Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/134

This page needs to be proofread.

112 DEVELOPMENT OF CARTESIANISM. Geulincx himself, besides two inaugural addresses at Ley- den (as Lector in 1662, Professor Extraordinary in 1665), published the following treatises : QiicBStio7tes Quodlibeticce (in the second edition, 1665, entitled Saturnalia) v. an im- portant introductory discourse ; Logica Fundamentis Suis Res- tittita, 1662 ; Methodus Inveniendi Argumenta (new edition by Bontekoe, 1675) ; and the first part of his Ethics — De Virtute et Primis ejus Proprietatibus, quce viilgo Virtutes Carditiales Vocantur, Tractatus Ethicus Primus, 1665. This chief work was issued complete in all six parts with the title, FrcoBi aeavTov sive Ethica, i675,by Bontekoe, under the pseudonym Philaretus. The Physics, 1688, the Metaphysics, 1691, and the Annotata Major a in Cartesii Principia Philosophies, 1691, were also posthumous publications, from the notes of his pupils. In view of the rarity of these volumes, and the importance of the philosopher, it is welcome news that J. P. N. Land has undertaken an edition of the collected works, in three volumes, of which the first two have already appeared.* The Hague, i89i-92.t Geulincx bases the occasionalistic position on the prin- ciple, quod nescis, quomodo fiat, id nan facis. Unless I know how an event happens, I am not its cause. Since I have no consciousness how my decision to speak or to walk is followed by the movement of my tongue or limbs, I am not the one who effects these. Since I am just as ignorant how the sensation in my mind comes to pass as a sequel to the motion in the sense-organ ; since, further, the body as an unconscious and non-rational being can effect nothing, it is neither I nor the body that causes the sensation. Both the bodily movement and the sense-impression are, rather, the effects of a higher power, of the infinite spirit. The act of my will and the sense-stimulus are only causce occasionales for the divine will, in an incomprehensible way, to effect, in the one case, the execution of the movement of the limbs resolved upon, and, in the other, the origin of the percep-

  • On vol. i. cf. Eucken, Philosophise he Monatshefte, vol. xxviii., 1892, p.

200 seq. f On Geulincx see V. van der Hacghen, Geulincx, Etude sur sa Vie, sa Philose- phie, et ses Ouvrages, Ghent, 1886, including a complete bibliography ; and Land in vol. iv. of the Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, 1890. [English translation, Mind, vol. xvi. p. 223 seq^