lf come under the influence of Descartes, whose work he
always regarded with the deepest respect. The cautiousness of the master
had done much to disguise the insidious dangers of his thought, and it
was in the hands of those disciples who developed his system and sought
to reconcile it at all points with orthodoxy that his ideas displayed
their true nature. Malebranche's philosophy revealed the incompatibility
of Providence--in the ordinary acceptation--with immutable natural laws.
If the Deity acts upon the world, as Malebranche maintained, only by
means of general laws, His freedom is abolished, His omnipotence is
endangered, He is subject to a sort of fatality. What will become of the
Christian belief in the value of prayers, if God cannot adapt or modify,
on any given occasion, the general order of nature to the needs of human
beings? These are some of the arguments which we find in a treatise
composed by Fenelon, with the assistance of Bossuet, to demonstrate
that the doctrine of Malebranche is inconsistent with piety and orthodox
religion. They were right. Cartesianism was too strong a wine to
be decanted into old bottles. [Footnote: Fenelon's Refutation of
Malebranche's Traite de la nature et de la grace was not published till
1820. This work of Malebranche also provoked a controversy with Arnauld,
who urged similar arguments.]

Malebranche's doctrine of what he calls divine Providence was closely
connected with his philosophical optimism. It enabled him to maintain
the perfection of the universe. Admitting the obvious truth that the
world exhibits many imperfections, and allowing that the Creator
could have produced a better result if he had employed other means,
Malebranche argued that, in judging the world, we must take into account
not only the result but the methods by which it has been produced. It is
the best world, he asserts, that could be framed by general and simple
methods; and general and simple methods are the most perfect, and alone
worthy of the Creator. Therefore, if we take the methods and the
result together, a more perfect world is impossible. The argument was
ingenious, though full of assumptions, but it was one which could only
satisfy a philosopher. It is little consolation to creatures suffering
from the actual imperfections of the system into which they are born to
be told that the world might have been free from those defects, only in
that case they would not have the satisfaction of kno