n of such incongruous elements was something which
the theologians at once recognised as heterodox and the philosophers
as illogical.

There was another doctrine of Malebranche which brought him into
trouble with the theologians, and which was the main subject of his
long controversy with Arnauld. This was his denial of particular
providence. As Leibnitz maintained that this is the best of all
possible worlds, and that its evils are to be explained by the
negative nature of the finite, so Malebranche, with a slight change of
expression derived evil from the nature of particular or individual
existence. It is not conformable to the nature of God to act by any
but universal laws, and these universal laws necessarily involve
particular evil consequences, though their ultimate result is the
highest possible good. The question why there should be any particular
existence, any existence but God, seeing such existence necessarily
involves evil, remains insoluble so long as the purely pantheistic
view of God is maintained; and it is this view which is really at the
bottom of the assertion that he can have no particular volitions. To
the coarse and anthropomorphic conception of particular providence
Malebranche may be right in objecting, but on the other hand, it
cannot be doubted that any theory in which the universal is absolutely
opposed to the particular, the infinite to the finite, is unchristian
as well as unphilosophical. For under this dualistic presupposition,
there seem to be only two possible alternatives open to thought:
either the particular and finite must be treated as something
independent of the universal and infinite, which involves an obvious
contradiction, or else it must be regarded as absolute nonentity. We
find Malebranche doing the one or the other as occasion requires. Thus
he vindicates the freedom of man's will on the ground that the
universal will of God does not completely determine the particular
volitions of man; and then becoming conscious of the difficulty
involved in this conception, he tries, like Descartes, to explain the
particular will as something merely negative, a defect, and not a
positive existence.

Reason and will.

But to understand fully Malebranche's view of freedom and the ethical
system connected with it, we must notice an important alteration which
he makes in the Cartesian theory of the relation of