Father Malebranche
Table of Contents
I imagine that you Cleanthes were:
- maintaining the Being of a God, against the cavils of Atheists and Infidels
- a champion for God
I think that no one doubts God’s existence.
The question is not on the existence, but on the nature of God.
My basis is Father MALEBRANCHE who says [Recherche de la Verite. Liv. 3. Chap.9]
One should not so much call God a spirit, in order to express positively what he is, as in order to signify that he is not matter. He is a Being infinitely perfect: Of this we cannot doubt.
But in the same manner as we ought not to imagine, even supposing him corporeal, that he is clothed with a human body, as the ANTHROPOMORPHITES asserted, under colour that that figure was the most perfect of any; so, neither ought we to imagine that the spirit of God has human ideas, or bears any resemblance to our spirit, under colour that we know nothing more perfect than a human mind.
We should rather to believe, that as he comprehends the perfections of matter without being material…. he comprehends also the perfections of created spirits without being spirit, in the manner we conceive spirit:
That his true name is, He that is; or, in other words, Being without restriction, All Being, the Being infinite and universal."
The existence of the Deity is unquestionable and self-evident.
Nothing exists without a cause. The original cause of this universe (whatever it be) we call God.
But all perfection is entirely relative. We should never imagine that we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or to suppose that his perfections have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of a human creature.
Wisdom, Thought, Design, Knowledge justly ascribe to him because these words are honourable among men.
But let us beware, lest we think that our ideas anywise correspond to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resemblance to these qualities among men. He is infinitely superior to our limited view and comprehension; and is more the object of worship in the temple, than of disputation in the schools.
There is no need of having recourse to that affected scepticism so displeasing to you, in order to come at this determination. Our ideas reach no further than our experience. We have no experience of divine attributes and operations.
I need not conclude my syllogism. You can draw the inference yourself. And it is a pleasure to me (and I hope to you too) that just reasoning and sound piety here concur in the same conclusion, and both of them establish the adorably mysterious and incomprehensible nature of the Supreme Being.
Look round the world Demea.
Contemplate the whole and every part of it.
You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain.
All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them.
The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.
Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
I could not approve of your conclusion concerning the similarity of the Deity to men; still less can I approve of the mediums by which you endeavour to establish it. What! No demonstration of the Being of God! No abstract arguments!
No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no further in this subject than experience and probability?
I will not say that this is betraying the cause of a Deity: But surely, by this affected candour, you give advantages to Atheists, which they never could obtain by the mere dint of argument and reasoning.
Cleanthes reduces all religious arguments to experience.
That a stone will fall, that fire will burn, that the earth has solidity, we have observed a thousand and a thousand times; and when any new instance of this nature is presented, we draw without hesitation the accustomed inference.
The exact similarity of the cases gives us a perfect assurance of a similar event; and a stronger evidence is never desired nor sought after.
But wherever you depart from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty.
After having experienced the circulation of the blood in human creatures, we make it take place in TITIUS and MAEVIUS.
But from its circulation in frogs and fishes, it is only a presumption, though a strong one, from analogy, that it takes place in men and other animals.
The analogical reasoning is much weaker, when we infer the circulation of the sap in vegetables from our experience that the blood circulates in animals; and those, who hastily followed that imperfect analogy, are found, by more accurate experiments, to have been mistaken.
If we see a house, CLEANTHES, we conclude that it had an architect or builder because we have experienced houses to be caused by them.
If we replace the house with the universe, then we can infer a similar cause.
The dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend to is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause; and how that pretension will be received in the world, I leave you to consider.
It would surely be very ill received. I should be blamed and detested if I asserted that the proofs of a Deity are just a guess or conjecture.
But is the whole adjustment of means to ends in a house and in the universe so slight a resemblance? The economy of final causes?
The order, proportion, and arrangement of every part?
Steps of a stair are plainly contrived, that human legs may use them in mounting; and this inference is certain and infallible. Human legs are also contrived for walking and mounting;
This inference is not so certain, because of the dissimilarity which you remark; but does it, therefore, deserve the name only of presumption or conjecture?