Deity as the Cause

Some maintain that bodies operate by their substantial form.

• Others, by their accidents or qualities.
• Several, by their matter and form.
• Some, by their form and accidents.
• Others, by certain virtues and faculties distinct from all this.

All these feelings again:

• are mixed and varied in 1,000 ways, and
• form a strong presumption.

None of these reasons have any solidity or evidence.

The supposition of an [innate or predetermined] efficacy in any of the known qualities of matter is entirely baseless.

This fallacy becomes obvious when we consider that these principles of substantial forms, accidents, and faculties, are in reality not any of the known properties of bodies.

Instead, they are perfectly unintelligible and inexplicable.

Philosophers would never have proposed such obscure principles, if they had clear and intelligible principles.

This affair must be an object of the simplest understanding, if not of the senses.

On the whole, I conclude:

• that it is impossible in any one instance to show the principle, in which the force and agency of a cause is placed, and
• that the most refined and vulgar understandings are equally at a loss in finding that force.

If anyone refutes this, he does not need to invent long reasonings.

He just needs to show us an instance of a cause, where we discover the power or operating principle.

We must frequently use this defiance, as almost the only means of proving a negative in philosophy.

The small success in the attempts to fix this power, has obliged philosophers to conclude that:

• the ultimate force and effectiveness of nature is perfectly unknown to us, and
• it is in vain to search for it in all the known qualities of matter.

They are almost unanimous in this opinion.

This is their only inference from it.

Descartes’ Principles: Deity as the Cause

The Cartesians established a principle that we are perfectly acquainted with the essence of matter.

They have very naturally inferred:

• that matter has no efficacy,
• that it is impossible for matter to:
  • communicate motion, or
  • produce any of the effects we ascribe to it, and
• that the essence of matter consists in space.

Space does not imply actual motion, but only mobility.

They therefore conclude that the energy which produces the motion cannot lie in space.

This conclusion leads them into another unavoidable conclusion.

They say that:

• matter is:
  • entirely inactive in itself, and
  • does not have any innate power for it to produce, continue, or communicate motion.
• Power must lie in the Deity, or that divine being who contains all perfection in his nature, since:
  • these effects are obvious to our senses, and
  • the power that produces them must be placed somewhere.

The deity, therefore:

• is the prime mover of the universe,
• first created matter and gave it its original impulse,
• supports its existence, by a continued exertion of omnipotence, and
• successively bestows on existence all of its motions, configurations, and qualities.

All ideas are derived from impressions, or some precedent perceptions.

We can only have an idea of power and efficacy, if there are instances where we can perceive this power exert itself.

These instances can never be discovered in bodies.*

The Cartesians follow their principle of innate ideas.

• This led them to a supreme spirit or deity.

They consider this deity as:

• the only active being in the universe, and
• the immediate cause of every change in matter.

But the principle of innate ideas is false.

It follows that the supposition of a deity is useless in accounting for that idea of agency.

We search for that agency in vain in all the objects:

• presented to our senses, or
• which we are internally conscious of.

If every idea were derived from an impression, then the idea of a deity should also proceed from an impression.*

If no impression, of sensation or reflection, implies any force or effectiveness, it is equally impossible to discover or imagine any such active principle in the deity.

They concluded that matter cannot be endowed with any principle of effectiveness, because it is impossible to discover any principle of effectiveness in matter.

The same reasoning should make them exclude it from the supreme being.

But this opinion is absurd and impious to them, and it really is.

They can avoid this opinion by concluding from the beginning, that they have no adequate idea of power or effectiveness in any object, since they are unable to discover an instance of that power or effectiveness in body or spirit, in either superior or inferior natures.