ited and
individual existence of other beings like himself, only in relation to
the whole in which they are parts, so he can find his own good only in
the good of the whole, and he is in contradiction with himself so long
as he rests in any good short of that. His love of happiness, his
natural inclinations both selfish and social, may be therefore
regarded as an undeveloped form of the love of God; and the ideal
state of his inclinations is that in which the love of self and of
others are explicitly referred to that higher affection, or in which
his love does not proceed from a part to the whole, but from the whole
to the parts.

Ethics.

The question of morals to Malebranche is the question how these
_natural inclinations_ are related to the particular passions.
Sensation and passion arise out of the connexion of body and soul, and
their use is only to urge us to attend to the wants of the former. We
can scarcely hear without a smile the simple monastic legend which
Malebranche weaves together about the original nature of the passions
and their alteration by the Fall. "It is visibly a disorder that a
spirit capable of knowing and loving God should be obliged to occupy
itself with the needs of the body." "A being altogether occupied with
what passes in his body and with the infinity of objects that surround
it cannot be thinking on the things that are truly good."[27] Hence
the necessity of an immediate and instinctive warning from the senses
in regard to the relations of things to our organism, and also of
pains and pleasures which may induce us to attend to this warning.
"Sensible pleasure is the mark that nature has attached to the use of
certain things in order that without having the trouble of examining
them by reason, we may employ them for the preservation of the body,
but not in order that we may love them."[28] Till the Fall the mind
was merely united to the body, not subjected to it, and the influence
of these pleasures and pains was only such as to make men attend to
their bodily wants, but not to occupy the mind, or fill it with
sensuous joys and sorrows, or trouble its contemplation of that which
is really good. Our moral aim should therefore be to restore this
state of things, to weaken our union with the body and strengthen our
union with God. And to encourage us in pursuing this aim we have to
remember that union with God i