Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment

Han van Ruler

What is Descartess contribution to Enlightenment? Undoubtedly, Cartesian philosophy added to the conflict between philosophical and theological views which divided intellectual life in the Dutch Republic towards the end of its Golden Age.1 Although not everyone was as explicit as Lodewijk Meyer, who said that his theological doubts were inspired by Descartess philosophical method, Cartesianism along with Copernicanism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism played an important part in the growing skepticism towards the authority of Scripture.2 Apart from Descartess general method, however, specific Cartesian ideas encouraged a new view towards nature and towards Gods role in governing it. In physics and physiology the new philosophy replaced the image of mind working on matter with the image of a self sufficient mechanism. This new causal metaphor led to a typically Cartesian form of disenchantment. In this article I argue that on account of their approval of a Cartesian theory of causality, even authors with sincere religious motives came close to accepting radical and nearly Spinozistic ideas. I start with disenchantment in a very literal sense: Balthasar Bekkers denial of the activities of devils, angels, and other spirits. A comparison of Bekkers arguments with those of another Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx will, I hope, bring out the nature and importance of what I shall present as
1 See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (Oxford, 1995), 637-99 and 889-933; and Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-1650 (Carbondale, Ill., 1992). 2 See L. Meyer, Philosophia S. Scriptur Interpres (Amsterdam, 1666), Prologus: quemadmodum illi in Philosophi, sic & mihi in Theologi liceret, conduceretque in dubium revocare, quicquid in dubium revocari posset. Cocceians, the followers of the Leiden theologian Johannes Coccejus (1603-69), contributed to the development of the science of Biblical criticism but were by no means disloyal members of the Reformed Church. See Israel, The Dutch Republic, 660-69, 690-99, 909-16.

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Descartess mechanical reduction in physics. Finally, I argue that the Cartesian separation of mind and body gave rise to a form of disenchantment that reached far beyond contemporary debates. Devils, Ghosts, and Gods Omnipotence Balthasar Bekkers classic book The World Bewitched (1691-93) does not so much deal with the practice of sorcery as with its theory. Bekker offers a wide range of theological and philosophical arguments in order to combat the idea that ghosts, devils, and angels influence natural or historical events. In particular Bekker draws some important conclusions from the philosophy of Descartes. Yet it is immediately clear to the reader that the motives for his critique are religious rather than philosophical.3 The World Bewitched is not written as a scientific assault on superstition. Bekker, at the time serving as a Calvinist minister in Amsterdam, presents his work as a new and perhaps final phase in the perfection of Christianity. For two centuries it had been a goal of the Protestant Reformation to accentuate Gods majesty and to establish the idea of His absolute power over creation. Bekkers World again expresses this idea. His denial that ghosts and devils are active in the world is a logical consequence of the belief that there is no room for demigods in nature. Bekker thus adds a final touch to the project of the Reformation. The World Bewitched will testify to the fact that I return as much of the honor of His Power and Wisdom to the Almighty, as they took from Him who gave it to the Devil. I ban [the Devil] from the World and I bind him in Hell.4 Removing devils and spirits from nature, Bekker aims to distinguish superstition from true faith. The battle against superstitious beliefs had formed a characteristic element of Protestant tactics. Dutch Calvinists, for instance, took offense at the continuing practices of blessings and incantations.5 Bekker wanted to go even further. The Protestantization of Christian dogma could only be completed by making everything in natures course depend on Gods unique power and providence.6 Science in our sense of the word was a subsidiary matter.7 Still, Bekker saw the new scientific theories of his day as useful allies. In particular it was the new philosophy of Descartes that attracted him. Following Descartes, Bekker reasons that I think, that I will,
3 See W. P. C. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, de bestrijder van het bijgeloof (The Hague, 1906); and Wiep van Bunges Einleitung to Bekker, Die bezauberte Welt (1693) in Freidenker der europischen Aufklrung, I, vii, 1 (Stuttgart, 1997). 4 Balthasar Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld (Amsterdam, 1691), Voorrede, unpaginated. 5 See A. Th. van Deursen, Mensen van klein vermogen: Het kopergeld van de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1991), 276-82; also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1991), ch. 3, The Impact of the Reformation, 58-89. 6 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 137, argues that since the days of Luther and Calvin, too little attention has been given to the project of purging religion of superstitious elements. 7 Cf. De Betoverde Weereld, II, 7 and IV, 10.

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[and] that I understand something, without any part of my body being involved in this type of consciousness. Mind and body in fact have nothing in common: My thoughts, my will and my intellect cannot be measured in yards or inches, nor can they be weighed in pounds: but my Body, my flesh and bone and my blood will keep their size and weight, or they will not be what they are.... That is why I keep myself to this; that a Mind is a thinking substance [ selfstandigheid ] and a Body an extended [uitgestrekte] one.8 Again in accordance with Descartes, Bekker deduces Gods existence from the idea of perfection.9 Yet both the distinction of body and soul and Gods perfection are given new explanatory roles in the context of Bekkers disenchantment. Since God is both perfect and unique, He does not allow semi-deities or other cooperative beings beside Him. All things naturalincluding the tiny animals that had just been discovered with the help of the microscope10are governed by a single Ruler and Creator of the world. Thus from Gods perfection alone it is evident that there is no room for any activity of devils or of spirits in nature. A second argument is based on the Cartesian distinction between body and mind. We know the mind, or the soul, only in so far as we know our own mind. Accordingly, if we are to say anything with regard to minds or spirits in general, our judgment must be based on the experience that we have of our own mental faculties. However, if we focus on the activity of our soul, we easily see that it never influences another soul except by making use of the body as intermediary. Moreover, the mutual influence between body and soul is such that certain movements are always linked to specific experiences. The will to stand up, to sit, to lie down, to eat, to drink, to speak, to read, or to write always expresses itself in specific bodily movements; and the same is true the other way round: a certain impression on our senses always results in a specific mental experience. We do not understand this interaction of body and mind; yet we must accept the fact that God connected body and mind in the way we continually experience. It makes no sense to speculate about alternative forms of mind-matter interaction. A human soul joined to a tree or to a stone will never form a human being. Not only does our soul need a body through which it can express itself, it also needs

Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 7. Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 8-9. Cf. the third of Descartess Meditations: The Existence of God, Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris, 1982), (hereafter AT), VII, 34-52; The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge, 1985-91) (hereafter CSM), II, 24-36. 10 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, IV, 10, shows a deep admiration for the work of the diligent and inquisitive Antonius van Leewenhoek of Delft.
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a human body, even a complete and well-trained human body.11 For this reason alone, it is very unlikely that a devil or an angel could simply tie itself to a natural object, or even to the body of a woman or man. When The World Bewitched was published, Bekker received a host of hostile reactions.12 This was partly due to the persistence of superstitious beliefs. As Andrew Fix has pointed out, the belief in active spirits was still very much alive in Amsterdam at the time when Balthasar Bekker came to work there as a vicar.13 Besides popular conviction, however, it was the Bible itself that seemed to enhance the belief in good and evil forces. Accordingly, Bekker had to question a literal reading of the Scriptures and, as a result, has been described as an adherent of the theory of accommodation, i.e., the view that Gods Word is written in a form which is adapted to average intellectual capacities.14 Bekker refuses to interpret the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge. Moreover, since he explains Biblical references to devils and angels using scientific and historical arguments and since he gives priority to philosophical interpretations, it is not without reason that his method has been characterized as a Cartesian form of hermeneutics.15 It would be wrong, however, to reduce his Cartesianism to the way in which he interprets Scripture. It is his way of understanding the relation between matter and mind which is the most typically Cartesian aspect of his work. Angels and Occasionalism In a follow-up to his first study of Bekkers Cartesianism, Andrew Fix considerably changed his former ideas about Bekkers influence on the Enlightenment. Fix argues that there is no evidence for a decrease in superstition under the influence of Descartes, since Cartesians were found on either side of the spectrumboth among the defenders of the activity of ghosts and among those, like Bekker, who criticized such ideas. Henricus Groenewegen, for example, defended the thesis that ghosts could influence bodies without themselves being embodied. Indeed, according to Groenewegen, this truth applies to God Himself: God is a spirit; so if God acts on [werkt op] a body, a Spirit acts on a body. Nobody can deny that God is a Spirit; nor can anyone deny that, as the Creator and keeper [onderhouder] of all things, He acts on the
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 42-43. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 224 ff. 13 Andrew Fix, Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Balthasar Bekker and the Collegiants, JHI, 50 (1989), 536-39. 14 Wiep van Bunge, Balthasar Bekkers Cartesian Hermeneutics and the Challenge of Spinozism, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 1 (1993), 55-79. 15 Van Bunge, Balthasar Bekkers Cartesian Hermeneutics, 72ff.
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We know from experience that God has also provided some of His creations with certain powers. We know, for instance, that there is a causal relationship between the human mind and the human body and between bodies among themselves. There seems to be no reason to doubt that individual spirits and angels might not just as well influence the course of events as we know it. According to Groenewegen, the Bible makes it sufficiently clear that angels and devils do in fact influence earthly events.17 Another reaction to The World Bewitched also mentioned by Fix, is that of Johannes van Aalst and Paulus Steenwinkel, both, like Groenewegen, ministers of the church.18 They, too, defended the possibility that angels at least influence the course of things. Moreover, they expressly mention Cartesian arguments in support of their view. According to Steenwinkel and Van Aalst, the nature of the soul does not include anything but thought. This, however, implies that the activity of the soul is necessarily restricted to thought. In other words although the soul may think and although it may will, it cannot do anything else. The human will is so to speak confined to the soul, without any action or power flowing from it.19 It is only through the will of God that the activity of the soul may result in certain effects taking place in the body. But if this occurs through Gods will, why should not God allow angels to act on our souls as well, or on our bodies, or on other material things? Again, according to Van Aalst and Steenwinkel, Scripture bears witness to the fact that this is indeed the case.20 Van Aalsts and Steenwinkels reaction is influenced to an important degree by the work of the Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx.21 Geulincx had been one of the very first Cartesians to formulate what has become known as the theory of occasionalism: the view that all relations of cause and effect are directly dependent on God. He has an original argument for this view, linking all forms of activity to the conscious experience of an act. We ourselves are active when we think and will. When we move our bodies, however, the situation is more complicated. Though we may take full credit for our thoughtsin this
16 Henricus Groenewegen, Pneumatica, ofte Leere van de Geesten (Amsterdam, 1692), quoted in Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 240. See also Andrew Fix, Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism, History of European Ideas, 17 (1993), 582. 17 Fix, Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism, 581-83. 18 Cf. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 244 ff. 19 Johannes Aalstius and Paulus Steenwinkel, Zedige Aanmerkingen, quoted in Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 245. 20 Fix, Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism, 583-84. 21 Here and elsewhere, Van Aalst and Steenwinkel expose their approval of Geulincxs ideas and indirectly contributed to their diffusion by introducing others to his works. See Arnold Geulings, Geest en Wereldkunde (Dordrecht, 1696), 3-4.

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case for the decision to movethere is no way in which we can account for the relation between our mental experience and the physical result that seems to follow. Geulincx therefore argues that there must be a causal source, different from myself, which is responsible for all activities that exceed the I. Not only must an independent source be looked for in order to account for the involuntary phenomena which enter our consciousness, but also for other natural phenomena. We see the activity of things around us: a fire warms, the Sun shines, and a stone falls down. On second thought, however, we may not ascribe the same sort of activity to these objects which we ascribe to our soul when we experience its activity in judgment and thought. For the forms of activity outside our own minds, such as the interaction of body and soul or of physical bodies among themselves, another Spirit must be responsible. This Spirit can be none other than God, who holds the world of nature in His hands.22 In the discussion on the activity of spirits Van Aalst and Steenwinkel take advantage of Geulincxs philosophical position. If God is the true cause of all interaction of body and soul, nothing prevents Him from securing the causal efficaciousness of other spirits as well, in particular the activity of angels. Thus, the discussions following the publication of The World Bewitched show that Cartesians could just as easily defend the activity of spirits. Andrew Fix rightly concludes that opposite views were held within the Cartesian camp itself. As a consequence Fix also retracted his earlier view concerning the influence of Cartesianism on the Enlightenment. However, the case is not that simple, since Descartess new way of dealing with matter and mind did not relate to devils and angels alone. Philosophical Demigods Balthasar Bekkers disenchantment reached further than everyday popular belief. For Bekker, divine power is axiomatic. Gods absolute power was threatened by the supposed power of angels and devils. Apart from such individual spirits, however, Gods perfect sovereignty also ruled out abstract philosophical principles that might act as statholders and mediators of divine omnipotence. Thus, Aristotles forms and Platos ideas are put on a par with the demigods of superstition: No Intelligences ... no Ideas, no Demons, no Semi-deities: God alone is all in all.23 In particular Bekker criticizes the Aristotelian idea of concomitant Spirits (bygestelde Geesten),24 which were thought to be responsible for the motions of heavenly bodies. Aristotles theory of the animation of

Arnold Geulincx, Metaphysica Vera, in: Smtliche Schriften in fnf Bnden, ed. H.J. de Vleeschauwer (hereafter: Opera) (Stuttgart, 1968), II, 147-50. 23 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 16. 24 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 132.

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heavenly bodies is nothing but an academic sequel to the childish belief in devils, ghosts, and witchcraft.25 Despite the fact that others quoted his works in opposition to Bekker, Arnold Geulincx shared this view to an important extent. Geulincx also emphasizes the uniqueness of divine power. Geulincx, too, criticizes the idea of introducing other causal principles than Gods omnipresent will. In a speech at the start of the 1652 Saturnalia, a festive week of less formal disputations at Leuven University, the young professor Geulincx took a swipe at the tendency of natural philosophers to depict the natural world as being animated.26 In poetry, says Geulincx, this may not be a problem. Physics, however, should be freed from animistic explanations. According to Geulincx, all philosophers had traditionally explained nature with the use of concepts drawn from human mental experience. Stoics, Platonists, and Pythagorians attribute virtue, sense, and even thought to the world. According to the Aristotelian tradition, nature has fears and impediments, desires and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, forms and intelligences, powers and potencies.27 Bekker and Geulincx both welcomed Descartess philosophy as an alternative. In particular it gave them a philosophical foundation for their religious intention to link nature in a more direct manner to the activity of God. By its strict separation of the physical and the mental realms, Cartesianism does without any causal agencies apart from God and man. In fact, according to Descartes, all forms of inanimate bodies are to be explained through the motion, size, shape, and arrangement of their material parts.28 In so far as bodily change can be accounted for in terms of the mutual influence of moving parts of matter, the whole of physical nature may be compared to a machine. This mechanistic view reveals a fundamental change in the notion of causality. According to Descartes, all bodily changes may be explained as the direct result of previous bodily states according to a law-like process. In such a causal scheme mentalistic forces are redundant. As we saw, Balthasar Bekker rejected the idea of concomitant Spirits which were intended to account for the regular motion of heavenly bodies. Cartesian natural philosophy could do without such independent centers of causality, since it explains the motion of bodies on the basis of the motion of the surrounding matter. In other words no spirits are needed to initiate movement as demigods of change. The same applies to all other sources of causality. In schoBekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 131-32. Rainer Specht, Commercium, Mentis et Corporis (Stuttgart, 1966), 157-58, points to Robert Fludd and Nicolas Malebranche, who also held the idea that Aristotelianism is a source of idolatry. 26 The lecture and the text of the Qustiones quodlibetic to which it forms an introduction were later republished as Saturnalia (Leiden, 1665). See Geulincx, Opera, I, 1-147. 27 Geulincx, Opera, I, 17-18. 28 Descartes, Le Monde, AT XI, 26; CSM I, 89.
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lastic physics substantial forms were held to be responsible for the activity of natural objects as the initiators of movement. Descartes considered such principles superfluous. He preferred not to commit himself and for the sake of peace with the philosophers did not explicitly deny the existence of what they further suppose to exist in bodies, such as their substantial forms. At the same time he was confident that his new philosophy had no need for them.29 Descartes addresses the school philosophers, but his criticism of their way of doing natural philosophy reaches beyond Peripatetic thought. Indeed, a range of philosophical schools kept to the idea that the problems and the explanations of natural philosophy should be put in terms of the interplay of active and passive forces. Aristotelians saw the form as the active principle in a physical process and regarded matter as being passive. Alternative sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophies came up with other principles but nonetheless maintained the dualistic scheme. Few contemporaries interpreted material elements simply as different kinds of matter. More often than not elements were classified according to their active or passive characteristics. Whether they were of a Platonic, Neo-Stoic, alchemical, or eclectic nature, the philosophical principles which were brought forward as alternatives to Aristotelian matter and form, followed the same pattern. Moreover, the alternative philosophies explicitly presented activity as being of a spiritual nature. On top of this, many accepted the Platonic-Paracelcist idea that nature as a whole was governed by a Soula hidden spiritual force which was often heaped together with the Stoic pneuma and the Holy Spirit of Christianity. With Descartes nature was cleansed of such spiritual or would-be spiritual forms. The strict separation of body and mind and the mechanistic conception of physical processes thus went hand in hand and put an end to the ongoing philosophical quest for active principles.30 Geulincx and Bekker, who were both inspired by the religious motive of securing the uniqueness of Divine efficaciousness, greeted Cartesianism with open arms. Yet the deanimation of the material world unmistakably kindled the fire of irreligion, since the Cartesian ban on active principles put all forms of spiritual intervention at risk. God as Spirit Following the publication of the first, Leeuwarden edition, The World Bewitched was so fiercely attacked that Bekker felt the need to complain about its reception in the preface to Book II, which was printed in Amsterdam: people have thus described it, and have publicly (although not in this city) preached about it [in such a way as if] I taught that there is neither Hell nor Devil
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Descartes, Mtores, AT VI, 239. J. A. van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality (Leiden, 1995), 310-15.

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which God forbid....31 Bekker never denied the existence of the devil or of hell. What he denies is that the devil can influence worldly events. This misinterpretation was not, however, the only one. In W. P. C. Knuttels biography of Bekker we also find the example of the Utrecht minister Henricus Brinck, who was of the opinion that, according to Bekker, God has no influence on humans.32 This again is an opinion Bekker never held. Nevertheless, it is quite logical that he was associated with it. If there can be no activity of spirits in the material world, the question soon arises whether God Himself, being of a spiritual nature, could actually influence the course of things. Bekker anticipated such possible objections. The view that God might be regarded as a spirit is exactly what Bekker denies at various points in The World Bewitched. Despite our habit of seeing God as a spirita habit which, by the way, we also come across in ScriptureGod has no affinities whatsoever with the kind of spirit that we know, i.e., with the human mind, or soul. Body and soul, says Bekker, are substances (Selfstandigheden), but at the same time they are creatures (Schepselen).33 Since there is an infinite difference between created and uncreated substance, body and soul are both equally far removed from their Creator. I only call [God] a Spirit, Bekker writes, since I cannot find a word in any language, with which I could characterise Him in the right way. God, however, does not share anything with created spirits but this name. Bekker in particular levels his criticism at those classical and modern philosophers who present the human soul as a part of Gods spirit.34 This expression from Horace (divinae particula aurae, a parcel of Gods breath) is founded on the Stoic conviction that individual human spirits are part and parcel of the Spirit of the World.35 We find the idea in modern times as well. With regard to the origin of the human soul Justus Lipsius writes that we are, as it were, [Gods] limbs and parts.36 It is of crucial importance to Bekker to say that God cannot be compared to a created spirit. Bekker denies that any spirits apart from human spirits influence the course of events in nature.37 If God be regarded a spirit He wouldas Bekkers opponents were quick to point outnot be able to influence either man or nature. Geulincxs position is potentially even more dangerous. Whereas Bekker rejected the Stoic view concerning the identity of human and divine souls, this idea is taken up anew in a quasi-Cartesian form by Geulincx. Comparing the
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, Voorrede. H. Brinck, Toet-steen der waarheid (Utrecht, 1691), Voorrede, quoted in Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 235. 33 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 6. Cf. Descartes, AT VIII-I, 24; CSM I, 210. 34 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 9. 35 Cf. Horace, Satires II, 2, 79, and Ren Descartes et Martin Schoock, La Querelle dUtrecht, tr. Theo Verbeek (Paris, 1988), 470, n. 63. 36 See Jacqueline Lagre, Juste Lipse. La Restauration du stocisme (Paris, 1994), 74. 37 As for the existence of an animal soul, Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 23, keeps his options open.
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relationship between God and individual minds with the relationship between individual material things and nature as a whole, the Flemish philosopher in fact welds God and human souls together to form a single substantial unity. Our mind is a modus of the divine spirit in the same way as bodily objects are modi of material substance.38 But when minds are so to speak cosubstantial with God and at the same time incapable of moving matter, the question arises how God Himself could influence the course of things. Contemporaries never confronted occasionalist philosophers with this objection. It was only in 1739 that David Hume spoke out against the Cartesians, arguing that their position could lead to the blasphemous conclusion that no force is to be met with in God. If, says Hume, no impression, either from sensation or reflection, implies any force or efficacy, tis equally impossible to discover or even imagine any such principle in the deity.39 If all spiritual influence on nature is denied, Gods activity in nature will have to be reconsidered. Bekker simply denies that God is a spirit in the usual sense of the word. Geulincx is, as we have seen, less observant; but he is aware of the necessary restrictions in comparing God with human souls. Geulincx argues that, in a certain sense, the influence of Gods will on nature remains mysterious (ineffabilis), since we cannot deduce any form of influence on matter from the notion of spiritual activity alone. The will can desire a form of bodily movement, but desiring motion is not a form of motion itself. Thus, when we say that God moves [matter] through His will, we do not really understand what we are saying. Nevertheless, Geulincx is willing to keep to the idea that God governs nature through the activity of His will. The will of a spirit of infinite power is simply incomparable to our own.40 Both Bekker and Geulincx take the necessary steps to exclude God from their Cartesian iconoclasm. God is not a spirit in the usual sense of the word. What they do not seem to have taken into account, however, is that, traditionally, the idea of causality was itself put into spiritual terms. Bekkers disenchantment is specifically directed against devils, ghosts, and witches. Yet being developed along the lines of the Cartesian mechanization of nature and the mind-matter dualism that accompanies it, this disenchantment points to a more fundamental form of disenchantment by which nature is stripped of its centers of spontaneous activity. In pre-Cartesian physics all natural activity is explained by active forces influencing what is passive. If this anthropomorphic metaphor is abandoned, there is, contrary to what Bekker and Geulincx expected, not more but ultiGeulincx, Opera, II, 237-39 and 273. The argument is based on the idea that the infinite has metaphysical and epistemological priority over finite things, which, as parts, are like residues of the whole; see Eugne Terraillon, La Morale de Geulincx dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de Descartes (Paris, 1912), 37-39. 39 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 160. 40 Geulincx, Opera, II, 502, thesis VIII.
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mately less reason to talk of God in physics. Accordingly, the Cartesian God is surprisingly disinclined to interfere with natures course. God and Nature Coalesce Despite Bekkers theological motivations, the philosophical notion of Gods power and perfection necessarily led to a reinterpretation of those Biblical texts in which angels and devils are reported to actively partake in historical events41 In other words even the strangest phenomena might be explained in naturalistic terms. Bekker, for instance, explains telepathic experiences by the idea of diffusions of sympathetic particles from the human body. Although in this case he shows himself to be a very uncritical natural philosopher and a bad mechanicist at that, it is clear that he favors naturalistic explanations, indicating how what is often associated with Witchcraft or the work of Devils may also be explained naturally.42 Balthasar Bekker objects to Geulincxs view that God is directly responsible for all natural activity, since he disapproves of involving God in every natural operation. When, says Bekker, we ask ourselves whether horses can fly, it would be preposterous to argue that in view of Gods Almighty Power, horses are indeed able to fly: the question was not what God is able to do, but what a horse is able to do. Accordingly, following the Scholastics, we should only talk of Gods influence and concurrence with respect to the usual, law-governed course of nature. It is of no interest to science to know what kind of divine assistance would be needed in order for trees to grow on the sea or ships to sail in the mountains. Bekker seems to have no philosophical problems with reintroducing Scholastic notions like concurrence. He simply links his common sensical view of nature to the Biblical word of Genesis: God preserves things according to the specific way in which He created themin other words, He creates and keeps all beings after their kind.43 Geulincxs position seems to be the very opposite to Bekkers in this respect. According to Geulincx, each and every natural activity is a direct consequence of Gods will. Yet here again there are more similarities than differences between Bekker and Geulincx, as both authors reveal a diminished concern for the exceptional. Bekkers unwillingness to mention God in every instance forms part of his strategy to emphasize the common course of nature. The daily rule of divine
Thus, Bekker interprets the devils temptation of Christ in the desert not as a personal confrontation with the Evil One, but as an inner conflict of Christ. Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 133. 42 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, IV, 10, 13. 43 Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 40. Apart from Genesis 1:1, 12, 21 and 24-25, Bekker quotes Revelation 4:11, Psalms 65:10-14 and 104:14-15, Hosea 2:20-21, Hebrews 6:7 and James 5:7.
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omniscience and the continual efficacy of divine omnipotence should be understood in terms of natures normal course. Showing a preference for natural explanations over explanations that introduce the activity of individual spirits or of God, Bekker stresses the importance of interpreting nature as governed by a fundamental regularity. Geulincx links all natural action directly to the activity of God. This, however, does not mean that he is concerned with exceptional occurrences or extraordinary phenomena. On the contrary Gods omnipresence leaves no room for the exceptional. With Geulincx, the fact that we know God from His works leads to a fascination with the common course of nature and not with the anomalous. Instead of miracles, it is the miraculous character of everyday phenomena which invariably amazes him. Thus, Geulincx uses the term miracle (miraculum, wonderwerk) only in relation to his idea of seeing the world as a spectacle (spectaculum, schouwspel) of wonderful phenomena and not in its traditional religious sense. The laws of nature depend only on Gods free will: So that it is really of equal significance and in itself as much of a miracle that, upon the command of my will, my tongue trembles in my mouth when I say Earth as that the Earth itself would tremble upon the same command; the only difference is, that it has pleased God that the one thing happens at a certain moment of time, but not the other.44 The identification of Gods will with natural law is a recurrent theme in postCartesian philosophy. Likewise with Bekker and Geulincx. In Geulincx a statement concerning the will of God maybe quite literally a statement of physics. Bekker holds on to the idea of a personal Divinity, operating independently from nature. Even so, his emphasis on natural explanations and disanimation of nature along Cartesian lines leave little room for a kind of divine government in terms of an actively intervening spiritual force. The theological world-view based on the dualistic terminology of active principles acting on passive matter is replaced by a deterministic view of nature which does not admit of spiritual or would-be spiritual interference in natural processes. The only remaining way to interpret nature in religious terms is by reformulating physical insights in a theological phraseology, just as Spinoza consistently did. With respect to Bekkers biblical hermeneutics, Wiep van Bunge concluded that [the] best way [for Bekker] to have defended himself against the accusation of being a Spinozist would probably have been to become one.45 We may now see in what way Bekkerand Geulincx, for that matterapproach Spinozism also in a philosophical sense. Both authors had much affinity with the
44 Geulincx, Opera, III, 36 and 280. See also Arnout Geulincx, Van de hoofddeugden, De eerste tuchtverhandeling, ed. Cornelis Verhoeven (Baarn, 1986), 97, and Victor Vander Haeghen, Geulincx: tude sur sa vie, sa philosophie et ses ouvrages, Diss. Lige 1886 (Gent, 1886), 77. 45 Van Bunge, Balthasar Bekkers Cartesian Hermeneutics, 79.

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new natural philosophy which did without spirits or other centers of causation. Yet in the alliance of Protestantism and Cartesianism which they formed, all seeds of a naturalistic world-view are present. In particular their Christian Cartesianism embodies the germs of Spinozism. Along with devils and angels God Himself gets into a tight corner. Furthermore, God and nature continue to draw closer. As the image of spiritual activity is ruled out as a causal metaphor for natural change, the subjective view of nature in terms of human experience is replaced by an objectivist view in which the scientific and the metaphysicotheological descriptions of the world are increasingly seen as two sides of the same coin. As Andrew Fix has argued before, Bekkers Cartesianism functioned primarily as an ad hoc argument against spirits.46 Cartesianism, however, brought with it more than Bekker had hoped for: a new conception of causality, replacing the old metaphor of active spirits acting on passive matter. Bekker wrote The World Bewitched at a time when Spinoza was already known as a notorious atheist. He therefore explicitly rejects the foolish aberration of Spinoza, who intermingles God and World.47 Spinoza, says Bekker, is someone who boarded Descartess foundations too broadly. Thereby, however, Bekker himself confirmed that Cartesianism was a slippery slope. Descartes and Modern Thought Both Aristotelian critics and occasionalist and Leibnizian followers of Descartes were, in their reaction to the mechanical philosophy, intrigued by the same question: If forms do not activate matter, then what does? The idea wasand often still isthat something must be responsible for action; something must do the causal work. From a Cartesian standpoint this is ultimately the wrong question. Indeed the very idea behind Cartesian physics is that the metaphor of mind acting on matter is no longer valid as a scientific explanation. The natural world is matter without form. Although metaphysical theories of analogy might cover up things in the case of God, the role of independent forces in nature had come to an end. Arguing that it must be God who is responsible for change in a world without forms, occasionalism in fact held on to the old causal metaphor that Descartes had done away with. This may also serve as an answer to the question whether Descartes himself was an occasionalist. Indeed he was not. The reason is not that he had other ways of dealing with the problems of mind-body dualism or that he never really elaborated the idea of Gods continuous creation.48 The reason is that, starting with Le Monde, he had made it his
Andrew C. Fix, Hoe cartesiaans was Balthasar Bekker? It Beaken, 58 (1996), 118-37. Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, Voorrede. 48 See Daniel Garber, How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance, and Occasionalism, in The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987), 567-80, and Descartes Metaphysical Physics (Chicago, 1992), 263-305; also Van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality, 274-76.
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task to substitute the form-matter, active-passive, type of causal argumentation with a new, mechanical, one. It was exactly the old anthropomorphic concept of causality that occasionalism reintroduced. Looking back, we may consider the consequences of the Cartesian ban on active principles over a longer period. Even today anthropomorphic ideas play an important role in our conception of nature. In common schoolbook representations we explain the phenomenon of gravity for instance in dualistic terms: an active force pulling away at passive lumps of matter. Some of us may be aware of the fact that this is only a manner of speaking, that in fact this account of gravity is based on the law-like regularity of observed phenomena, expressed in a mathematical way. It is to seventeenth-century thought, and to Isaac Newton in particular, that we owe this kind of mathematical representation. Yet the mathematical law itself leaves open the question of its interpretation. The possibility of interpreting the law of gravity in mere positivistic terms, i.e., as a precise formulation of observed regularities without considering the question of causality, is a typically nineteenth-century idea. The seventeenth century did, however, witness its own revolution with regard to causal interpretations of nature. Descartess strict distinction between mental and bodily events is nowadays mostly interpreted with respect to the question of mind-body interactionism. Descartes himself, however, was not so much occupied with this question as with the removal of mentalistic terms from physics. As he wrote to Princess Elisabeth: when we suppose that heaviness is a real quality, of which all we know is that it has the power to move the body that possesses it towards the centre of the earth, we have no difficulty in conceiving how it moves this body or how it is joined to it.49 The real quality of gravity is like an active force carrying a body to the center of the Earth. Yet we must, says Descartes, be skeptical of such real qualities, of such powers in nature. That we represent nature in this way is the result of an anthropomorphic projection. We ourselves have the experience of a power that moves the body. Interpreting nature as being ridden with active forces, we call upon our primitive notion of the unity of body and soul. We should, however, where physics is concerned, make use of the primitive notion of material extension. As Descartes explained to Princess Elisabeth: I think we have hitherto confused the notion of the souls power to act on the body with the power one body has to act on another.50 Although many of his contemporaries were prone to ridicule, along with Molire, the unproductive Scholastic concepts of real qualities and substantial forms, only a few were able to draw the consequences from Descartess argu49 50

Descartes to Princess Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 667; CSM III, 219. Idem.

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ments against them. Balthasar Bekker saw the possibility of applying Descartess arguments to superstitious beliefs. Arnold Geulincx was one of the few who saw what Descartess philosophy meant for the traditional, anthropomorphic way of doing physics and was exceptional in his way of explicitly discussing the metaphor of animation which lay concealed in the traditional philosophical accounts of nature.51 But Descartess separation of body and soul should not merely be seen in relation to the question of superstition or to the critique of ancient and medieval philosophies. In fact Descartes introduced a new model of natural causality, the most striking feature of which is that nature contains no little souls, no spontaneous centers of activity.52 The modern concept of determinism is a direct consequence of this idea. The substitution of active spirits by natural causes is reflected in the substitution in natural philosophy of spontaneous centers of causation by outward, material circumstances. Nature, in other words, is stripped of its anthropomorphic properties, its active facultieswhich is exactly what Descartes meant when he said that he could do without the forms. A choice in favor of Descartes implied a redefinition of Gods relation to nature. Considering the consequences of Descartess disenchantment in the long run, we may conclude that the mechanical reduction of reality had a lasting effect on our way of seeing the physical world, even though specific mechanistic explanations in physics were soon to be forgotten. Rather than by exorcising superstition or promoting a more allegorical reading of the Bible, it was by rejecting the image of body and soul and by replacing it with that of the machine that Descartes influenced our concept of nature. Spiritual activity was no longer accepted as a model for natural change. As a result, even Cartesians of strong faith were prone to accept ideas that were typical of the Age of Reason. Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

He may have been influenced by Willem van Gutschoven. In a 1651 university disputation, Van Gutschoven criticized the Scholastic notions of sympathy, antipathy, antiperistatis, magnetic forces, influence of heavenly bodies, occult qualities and other powerful faculties, arguing that for us, matter and motion suffice. Student lecture notes show that this would remain the accepted view at Leuven university until as late as 1766. Cf. G. Vanpaemel, Echos van een wetenschappelijke revolutie. De mechanistische natuurwetenschap aan de Leuvense Artesfaculteit (1650-1797) (Brussel, 1986), 82-84. 52 Descartes to Mersenne, 26 April 1643, AT III, 648; CSM III, 216: I do not suppose that there are in nature any real qualities, which are attached to substances, like so many little souls to their bodies. On Descartess idea that Scholastic theory attributes a form of substantiality to the qualities themselves, see: Descartes to Princess Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 667; CSM III, 219: We imagined these qualities to be real, that is to say to have an existence distinct from that of bodies, and so to be substances, although we called them qualities. Descartes seems to regard the notions of real quality and substantial form as being interchangeable. See also Les Mtores, AT VI, 239.

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