MALEBRANCHE, mftl'briiNsht, Nwouts (1638-17l5). A French philosopher. He was born in Paris, where his father was president of the Chambre des Comptes. He was deformed and sickly, with a constitutional inclination to solitude. His early education was conducted at home. After studying theology at the Sorbonne, he entered the Congregation of the Oratory at the age of twenty-two. His interests were mainly in critical and historical lines, until Descartes's Trait(' de Ihomme fell into his hands and gave him an impulse toward philosophy. He spent ten years in the study of the Cartesian system, and published the results in his famous Recherche de la verite (1674; Lug. trans. by T. Taylor, Lon don, 1694). This work, written with perspicuity and elegance, had for its object the psychological investigation of the causes of the errors to which the human mind is liaLle, as well as of the nature of truth and the way of reaching it. He main tains that we see all things in God; that all be ings and thoughts exist in God; and that God is the cause of all changes taking place in bodies and souls, which are therefore merely passive therein. All apparent causation of object by object in the perceived world is only occasional causation. (See OCCASIONALISM.) All physical and psychical changes follow an apparent causal order only because God uses the oceurrenee of a so-called cause as the occasion on which He calls into being a so-called effect. Only God can cause
events to happen; it is an incommunicable divine attribute. His system is a kind of mystic ideal ism. It was subjected to a thorough examination by Locke and Leibnitz, and opposed by Bossuet and especially by Antoine Arnauld, the .Jansenist leader. The attacks made upon it led him to discuss the relations between philosophy and Church doctrine in Conversations metaphysigues et ehretiennes (1677). which was followed by a Trait(' de la nature et de la grace, while he dealt with his chief antagonist expressly in a series of Reponses do Malebranehe Arnauld. He died in Paris, where his collected works were published in 1712, and again in 1837 and 1859-71. For his life, consult Andre, Vie du R. P. Malebranehe (Paris, 1SS6) ; and for his philosophy, 011e-La prune, La philosophic de Malebranche (ib., 1870 72) ; Grimm, "Malebranches Erkenntnistheorie and deren Verhiiltnis zur Erkenntnistheo•ie des Descartes," in Zeitsehrift fiir Philosophic und philosophisehe Kritik (Berlin, 1877) ; Blampi gnon, Etude sur Malebranelic (rapt-es des docu ments manuserits (Paris, 1862).