alebranche means
consciousness of desires and feelings, which belong to the individual
as such, and not consciousness of self as thinking. He begins, in
fact, where Descartes ended, and identifies the consciousness of self
as thinking, and so transcending the limits of its own particular
being, with the consciousness or idea of God. And between the
consciousness of the finite in sense and the consciousness of the
infinite in thought, or in other words, between the consciousness of
the universal and the consciousness of the individual, he sees no
connexion. Malebranche is just one step from the pantheistic
conclusion that the consciousness of finite individuality as such is
illusory, and that as all bodies are but modes of one infinite
extension, so all souls are but modes of one infinite thought. But
while he willingly accepts this result in regard to matter, his
religious feelings prevent him from accepting it in relation to mind.
He is driven, therefore, to the inconsistency of holding that sense
and feeling, through which in his view we apprehend the finite as
such, give us true though imperfect knowledge of the soul, while the
knowledge they give us of body is not only imperfect but false.[22]
Thus the finite spirit is still allowed to be a substance, distinct
from the infinite, though it holds its substantial existence on a
precarious tenure. It is left hanging, we may say, on the verge of the
infinite, whose attraction must soon prove too strong for it. Ideas
are living things, and often remould the minds that admit them in
spite of the greatest resistance of dead custom and traditionary
belief. In the grasp of a logic that overpowers him the more easily in
that he is unconscious of its tendency. Malebranche is brought within
one step of the pantheistic conclusion, and all his Christian feeling
and priestly training can do is _just_ to save him from denial of the
personality of man.

But even this denial is not the last word of pantheism. When the
principle that the finite is known only in relation to the infinite,
the individual only in relation to the universal, is interpreted as
meaning that the infinite and universal is complete in itself without
the finite and individual, when the finite and individual is treated
as a mere accidental existence due to the "arbitrary will of God," it
ceases to be possible to conceive even God as a spirit. D