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MALEBRANCHE MALE FERN 63 make voyages to Calcutta, Ceylon, Sumatra, the Malabar coast, and other distant parts, carrying cocoanuts, coir, mats, cocoanut oil, tortoise shell, dried fish, and cowries, or small shells, which pass as coin over all India. In return they bring home gold and silver, rice, tobacco, cotton and silk goods, and European articles. The Maldives have been seldom vis- ited by Europeans. The Portuguese touched at Male in the 16th century. In the beginning of the 17th a French merchant vessel was wrecked upon them, and one of the survivors, Pyrard de Laval, remained there nearly five years, and wrote an account of the islands, which was published in Paris in 1679. MALEBRAXCHE, Nicolas, a French metaphysi- cian, born in Paris, Aug. 6, 1638, died there, Oct. 13, 1715. In his childhood he was feeble, and was educated at home with great care. Intended for the priesthood, he studied philoso- phy at the college of La Marche and theology at the Sorbonne, and in 1660 entered the con- gregation of the Oratory. But he wearied of theological and critical studies, and his phi- losophical vocation was determined by reading the Traite de Vhomme of Descartes, which he accidentally met with, and which impressed him so strongly that his perusal was more than once interrupted by palpitations of the heart. From that time (1664) he devoted himself to philosophy, renouncing all other sciences ex- cept mathematics, aiming thus to enlighten his mind without burdening his memory. After ten years he produced his principal work, De la recherche de la verite (Paris, 1674), which received numerous additions, and in its 6th edition (1712) extended to four volumes. It was translated into English by Richard Sault (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1692-'4; 2d and 3d eds. by Thomas Taylor, fol., 1700 and 1720). In 1677 he published Conversations metaphysiques et chretiennes, a discussion on the relation of philosophy to religion and Christian dogmas, which involved him in a long controversy with theologians and Cartesian metaphysicians, es- pecially with Arnauld and R6gis. In 1699 he was elected an honorary member of the acad- emy of sciences. Withering slowly away, till he was hardly more than a skeleton, he died "a tranquil spectator of his own long dissolution." His later more important publi- cations, partly philosophical and partly reli- gious, were the Traite de la nature et de la grace (1680) ; Meditations metaphysiques et chretiennes (1683); Traite de morale (1684); Entretiens sur la metaphysique et sur la re- ligion (1687); and Reponses de Malebranche d Arnauld (4 vols., 1709). A complete edi- tion of his works was published at Paris in 1712, in 11 vols. The philosophical system of Malebranche begins with the admission of !the Cartesian doctrine that mind and matter are utterly opposed and mutually impermeable, the mind knowing nothing but its own states, i which it sees in self-consciousness. It is like one in the dark, who can perceive nothing but 526 VOL. xi. 5 himself. To this he added that we are able to see external objects in God, who is the light of our knowledge. He is the absolute sub- stance, in whom exist alike the persons who know and the ideas which they know. He is the home of the world of ideas, as space is the home of physical bodies ; and in him the mind knows objects other than itself. Malebranche recognized, with Descartes, three substances: the thinking, the extended, and the infinite substance, or the soul, matter, and God; but there is throughout his system a tendency to reduce them to one. In Descartes they describe excentric circles; in Malebranche they are concentric, including each other. Matter is grasped by the soul, and souls by the Deity ; ideas enter the mind, the mind itself existing in God. Thus he marks the transition from Descartes to Spinoza, recognizing a personal God, but with pantheistic forms of thought, tending to reduce spirit and matter to one ab- solute substance. His most important works are contained in the edition by De Genoude (Paris, 1837), and in an edition by Jules Simon (2 vols., Paris, 1853). La philosophic de Male- tranche^ by Olle'-Laprune, received a prize from the French academy in 1872. MALE FERN (aspidium Jilix-mas). Theo- phrastus and other ancient writers mention two kinds of fern, the male and female ; whether or not this was the fern referred to as the male, it retains the name in common as well as in botanical nomenclature. There are some- thing over a dozen aspidiums or shield ferns found in this country, some of which are very common, while a few, including the male fern, are exceedingly rare ; this, while one of the Male Fern. common ferns of Europe, has thus far been found here only at Lake Superior. It has a large scaly root stock, from which arise the handsome fronds in a circular tuft, 2 to 3 ft. high and of the outline shown in the engra- ving ; its elegant appearance makes it a desirable