Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth (incl. Treatise of Nature and Grace)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~550,000 words · 2,608 passages
Cite this work
- APANicolas Malebranche. (n.d.). Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth (incl. Treatise of Nature and Grace). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nicolas-malebranche/treatise-concerning-the-search-after-truth-incl-treatise-of-nature-and-grace
- MLANicolas Malebranche. Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth (incl. Treatise of Nature and Grace). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nicolas-malebranche/treatise-concerning-the-search-after-truth-incl-treatise-of-nature-and-grace.
- ChicagoNicolas Malebranche. Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth (incl. Treatise of Nature and Grace). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nicolas-malebranche/treatise-concerning-the-search-after-truth-incl-treatise-of-nature-and-grace.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
An examination of why we go wrong — the senses, the imagination, the passions, the inclinations — and, out of that, his own metaphysics: we see all things in God, and no body is ever the real cause of what happens to another.
Context and history
Published in 1674-75. This edition also carries the Treatise of Nature and Grace. Malebranche starts from Descartes and ends somewhere very different: occasionalism, in which what we call causes are only occasions for God to act. The consequence is radical, and it is what Arnauld and Leibniz argued with him about — if God does everything, what is left of us.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Some there are who fancy to themfelves they very well knoiv the Nature of the Mind. Many others are perfuaded, 'tis vnpojfible to know any thing of it. Laftly, the greateft Number of all lee not of what ufc that Knowledge could be, and therefore defpife it. But all thefe i'o common Opinions are rather the Effects of the Imagination and Inclination of Men, than the Confequences The PREFACE. quinces of a Gear and DiJiinffView of their Mind •, and proceed from their feeling an Uneafi-Deft and Regret to retire into themfelves, there to difcover their Weakneffes and Infirmities ; and their being pleased with Curious Enquiries and gayer fort of Sciences. Being always Abroad, they are inlenfible of the Diforders that happen at Home within themfelves. They think all's right, becaufe there's a Stupor on their Soul, and rind fault with thofe who knowing their Diftemperi betake to Remedies, faying, they make themfelves fick, becaufe they try for Cure. But thefe Great Genius, who pierce into the molt Myfierious Secret s of Nature, who lift themfelves in Opinion as high as Heaven, and defcend to the bottom of the Abyfs, ought to remember what they are. Thefe great Obje&s, it may be, do but dazle them. The Mind muft needs depart out of it felf, to compafs fo many things ; and this it can't do without fcattering its Force. Men came not into the World to be Aftronomers, or Chymifs, to fpend their whole Life at the end of a Tele/cope ; or labouring at a furnace, to deduce trilling Conferences from their painful Obfervations.…