desire that their opinions should appear new; on the contrary, I accommodate mine to those of others, so far as the truth permits me."70 His ~8

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endeavour is to see a truth in a systematic context. It did not much matter whether it was old or new. Hence his criticism of Regius. "But now frequent experience compels me to conclude that he is swayed not so much by love of truth as by love of novelty. He holds all that he has learned from others to be old-world and outworn, thinking nothing sufficiently novel except what he has hammered out of his own brain."71 Further, Regius is accused in the Preface to the Principles of having in his Fundamenta Physicae changed the necessary order of truth. 72 The explanation of the criticism is that for Descartes the truth ofideas is a function of their order. A discovery may be new when come upon otherwise than by the Method, but it will be neither true nor false. If one uses the true Method, nothing is more laudable than to be an innovator, because the newness and truth of our discoveries are then inseparable. Descartes admits no antique truths but only antique prejudices, because his is the first true method. The discoveries of antiquity can become true by being incorporated in a science methodically cultivated. It is this point of view which accounts for Descartes' both contemning and using the past. "The whole of the Fourth Meditation," says M. Gilson, "is a tissue of borrowings made from tIle theology of St. Thomas, and from that of the Oratory. It is no exaggera.. tion to say that they contain nothing original unless it is the order in which these materials are arranged."73 Thus also the "morale provisoire" is merely useful, not true, until it has been rediscovered at the top of the tree of knowledge as the "mo-rale definitive." It is easily understandable, therefore, why the study of the Meditations is interdicted to those who read "without caring to comprehend the order and connection of the reasonings."74 It is clear, also, why Descartes should

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regard the Meditations both to be his defmitive metaphysical work, and to be complete. True science must consist of a perfect nexus of truths, and since metaphysics is a demonstrative science, its exposition must contain neither too few nor too many truths. To be cogent it must be coherent and consequent, complete and balanced. If to understand a science it is necessary to comprehend the interrelation and order of proofs in a complete system, then, in considering his _Meditations to be scientific, Descartes presents them as lacking in nothing. It follows, further, that the proper study of the Cartesian metaphysics is the study of the formal order of the proofs of the Meditations. This is more important than the study of their content since that is the same both for the Medita-

tions and the first book of the Principles. More important than to know what is proved is to know how it is proved, to understand the Meditations being to be able to view at a glance, or intuitively, the order and connection of the reasonmgs. Before it is possible to understand the Meditations, therefore, it is necessary to determine what their structure is, and the form which demonstration takes in them. In his reply to the authors of the second set of objections Descartes explains his intentions concerning the structure of the Meditations. Metaphysical truth must be.demonstrated geometrically. But in the geometrical mode of writing two things must be distinguished, namely, the order and the method of proof, and of these he gives the following account. I. The order of proof. "The order consists merely in putting forward those things first that should be known without the aid of what comes subsequently, and arranging all other matters so that their proof depends solely on what precedes them. I certainly tried to follow this order

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as exactly as possible in my Meditations; and it was through keeping to this that I treated of the distinction between. the mind and the hody, not in the second Meditation, but fmally in the sixth, and deliberately and consciously omitted much, because it required an explanation of much else besides."75 The order of the metaphysic is thus an order ofproof, of rational demonstration. This order is not influenced by the order in the real of the objects into whose nature we are inquiring. It is a purely logical order, so that the order in which things are apprehended gives no direct clue to their ontological status. According to the third rule of the Discourse on Method, we "assign in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and consequence."76 We start with the most intelligible things not with the most real. II. The method of proof. In his reply to the authors of the second set of objections Descartes says that there are two methods ofproof, the analytic and the synthetic. He himself employs the analytic method, because it represents the actual order in which metaphysical discoveries are made, and is therefore the best method of teaching. "If the reader cares to follow it, and gives sufficient attention to everything, he understands the matter no less perfectly and makes it as much his own as ifhe had himself discovered it. But it contains nothing to incite belief in an inattentive or hostile reader; for if the very least thing brought forward escapes his notice, the necessity of the conclusions is lost; and on many matters which, nevertheless, should be specially noted, it often scarcely touches, because they are clear to anyone who gives sufficient attention to them."77 Descartes' intention is thus to take the reader with him on his journey of metaphysical discovery. The Meditations will become clear to those "who

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will pay enough attention, and will meditate with nle for long."78 They are not merely an exposition of discovered truth. They reflect the creative working of the human mind. The analytic method requires to be accepted before it can be understood. "I cannot give men penetration (esprit!) nor make the kind of people who will not go into a room to look see what is in it."79 Descartes greatly complicates the work of his interpreter by declaring that to be critical of his method is the same as to be ignorant of it. This he considers to be the inescapable consequence of the analytic method. Because this consists rather in a habit of mind than in particular rules80 it is impossible to follow the intricacies of the proof in the presence of a hostile attitude which bears witness that this habit has not been formed. To be discussed the method must be known, to be known it must be practised. To practise the method, however, requires time and experience. At each step of the proof we have not only fully to grasp that step but to see completely all the previous steps, and how the last depends on them. The system has to be known at once in whole and in Fart because the ideal of knowledge is to become intuitive, and it becomes intuitive when by long practice we can hold before us at one time both the conclusion and all its grounds. "I know how difficult it will be even for one who does attend and seriously attempt to discover the truth, to have"before his mind (intueri) the whole corpus of my Meditations and at the same time to know each part, things both of which I consider must be done if their full fruit is to be plucked."sl That is why Descartes asks us to spend weeks and even months on the flIst meditation before going any further, and declares that he despises those who think that they can learn in a day what it has taken others twenty years to discover.82

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Descartes' account of the analytic method must be taken to heart by the reader of his Metaphysic. It is, of course, impossible to agree that a criticism of the Metaphysic can arise only from prejudice, but we are under the obligation of acquiring that facility in going from part to part, and of seeing it as a coherent whole which gave it its significance for its author. The difficulty of such an acquaintanceship has perhaps been exaggerated by Descartes from egoism, but it is interesting to observe that he was so convinced of the difficulty of the Meditations that he thought it better to disseminate their conclusions through the channel of authority than to submit the work directly to the public. In a letter to Huyghens he says that he proposes "to elucidate what I hav~ written in the fourth part of the Method, but to have only twelve or fifteen copies printed, to send to twelve or fifteen of our principal theologians and to await their judgment: for I compare what I have done in that field with the demonstrations of Appollonius, in which there is truly nothing which is not very clear and certain, when one considers each point by itself But because the demonstrations are rather long, and the necessity of the conclusion cannot immediately be seen if one does not remember accurately everything which precedes it, it is with difficulty that a man is to be found in an entire country capable of understanding them. However, because those few who understand them assert that they are true there is no one who should not believe them. Thus I think I have completely demonstrated the existence of God and the immateriality of the human soul, but because the demonstration depends on several consecutive arguments, of which the conclusion cannot be properly understood if the least detail of them be forgotten, I see that they will bear very little fruit if I do not find very capable people of a great

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reputation in metaphysics, who taking the trouble to examine my arguments carefully, and who, saying openly what they think, give the impulse to others, in this fashion, to judge of it as they do, or at least to be ashamed of contradicting them without grounds."83 The use of the analytic method makes dogma as necessary for metaphysics as it is for religion, because the popularity of a proof is in inverse proportion to its cogency. The authors of the second set of objections have asked for a sample of the Metaphysic demonstrated by tIle synthetic method employed by the ancient geometers. Descartes concedes that this method "does indeed clearly demonstrate its conclusions, and it employs a long series of defmitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if one of the conclusions that follow is denied, it m~y at once be shown to be contained in what has gone before." Thus the reader, however hostile and obstinate, is compelled to render his assent. Yet this method is not so satisfactory as the other and does not equally well content the eager learner, because it does not show the way in which the matter taught was discovered. 84 In the Metaphysic, then, it is important not so much to know what has been discovered but how it was discovered. What is demanded is not agreement but comprehension. If the synthetic method be employed, and the reader question a conclusion, he is bound to assent to it when he is referred back to propositions to which he has already assented. Yet since this method does not demand from him the lively and constant apprehension of these earlier propositions, but merely the recollection that he once gave his assent to them, the mental gain of the reader is not very great. Again, even a willing reader is retarded by the comparatively mechanical arrangement of the matter demonstrated by the synthetic method.

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The fmal objection to this method is that it demands a statement of first principles from which the proof may proceed, and though this causes no difficulty in geometry the first principles ofwhich are obvious, it results in great diff~ulties for metaphysics in which the difficulty lies precisely in the apprehension of frrst principles. It is of interest to observe that the later Cartesians do not agree that the analytic is the best method of teaching. The Port-Royal Logic states that "there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth, which is called analysis or the method of resolution, and which may also be termed the method of invention; and the other for explaining it to others when we have found it, which is called synthesis or the method of composition, and which can also be called the method of doctrine."85 Regis says that his logic contains "two methods, one of which is called analysis which serves us for instructing ourselves, and the other synthesis, which is suitable for instructing others."86 Descartes himself seems to have suffered a disillusionment. He tells Burman that he has changed the order of proof in the Principles "because the order of discovery is one thing; of teaching another; in the Principles however he is teaching."87 The order of the Meditations, however, is the order of discovery, the record of a spiritual experience in the order in which it occurred. A great many difficulties in understanding Descartes can be avoided by bearing in mind the di~tinction which Descartes makes between the analytic and synthetic methods. We bring upon ourselves nothing but confusion when we try to interpret the Meditations now in the light of one method, now in the light of the other. The habit of keeping these methods apart must be formed before Descartes can be properly read. The order in which arguments are arranged in expositions after the

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synthetic and after the analytic methods necessarily differ from each other. The former is an order of exposition, the latter one of discovery. If I am following a chain of reasoning after the analytic method and, forgetting what is so important for that method: to recall constantly and vividly the steps by which I have arrived at the point where I stand, I mentally substitute for these steps a first principle of the synthetic method, the cogency of the further argument is destroyed. Thus in the Meditations I intuit that I am a substance, I do not deduce it from the general truth that to nothing no properties Ilor qualities belong. It is a very easy mistake to treat what would for the synthetic method be the frrst principles of Descartes' metaphysics, as though they were principles tacitly and unjustifiably assumed in the Meditations. There is clearly no end to the objections which could be raised against the Metaphysic if we believe that Descartes assumes principles which in fact he intends to establish there for the first time, metaphysics unlike geometry requiring that its frrst principles be demonstrated. 88 It is true that tke demonstration of principles such as "of nothing there can be no properties nor qualities" consists, for the analytic method, in nothing other than positing such principles at the appropriate moment, or disentangling them from the intuition in or with which they are given. Their proof consists in their appositeness. But it is precisely here that the difference between the analytic and synthetic methods lies. 111 synthesis we pass from the general to the particular, from clearly formulated general truths to the nature of a particular thing. In analysis, on the contrary, we concern ourselves with the direct examination of the particular thing the nature of which we wish to discover, making explicit during our examination the general principles which reveal themselves as our think-

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ing proceeds. The truth is not considered by the analytic thinker to be deduced from these principles: it is these principles, rather, which are revealed and confirmed by the discovery of the truth in a manner which implies them. Assuming thus that if the Meditations are to to be understood the requirements of the analytic method must be borne in mind, then they must not be interpreted as though the sequence of the reasoning were being tacitly directed by principles presumed to be true, more synthetico. The Meditations must be considered as a closed system of metaphysical truth, rigidly demonstrated, proceeding from the examination of a particular thing in so far as it is clearly and distinctly known, and affirming nothing which does not follow from what explicitly precedes it.

Chapter IV

THE CARTESIAN CJRCLE THOUGH DESCARTES desired to have his Metaphysic generally accepted because of its conclusions, namely, that God existed and that the soul was immaterial, yet it is by reason of its structure that he meant it to appeal to the natural reason; and it is the consecutiveness of the proofs that guarantee the truths of our reasoning. The emphasis in reading the Meditations should, therefore, fall upon the order of proo£ If the fourth book of the Discourse and the first of the Principles are to be profitably read, they must be read not to supplement the content of the Meditations, but to discover how by the contrasts al1d similarities of the order of their proofs, they throw light upon the structure of the Meditations. The Meditations fall naturally into two parts, the first, the statement of the doubt, occupying the [lIst Meditation; the second, the systematic body of metaphysical proofs of the last five Meditations for which the doubt clears the ground. The second has two explicit aims, first, to prove God's existence, secondly, to prove the soul's immateriality, that is, to prove that it is a thinking substance really distinct from body. A complete study of the Meditations would demand the examination of the proofs of both these theses. The preoccupation of this essay, however, is with the formal aspects of the Metaphysic, which the proof of the soul's immateriality sufficiently 38

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illustrates. The second Meditation commences with my affirnlation of my existence. My immateriality is proved in the sixth and last. The transition from the cogito to the proof of the real distinction of body and mind thus runs through five Meditations, so that to trace its steps requires a survey of the structure and connection of the whole work. That this transition is real was in the past often overlooked or denied, Millet suggested that the passage from the "thing that thinks" to the immaterial substantial self was artificial, and that though Descartes probably felt the feebleness of the proof, he had nevertheless retained it both as a support to Christian beliefs, and as a meallS of preventing fanatics from becoming excited against him. 89 But though this attitude has been common ever since Descartes' own times it stultifies the Meditations. If Descartes assumes the distinction between mind and body, then the Metaphysic is an empty parade of false logic. He himself was always vigorous in rebutting the charge of assuming in the second Meditation what he pretends to prove in the sixth. So far from our knowing what our proper substance is at the stage of the cogito, we arrive at this knowledge "by degrees".9o Everything that 11e has written in the third, fourth and fifth Meditations, says Descartes, serves to establish the real distinction of body and mind which is concluded only in the sixth. 91 The nature of the steps of this transition is a principal pOlllt of discussion between Descartes and Arnauld. If Arnauld were right then not only would the Meditations collapse but the whole Cartesian method. Since it is a universal method, then, if it fails to be a genuine instrument of discovery in metaphysics, its uselessness in all the sciences is proved. It is precisely because it involves no assumptions that Descartes prefers his method to the scholastic

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logic which, he says, merely teaches a method of communicating unexamined knowledge to others. It has been remarked above that Descartes preferred to depend on the authority of theologians to gain credence for the conclusions of the Meditations rather than substitute the proofs of synthesis for the more difficult proofs of analysis. Ifhe was willing to go to such extremes out of respect for the most stringent method of proof, it is not likely that he has employed artificial arguments. The act of faith in an author of genius which must be made before the study of his writings becomes really profitable, required that this hypothesis be adopted rather than the contrary for confirmation or disproof in the sequel. The analysis of the first Meditation has so often been made that it may be omitted in a brief essay which does not intend to comment upon the whole of the Meditations. Not that this Meditation has been exhausted: it remains a quarry not only of philosophical but also of biographical and psychological problems. It is hard to tell whether Descartes' doubt is methodological only, and not also experiential: it is difficult to say what arcana of private experience are hidden behind the formal fa~ade of the first Meditation. For at the frrst glance the doubt, especially the hyperbolical doubt, is merely a formal precaution. But the attentive reader comes to suspect that it was something very much more to Descartes. The form of the Meditations suggests a psychological superficiality which is only apparent. They pretend to have been thought out on six successive days. By the acceptance of a medieval convention92 in the arrangement of his work Descartes raises and lays the doubt in two days. This convention obscures the fact that the doubt is intended to be not only a metaphysical precaution but a mental habit, to be acquired by exercise, and preserved in the form of an

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attitude of vigilance towards any evidence with which we may subsequently be faced. Hence it is appropriately presented as a meditation, a form of religious exercise evolved historically to meet the need of a slow penetration into religious truth. The doubt is a way of gradual purgation from habits not of sin but of error. Hence Descartes' desire that his reader should spend weeks and even months on the first Meditation before going further. It is not safe for everyone, he says, to strip himself of all his preconceptions. He has written the Meditations in Latin instead of French because of the danger of exposing the popular mind to the hyperbolical doubt. The doubt, then, must be a real experience, a kind of moral and intellectual dark night which will leave a permanent trace upon our attitude to the real. The first Meditation must produce a spiritual crisis for which the analytic method is the medicine, its author leading us gradually from the discovery of the self to all the truths contained in it by an or~er of exposition which is the same as the order ofdiscovery, and which is therefore psychologically appropriate. The Meditations represent the actual conversion of a mind from error and its journey to the true. The doubt is not terminated by my intuition of my self as existing because I have not yet determined all the characteristics of the real of which I doubted. I have assured myself, however, that certain truth about an existent is obtainable. My awareness of other natures is intermittent. But the cogito is an ever-present intuition, apprehended in every operation of the mind. Every thought presupposes the I that thinks it, but since the mind always thinks, the certainty that I exist is always present. To be aware that I exist, I need not be aware that I am aware, I need be aware be it only of a chimera. The fundamental difficulty which can be brought

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against the certainty of the cogito was urged by the Authors of the second set of Objections. Is Descartes guilty of circular reasoning in the Metaphysic? "Since you are not yet aware of the existence of God, and yet according to your statement, cannot be certain of anything or know anything clearly and distinctly unless previously you know certainly and clearly that God exists, it follows that you cannot clearly and distinctl)y know that you are a thinking thing, since, according to you, that knowledge depends on the clear knowledge of the existence of God, the proof of which you have not yet reached at that point where you draw the conclusion that you have a clear knowledge of what you are."93 "You admit," says Gassendi, "that a clear and distinct idea is true because God exists, who is the author of that idea and no deceiver; and on the other hand you admit that God exists, who is the creator and veracious, because you have a clear idea of him. "94 The difficulty is one of fundamental philosophic interest. Can any truth be certain except truth about ultimate reality? Can any fmite thing as merely finite be truly characterised? Descartes must decide whether the real is knowable because some particular is, or whether the particular is knowable because the real is. He chooses the former alternative, thus laying himself open to the criticism both of those who hold the second alternative to be true, and of those who hold that both are abstract. The discussion usually centres round our certainty of the truth of the cogito though the question is really much wider. The charge of circular argument is one of the most serious that, from Descartes' point of view, can be brought against the Metaphysic. The cogency of the Metaphysic depends on the rigid order of its proofs. It is said to take nothing for granted. The proofs have a strict

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mathematical sequence, each depending irreversibly on the one before it. To follow this order of proof is to understand the Metaphysic. If there is a flaw in the order, if there is a petitio principii, then the Metaphysic is unintelligible. It is small wonder, then, that many commentators have tried to justify the argument of the Meditations against the imputation of circularity. The exegesis of M. Gilson may be taken as typical of the most widely adopted solution of the difficulty. This exegesis makes use of a distinction between two kinds of clear and distinct knowledge to which the doubt can apply. In the reply to the Authors of Objections II the following passage occurs: "When I said we could know nothing with certainty unless we were first aware that God existed, I announced in express terms that I referred only to the science apprehending such conclusions as can recur in memory without attending further to the proofs which led me to make them." We must then distinguish as follows. I. By the hypothesis of a God who is a deceiver we can doubt whether a clear and distinct idea is a true idea, i.e., whether the essence of the thing conceived really corresponds to the clear and distinct idea we have of it. II. We can doubt also of the validity of chains of reasoning i.e., of the connections of clear and distinct ideas, such as we have in a mathematical demonstration. But in chains of reasoning memory is involved. In proving a proposition in the fifth book of Euclid we do not clearly and distinctly call to mind all the detail of the preceding proofs. Though the proposition we are proving depends so closely on what has gone before that if the smallest preceding step were false the proof would fail, yet we do not recall all this detail, but only certain main conclusions. But how are we to be sure of these conclusions, if we are not attending to the details? Only because we remember 4-

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that we had a clear and distinct knowledge of them grounded in intuitions not involving memory. But our memory cannot guarantee its own truthfulness. We require to have knowledge of a God who will not let this faculty deceive us, in order to be certain of scientific truths. 95 That is why the possibility of mathematics demonstrated in the second half of the fifth Meditation is essentially a proof of the reliability of memory. M. Gilson concludes that if we bear this in mind, the problem of the cercle cartesien is easily solved. Only truths depending on memory require the divine guarantee. The cogito being an ever-present intuition does not require it. But there is a serious objection to this explanation. It is that we can raise the question of our certainty of the truth not only of the cogito but of every proposition preceding the proof of God's existence. The transition from the cogito to the certainty of God's existence is itself a long chain of proof, requiring much application, and involving memory as much as any chain of mathematical demonstrations. When, for instance, I know that I am and inquire into what I am, I discover that I am a being who imagines, doubts, wills, etc., an enumeration possible only because I can recall in memory past states of my self Again, when I inquire into what I used to think that I was, I have to remember not only the preceding conclusions of the Meditations but tracts of my past life. Thus even if the cogito did not require the divine guarantee, the problem would recur in connection with the chains of demonstration consequent upon it. My certainty of the truth of the cogito could not guarantee this truth, because it is the certainty of a presently intuited not of a remembered truth. Yet if Descartes' reasoning is not to be called circular every proposition preceding the proof of God's existence must have a guarantee other than God's nature.

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No more than any other epistemological investigation can the Meditations escape the necessity of starting from the undemonstrated. Every essay in epistemology is a vicious circle, because it has to justify its own procedure and point of departure. The truth of our knowledge about truth must at frrst be guaranteed by no more than the assumption that after all we are investigating something, and that we cannot with consistency show it to be a mere illusion. To attempt to -show that there is no circularity in Descartes' reasoning is to attempt what in the nature of the case is impossible. But it does not follow that the circularity is not justified. Let us turn back to the passages near the beginning of the third Meditation where the nature of the evidence of the cogito is discussed. "I am certain that I am a thinking thing; but do I not therefore likewise know what is required to render me certain of a truth? In this fIrst knowledge, doubdess, there is nothing that gives me assurance of its truth except the clear and distinct perception of what I affirm, which would not indeed be sufficient to give the assurance that what I say is true: if it could ever happen that anything I thus clearly and distinctly conceived should prove false, and accordingly it seems to me that I may now take as a general rule, that all that is very clearly and distinctly apprehended is true."96 But Descartes has an idea of an all-powerful God, and "as often as this preconceived opinion of the sovereign power of a God presents itself to my mind, I am constrained to admit that· it is easy for Him, if He wishes it, to cause me to err even in matters where I think I possess the highest evidence; and, on the other hand, as often as I direct my attention to things which I think I apprehend with great clearness, I am so persuaded of their truth that I

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naturally break out into such expressions as these: Deceive me who may, no one will yet ever be able to bring it about that 1 am not, so long as 1 shall be conscious that 1 am, nor at any future time cause it to be true that I have never been, it being now true that I am, or make two and three more or less than five, in supposing which, and other absurdities, I discover a manifest contradiction."97 There are several very interesting features in these passages. The first is that our certainty of the truth of the cogito rests on no different grounds from our certainty of the truth of other clear and distinct ideas. "I have no assurance of its truth except the clear and distinct perception of what I affirm,," The kind of truth and the mark of truth which we fmd in the cogito and in other clear and distinct perceptions differ in no way. The cogito is coupled with and spoken of as being a truth of the same kind as other clear and distinct ideas: "Deceive me who may, no one will yet ever be able to bring it about that I am not, so long as I shall be conscious that I am ... or make two and three more or less than five." The cogito is, therefore, a truth of the same kind as mathematical truths, and is not certain and self-guaranteeing in any other fashion. Further, it is of importance to observe that in the frrst passage quoted the truth of the cogito is made conditional. The clearness and distinctness with which it is perceived "would not indeed be sufficient to give me the assurance that what I say is true, tf it could ever happen that anything I thus clearly and distinctly conceived should prove false." The cogito is therefore no more and no less true than other clear and distinct ideas. Its truth is conditional on theirs, and is therefore not unaffected by the metaphysical doubt. It is significant that in the corresponding passages in the Discourse, where there is no hyperbolical doubt, the clauses in which this condition is attached to

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the truth of the cogito are lacking. 98 Descartes has classed the cogito with the other clear and distinct truths, and does not consider the latter to be true because the cogito is true, which is the usual interpretation; but that the cogito is true only provided that I cannot fmd a clear and distinct idea which is false. I can treat it as if it were true, however, until I can find an idea which is false though clear and distinct. The certainty which attaches to the cogito at the moment of its discovery depends on my estimate of the probability of fmding a clear and distinct idea which is false. It depends on the credibility which I attach to the doubt. And it is because Descartes finds the doubt itself so doubtful that he can treat the cogito as if it were true. It is the hypothesis of the God-deceiver and of the evil genius which alone can make me entertain the possibility of finding a clear and distinct idea which is false. But how much reason have I to believe that these hypotheses are true? It is important to observe that for Descartes clear and distinct ideas, unlike the ideas of sense, are onlyextrinsically and not intrinsically doubtful. One cannot deny the evident. The hyperbolical doubt consists in asking whether what cannot possibly be doubted can yet be false. The will is not free to refrain from assenting to what is clear and distinct. "I am of such a nature as to be unable, while I possess a very clear and distinct apprehension of a matter, to resist the conviction of its truth."99 The freedom of the will, indeed, consists in being thus compelled to assent. The will can suspend judgment only by indifference, which is not true freedom. loo To say that God has given us the' power of assenting only to our clear and distinct ideas does not mean that we have the power of not assenting to them, but only that we have the power of not

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assenting to obscure ideas.. It is thus a false interpretation of Descartes' metaphysic to suppose that his doctrines of freedom makes possible the withholding of our assent to clear and distinct ideas, If the freedom of the will lies, as Descartes declares, in the compulsion which the will feels to assent to what is clearly and distinctly known, then the hyperbolical doubt arises from the will's doubting its own freedom. The will is free to doubt if It is free, but not to cease to be free. Failure to resolve the doubt would not enable us to cease from assenting to our clear and distinct ideas, but would involve us in the intolerable contradiction ofnot being able to believe in what we must believe in.lOl Suspicion of the truth of clear and distinct ideas, therefore, cannot arise from contemplating these ideas, but only from discovering some external and higher reason for this suspicion. We must discover how to be doubtful about what never surrenders its intrinsic compulsion to be believed. The first hypothesis designed for making our clear and distinct ideas extrinsically dO!1btful is that of the God-deceiver who may have made us such that none of our ideas are true. But the deceitfulness of a Goddeceiver is itself open to doubt because "to invoke the mystery of the creation is to look on the side of the highest reason ~or the principle of the most radical irrationality. Thus I risk deceiving myself if I suppose that God deceives me and my doubt will be doubtful."102 The reason for the failure of the hypothesis of the Goddeceiver is that he is a rational concept, and reason can never persuade us to doubt the truths of mathematics. To doubt our reason we must transcend it or we should merely contradict ourselves. Hence Descartes decides to feign or imagine that his clear and distinct ideas are false. The evil genius who employs all his artifice to deceive

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me is the personification of our imaginative doubt of the validity of our ideas, and is preferable to the hypothesis of a God-deceiver in that as it is the creation of my imagination at the request of my will, I need admit nothing into its nature to render its malice doubtful. But the hypothesis is thoroughly unsatisfactory. The evil genius corresponds to the demand of my will to doubt whatever can be doubted, and haunts me only while I will that it should. Thus the will is divided against itself since it cannot refuse to assent to clear and distinct ideas. It is because this tension is unbearable that we are driven to metaphysics. A conscious relapse into imaginative fears is not a real transcendence of reason, and cannot in the end be held to be reasonable. Even if it is true that I am deceived, then my knowledge of this must be a rational conviction, a truth~ and to recognize any truth as true is to break the power of the evil genius. I doubt. In that I cannot be deceived. But since the evil genius "has been imagined as all-powerful, he loses his reason for being imagined in ceasing to be omnipotent."103 His essence was to possess full powers of deception. Without that he is nothing. The evil genius, then, disappears with the affIrmation of the cogito. What effect has this on the problem of the cercle cartesien? The effect is, it would seem, that all affirmations prior to the proof of God's existence are open to as much doubt as we attach possibility to the existence of a God-deceiver. Though I do not yet know what my origin is, and whether or not God is a deceiver, I do at least entertain one proposition, that I doubt and exist, from which I cannot withhold my assent. Further, I see that propositions such as 2 3 == 5 have the same evidence, and equally compel my assent.. They cease to be credible only when I can fmd one which is false, and that I can do

+

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only if I can prove that there is a God who is a deceiver, and who actually does deceive me. The cogito would have to be the starting point of such a proof, so that in any event we should have to hold that the cogito is true, and if the cogito then 2+3 = 5. The cogito, then, is to be taken as true, and used for purposes of metaphysical proof, until we have found a clear and distinct idea which is false, or a God who has deceived us. The reliability of the cogito does not depend directly on our fmding a God who is no deceiver, but on our not fmding a God who is. The proof of the existence of a God who is no deceiver is thus of negative and indirect significance. It is a guarantee that there is no God-deceiver, and therefore that no clear and distinct idea can be false. Since, as has been remarked, the hypothesis of a God-deceiver is itself open to doubt and does not compel assent, and since the certainty of such a God's existence must itself derive from the cogito, we are justified in thinking metaphysically before solving the hyperbolical doubt. 104 The imputation of circular reasoning would be justified if we knew that the cogito was true only after we had proved God's existence. However, we know that the cogito is true until a clear and distinct idea which is false be found, and this possibility is fmally removed by the proof of the existence of a veracious God. The proof of the reliability of memory removes the last possibility of finding a clear and distinct idea which is false. Truths established by chains of reasoning are no less clear and distinct than unmediated intuitions, and intrinsically are as certainly true. An extrinsic uncertainty arises, however, out of human infirlnity. Remembered truths may appear to be false "because my constitution is also such as to incapacitate me from keeping my mind continually fixed on the same object."lo5 "I

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am conscious of the weakness of not being able to keep my mind continually fixed on the same thought."lo6 I must pass from one thought to another, and how can I be sure of the truth of that froln which I have passed? The case, then, where we have most reason to fear that a clear and distinct idea may not be true is the case where memory of the grounds of a truth is involved. When it can be shown that memory is reliable, then the last possibility for doubting the truth of our clear and distinct ideas disappears. And fmally, a fact which is overlooked by those who attempt to dispel the problem of the cercle cartesien by pointing out that God's guarantee is required only for truths involving memory, the proof of God's existence, involving as it does a chain of propositions calling for the use of memory is itself confirmed. The doubt, then, does not alter the power of our clear and distinct ideas to compel our assent; and therefore it does not make metaphysical reasoning impossible, since the order of proof is for Descartes the order in which we are compelled to assent to ideas. His choice of the analytic method is an attempt to make the logical and the psychological order coincide.107 The cogito is the first truth that occurs to us whet1 we philosophize in order, but its primacy derives from the psychological necessities of the thinker who has entered upon the purgative way of the first Meditation. It is no truer and no more indubitable than any other clear and distinct ideas: it is merely the truth which first compels our assent. It must never be forgotten that Descartes' metaphysic is a catharsis for the fear that we do not stand in an organic relationship to reality. The metaphysic ends when this fear ends, and when a weight of uncertainty has been counterbalanced by a weight of evidence. It is not, like Thomistic meta-

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physics, born out of a confidence that man is at home in the Universe, but out of a dread that he is not. It is a metaphysic the aim of which is to justify metaphysics: that is the real extent of the cercle cartesien, and that is the reason why its reasoning follows an order of psychological compulsion. Like Hume, Descartes philosophizes because he must, from subjective not objective necessity. Hence it is that his mind contemplates its own structure rather than that of the real--consider the fashion in which his physics dictates its course to nature-and is obliged to commence its thinking by positing itsel£ Thus both in point of the clearness and distinctness of the idea of its existence, and in point of its ontological sigl1ificance, the self has no real primacy. It merely happens to be found first, by a psychological necessity inevitable for those who have really put themselves out of harmony with the real through doubt; and is assented to because our wills cannot refrain from assenting to what is clearly and distinctly conceived. The cogito is the first truth which we come upon when we philosophize in order, and this as it were accidental property constitutes its only claim to the place it occupies in Descartes' metaphysics. In support of this interpretation certain aspects of the ontological proof are significant, which go to show that Descartes' use of the cogito is essentially a use justified by his method's prescribing the attainment of knowledge by the order of necessary assent, not by the order of things. One of the difficulties which arises in the study of the ontological proof is that in the Principles, and in the examples of the synthetic method in Responses II, the ontological pro