THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN THE NETHERLANDS AND IN FRANCE 1. Occasionalism: Geulincx 2.

%1. Occasionalism: Geulincx.% The propagation and defense of a system of thought soon give occasion to its adherents to purify, complete, and transform it.

Thus occasionalism forms the transition to the pantheism of Spinoza, Geulincx emphasizing the non-substantiality of spirits, and Malebranche the non-substantiality of bodies, while Spinoza combines and intensifies both.

Occasionalism denotes the theory of occasional causes.

Müller (J. Clauberg und seine Stellung im Cartesianismus, Jena, 1891), to be stricken from the list of thinkers who prepared the way for occasionalism, since in his discussion of the anthropological problem (corporis et animae conjunctio) he merely develops the Cartesian position, and does not go beyond it.

The meaning of this doctrine is misapprehended when it is assumed,an assumption to which the Leibnitzian account of occasionalism may mislead one,that in it the continuity of events, alike in the material and the psychical world, is interrupted by frequent scattered interferences from without, and all becoming transformed into a series of disconnected miracles.

Over the numberless lesser miracles with which occasionalism burdened the Deity, the one great miracle of the pre-established harmony has an undeniable advantage.