faith and the things of nature. To be a Believer, one must believe blindly, but to be a philosopher, one must see evidently; for the Divine authority is infallible, but all men are subject to error. Let us try to deliver ourselves by degrees from the illusions of our senses; of our sight, of our imagination, of the impressions which the imagination of other men have made upon our spirits. Let us reject all the confused ideas which we have through the dependence in which we are upon our bodies, and only admit the clear and evident ideas which the spirit receives by the union which it necessarily has with the Word or Wisdom or Eternal Truth. It is only God that we see with a sight immediate and direct. In this life it is only by the union which we have with Him that we are capable of knowing what we do know. We must let God speak; turn back into ourselves and seek in ourselves for that which never quits us, and which always enlightens us. He speaks low, but His voice is distinct; He enlightens but a little, but His light is pure. Nay, rather, His voice is as strong as it is distinct, His light is as bright as it is pure. The knowledge of the truth and the love of virtue can be nothing else than the union of the spirit with God, and a kind of possession by God. When the spirit sees the truth, not only is it united with God, it possesses God, it sees God in a manner, it sees also in one sense the truth as God sees it. We discover by the clear light of the spirit that we are united to God after a manner far more close and far more essential than to our own bodies. Men are more certain of the existence of God than of that of their bodies; and when they turn back into themselves they

1 What Malebranche said in all sober seriousness, the author of Christianity not founded upon Argument (Dodwell the younger) said, probably, in irony. It is no wonder that Law supposed, though, I think, erroneously, that this latter author was in earnest, for Law certainly agreed in the main with his argument.

174

Law and Malebranche.

discover more clearly certain wills of God, according to which He produces and preserves all beings, than those of their best friends, of those whom they have studied all their lives. For the union of their spirit with God and that of their will with His, I might say, with the Eternal Law or with the Immutable Order, is an immutable union, is an immediate, direct, and necessary union."1

An intelligent man like Law reading with delight such sentiments as these, set off as they were with all the graces which a most pure, forcible, and luminous style can lend, could hardly fail to become favourably impressed with the ground-doctrine of mysticism which they contain. Thus, in Law's early undergraduate days, the seed was sown by Malebranche which was many years later to grow and bear fruit in full-blown mysticism.

Apart from this dominant idea, the other details of Malebranche's philosophy were by no means in accordance with Law's later views. It is a curious fact that, deeply as he was indebted to Malebranche's writings for his mystic. bias, the only mention he makes of the Oratorian by name in his later works is to express his strong disagreement with him. Mystic as Malebranche was, so far as the great aim of all mysticism, the union of the soul with God, is concerned, his system was quite incompatible with that other phase of mysticism, so dear to William Law, which

These expressions are taken mainly from the Recherche de la Vérité, and especially from chap. vi. book 3: 'Que nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu 'the thesis, it will be remembered, which Law elected to maintain, avowedly on the authority of Malebranche, at his Act at Cambridge. But the same sentiments permeate all Malebranche's writings. For example, in the Méditations Chrétiennes (ii. 15), addressing 'the Divine reason' he exclaims: 'C'est donc vous-même dans le plus secret de mon esprit, et c'est votre voix que j'entends. O mon unique maître ! que les hommes sachent que vous les penetrez de telle manière que lorsqu'ils croient se répondre à eux-mêmes, et s'entretenir avec eux-mêmes, c'est vous qui leur parlez et qui les entretenez.' See also Traité de Morale, t. ii. p. 46, i. 242; also Entretiens sur Métaphysiques, i.; and, in a word, Malebranche's works passim.

Comparison between them.

175

traces the essential connection between the visible and the invisible world. In Law's view, body and spirit are not two separate, independent things, but are necessary to each other, and are only the inward and outward conditions of one and the same being.'1 This Law rightly conceives to be totally opposed to the doctrine of Malebranche; he represents both the schools of philosophy-that of Locke on the one side, and that of Descartes and Malebranche on the other though they agreed in little else, as agreeing in this, that they supposed spirit and body not only without any natural relation, but essentially contrary to one another, and only held together in a forced conjunction by the arbitrary will of God.' Nay,' he adds indignantly, 'if you was to say, that God first creates a soul out of nothing, and when that is done, then takes an understanding faculty, and puts it into it, after that a will, and then a memory, all as independently made as when a taylor first makes the body of a coat, and then adds sleeves or pockets to it; was you to say this, the schools of Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke could have nothing to say against it.' 2 The reason why Malebranche has to be gibbeted in such evil company as that of Locke, the arch-enemy of mysticism, is, that he has unhappily never sat at the feet of Jacob Behmen! But this is anticipating.

In more respects than one there was a curious resemblance between Malebranche and Law, both in their tones of mind and, mutatis mutandis, in their circumstances of life. In the first place, there was in both that same strange intellectual inconsistency which made them depreciate the very points in which one secret of their strength lay. The study of languages was in the eyes of Malebranche worse than waste of time. It might be necessary to learn just

1

Spirit of Love, 'Works,' vol. viii. p. 33.

2 Ibid, p. 31.

176 Resemblances between Law and Malebranche.

He

enough Latin to read Augustine, but as for Greek!-so many languages weary the brain and impede the reason. How is it possible to justify the passion of those who turn their heads into a library of dictionaries?' He would have made a clean sweep of all literature and sciences, with the exception of algebra and a little natural science; history, geography, &c., are all pedantry and puerility. Adam was perfect, and he knew neither history nor chronology.' anathematised style as the product of sin, yet his own style was singularly polished and attractive; his own writings show in every page of them the mind of the well-read scholar as well as the profound thinker, and, strangest of all, they are constantly interlarded with most apposite quotations from those very classical authors whom he abjured. The same curious inconsistency has already been noticed in Law. It may be added that neither in Law nor in Malebranche is there the slightest trace of affectation or unreality in their inconsistency.

Again, in France during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and in England during the first half of the eighteenth, there were giants in the land.' Bossuet, Fénelon, Pascal, in France; Butler, Waterland, Bentley, Sherlock, in England, were great names. Both Malebranche and Law fully reached the stature of the tallest of their contemporaries, but they were content, and they were allowed

1 Even Enfield, who had no sympathy with Malebranche's system, and could only see in his theory of seeing all things in God' a singular and paradoxical dogma, still owns the work (Recherche de la Vérité) was written with such elegance and splendour of diction, and its tenets were supported by such ingenious reasonings, that it obtained general applause, and procured the author a distinguished name among philosophers and a numerous train of followers.' (ii. 534.)

Norris of Bemerton says of Malebranche: 'He is indeed the great Galileo of the intellectual world. He has given us the point of view, and whatever farther detections are made, it must be through his Telescope. He has search'd after Truth in the proper and genuine Seat and Region of it, has open'd a great many noble Scenes of the World we are now contemplating [the

Resemblances between Law and Malebranche. 177

Both

to live and work and die unnoticed and unrewarded. Malebranche and Law were born for the recluse life, and both of them found it; for Malebranche was as much a recluse amid the hubbub of Paris as Law was amid the green fields of Northamptonshire. For simplicity and purity of life, for intense piety and self-denial, there was nothing to choose between these two saintly mystics. But in one point they differed widely. Malebranche was always the philosopher as well as the theologian. Law, though he was constantly accused of blending philosophy with religion, had in reality no taste for philosophy, for Behmenism can hardly be dignified, or, as Law would say, degraded, by that name. The study of mathematics, too, which was regarded by Malebranche as a sort of handmaid to mysticism, was not thus looked upon by William Law. But it is needless to pursue the contrast and comparison further.

With the great name of Malebranche this brief sketch. of the mystics who influenced William Law may fitly close. There were many others, both sects and individuals, of a mystic tendency, with whom Law was brought into connection. But to treat of them under the head of mystics. would be to encourage the very error against which a protest was entered at the beginning of this chapter. It would be to confound the mystics proper with those who, together with a large admixture of mysticism, blended much which, whether better or worse, was really a different element. Platonists, Philadelphians, Swedenborgians, Moravians, Quakers, will all have to come before us in connection with Law. All were tinged with mysticism; but all were some

ideal world]; and would perhaps have been the fittest Person of the age to have given a just and complete Theory of its Systems. But even this great Apelles has drawn this Celestial Beauty but half way, and I am afraid the excellent piece will suffer, whatever other hand has the finishing of it.'-Theory of the Ideal World, vol. i. p. 4.

N