Supernaturalism, Occasionalism, and Preformation in Malebranche

Karen Detlefsen University of Pennsylvania

Malebranche is both an occasionalist and an advocate of the preformationist theory of generation. One might expect this given that he is a mechanist: passive matter cannot be the source of its own motion and so requires God to move it (occasionalism); and such matter, moving according to a few simple laws of motion, could never fashion something as complex as a living being, and so organisms must be fashioned by God at Creation (preformationism). This expectation ªnds a challenge in Kant’s depiction of the relation between causation and generation. According to Kant, preformation is the generation theory one would expect the advocate of the pre-established harmony to endorse, while the occasionalist would endorse a theory whereby God directly forms the organism upon every insemination. I make sense of Malebranche’s position in light of Kant’s suggestion by examining the relation Malebranche sees between science and metaphysics, the roles that he believes empirical investigations and ªnal causes have in scientiªc practice and explanation, and the role of the supernatural in Malebranche’s philosophy. Malebranche is an advocate of both occasionalism and preformationism. Occasionalism is Malebranche’s theory of causation, and as a general doctrine, it holds that the only true and active cause is the will of God. Cre- ated beings are not actively efªcacious, and so, have no power by which to affect changes. Preformation is the theory that, at Creation, God pre-

I thank audiences at The American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting (Minneapolis, May 2000) and The History of Philosophy of Science Working Group Con- gress (Montreal, June 2002) as well as members of my Spring 2003 graduate seminar at The University of Pennsylvania for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. An- drew Pessin’s comments at the former conference were especially beneªcial and pivotal in my thinking about this material. Further thanks are due to Saul Fisher, Sean Greenberg, Ernan McMullin, Tan Kok Chor, and two anonymous referees of this journal.

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formed every organism that would ever live, encasing generation within generation in the reproductive organs of the ªrst member of each species. For preformationists, what we witness as and call “generation” is merely the becoming visible of what was previously invisible, and there is no development of organic form in any meaningful sense of the word “development.” Preformation is often contrasted with epigenesis, which posits that the fetus develops by the sequential emergence of parts, and that this represents a truly new coming-into-being of organic form.1 To the student of Malebranche, it may come as no surprise that he endorses both occasionalism and preformationism. Both views, arguably, are grounded in and are natural outgrowths of his more foundational mechanical philosophy—the idea that all changes in the phenomenal material world are explained in terms of sub-visible extended matter moving according to a few general laws of motion. Among the arguments for occasionalism identiªed by commentators, for example, is the claim that ªnite and inert extension cannot move itself and so must be moved by something with the unfailing

1. “Preformation” is an ambiguous term in early modern theories of generation. As Jacques Roger and Peter Bowler have both noted, it denotes two distinct theories which answer the key question of generation in importantly different ways (Roger [1963] 1997, pp. 259–60; Bowler 1971, pp. 221–22). One theory, which we might call “natural preformation,” postulates that the form of the living organism is generated sometime before insemination, and by some natural agent, usually by the parental soul (either maternal or pa- ternal, depending on where the germ is believed to be formed). Insemination starts the process merely of growth and not of organization or unity. The second theory, which we might call “divine preformation” (and which some commentators call “pre-existence”), also postulates that the form of living organisms is generated before insemination and also maintains that insemination starts the process merely of growth and not of development of organic form. But unlike natural preformation, on this theory, the generation of form oc- curs not at just anytime before insemination and not by a natural agent. Rather, God created each organism, all at once, at Creation. Unlike natural preformation, that is, divine preformation provides a ªnal and foolproof explanation for the problem of organic origins because it equates generation with supernatural creation. Throughout this paper, I shall use the term “preformation” to indicate divine preformation, because if Malebranche is a preformationist at all, he is a divine preformationist. Epigenesis, like preformation, is not a single monolithic theory. Phillip R. Sloan, for example, distinguishes between between Harvey’s epigenesis, a “neo-Aristotelian theory of the gradual organization of unformed matter into a new organism under the action of vital powers,” and the “mechanistic epigenesis” of Descartes, a theory which explains “the formation of the embryo purely from the assumptions of a particulate conception of matter, contact forces, vortices, and the three laws of nature” (Sloan 2002, pp. 233–34). Precisely because there are different forms of (and motivations for) both epigenesis and preformation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the distinction between the two theories is not always sharp. See footnote 26 below. At this juncture, I contrast preformation as the theory that God created all organisms, fully-formed, at Creation with epigenesis as the theory that organisms are gradually formed and organized from material that was previously unformed and unorganized.

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ability to do so, namely God (e.g., Nadler 1997, pp. 80ff and Sleigh 1990, pp. 171ff; see also Lennon [1974] for a variation on this).2 Analogously, one argument for preformationism rests on the belief that extended matter moving according to a few simple laws could never fashion something as complex as an organic body, and so, in order to save the more foundational mechanical philosophy, one must assume that God fashioned these bodies at Creation (Roger [1963] 1997, ch. 6). But complications arise when we consider Kant’s depiction of the relation between causation and generation. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant suggests that the “internally purposive form” of organic beings can be explained by either occasionalism or the pre-established harmony. The latter is Leibniz’s theory of causation, according to which God formed the world at Creation in such a way that through its own active power all future events would unfold. According to Kant, the advocate of occasionalism would support a theory of generation in which “the supreme world-cause, in accordance with its idea, would immediately provide the organic formation to the matter commingling in every impregnation,” and in this case, “everything that is natural is entirely lost”—nature itself has no active power in its creations because each organic form emerges upon procre- ation as a direct result of God’s forming the generative matter. Moreover, according to Kant, one option endorsed by the advocate of the pre- established harmony is preformation, and in this case, the supreme world-cause “would only have placed in the initial products of its wisdom the predisposition by means of which an organic being produces more of its own kind and constantly preserves the species itself” (Ak 5:422–23/Kant [1790] 2000, §81). On Kant’s schema, for the preformationist, nature has some active power: champions of preformation “would at least have left something to nature,” such as the mother’s ability to nourish and develop the pre-formed germ, and the predisposition of the species to preserve itself (Ak 5: 423/Kant [1790] 2000, §81). Taking naturalism to be the doctrine that nature itself has at least some power to bring about effects (though this conception will be challenged below), performationism permits some degree of naturalism.3 Malebranche, obvi- ously, does not ªt the schema: he is an occasionalist and a preformationist.

2. Secondary sources and sources cited infrequently are embedded in the text according to author, date, and page number; primary texts follow the scheme identiªed in the “Refer- ences.” 3. This limited naturalism is implied quite clearly in Kant’s (1763) The One Possible Ba- sis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, where he portrays preformation as the theory in which “each individual is immediately made by God and therefore is of supernatural origin so that only perpetuation, that is the transition from one time to another in evolution, is entrusted to natural law” (Ak 2:114/Kant [1763] 1979, p. 141).

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Further, if occasionalism requires that nature have no active power what- soever while preformationism suggests that nature does have some (albeit limited) active power, Malebranche would seem to be in a very precarious metaphysical position by endorsing both views. One may wish to defend the Kantian schema by invoking the old debate over how to interpret Malebranche’s theory of occasionalism. Re- calling the dispute between Leibniz and Arnauld which has endured to the present, we may side with Arnauld’s interpretation which sees no difference between occasionalism and the pre-established harmony.4 So we may agree with Kant, simply recognizing as well that Malebranche is not an occasionalist in whatever way Kant intended in the passage above. An- drew Black supports the Arnauldian interpretation of occasionalism, and cites the following passage from Malebranche’s Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (hereafter Dialogues) as textual support for this interpretation—a passage which also shows the link between Malebranche’s theory of causation and preformation (Black 1997, p. 39): At the time of creation, God constructed animals and plants for future centuries. He established the laws of motion necessary for making them grow. Now he is at rest because he does no more than follow these laws....Everything is done in relation to the laws of motion, laws which are so simple and so natural that, although God does everything by means of them in the ordinary course of his Providence, it seems that he affects nothing, in short that he is at rest (OC XII, 253–4/DMR XI, p. 196, emphases added).5

4. The debate between Arnauld and Leibniz over the interpretation of occasionalism and its relation to the pre-established harmony began with Leibniz’s letter of July 14, 1686 when he distanced his theory of causation from Malebranche’s (G II, 57/CA 134), a theme picked up by Arnauld a few letters later on March 4, 1687 (G II, 84/CA 173). Recent de- fenders of Leibniz’s interpretation include Steven Nadler (1993), while aligning themselves on Arnauld’s side of the debate are Andrew Black (1997), Nicholas Jolley (1990, pp. 106–07), and Charles McCracken (1983, p. 101). 5. A.J. Pyle sets up an argument for preformation as follows: “Accept the following commonplace premises: a. Nature is a material system; b. Matter is passive, obeying the laws of mechanics; c. Mechanism cannot frame an animal body; d. No subordinate agent has the necessary competence; e. God does not constantly intervene in the physical world; and one cannot escape pre-existence [what I call “preformation”—see footnote 1 above] as a conclusion” (Pyle 1987, p. 244).

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Thus, one might argue, by turning to Malebranche’s engagement with the study of life in the seventeenth century (speciªcally his engagement with theories of generation), we can marshal support for one side—the Arnauldian side—in the dispute over the meaning of Malebranche’s occasionalism. I argue against this conclusion. First, Malebranche does not ªt the Kantian schema, but is not thereby inconsistent.6 Second, Malebranche’s endorsement of preformationism cannot settle the debate one way or the other over how to interpret his theory of causation because, strictly speak- ing according to Malebranche, causation has nothing to do with explanations of generation. By investigating Malebranche’s advocacy of the preformation doctrine, and his engagement with the work of seventeenth century naturalists (especially the work of contemporary microscopists), we can learn much about what he thinks is the proper relation between science and metaphysics. Speciªcally, the naturalism that Kant indicates is implicit in preformationism is found in Malebranche too, but this is a scientiªc or explanatory naturalism that is wholly distinct from the metaphysical “supernaturalism” of occasionalism. This is not a new insight (e.g., Nadler 2000), but this naturalism is especially striking in the case of preformation because it shows the immense import of both the empirical

Given that Malebranche does endorse preformation, then it may well be because he accepts premises (a) through (e)—including the more Arnauldian interpretation of occasionalism, captured by premise (e). 6. To be sure, Kant does not specify Malebranche in the passage quoted above, and the scheme may hold in general. It is crucial, then, that my method here be clear. This is not a paper on Kant, and I do not intend to investigate what Kant thought Malebranche, as an occasionalist, ought to have believed regarding generation. Nor do I intend to investigate what Kant thought Malebranche actually intended by his theory of occasionalism, and consequently what he thought Malebranche ought to have maintained regarding generation. In fact, to my knowledge, Kant refers speciªcally to Malebranche just twice in his writings intended for publication, once in his Logic (“Malebranche . . . [has] not actually written a logic” [Ak 9:21/Kant [1800] 1988, p. 24]), and once in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Ak 6:73fn1/Kant [1793] 1934, p. 63n). In the latter text, he cites Malebranche’s denial, for theodicean reasons, of the claim that animals have souls (OC II, pp. 104ff/ST, pp. 323ff). Neither passage establishes Kant’s direct acquaintance with Malebranche’s own theory of occasionalism, though the latter does not rule out the possibility that Kant himself had read the Search After Truth, and therefore was acquainted with Malebranche’s theory of causation. Rather, my method is to start with Kant’s general suggestions on cause and generation which provide an extremely fruitful framework by which to investigate Malebranche’s engagement with the life sciences, his theory of occasionalism, and the relation between the two. Importantly, I think that Malebranche was proba- bly aware of a theory of generation somewhat like that suggested decades later by Kant, but that Malebranche rejected this theory for reasons that are extremely instructive. I address this in Part V below.

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and the teleological in Malebranche’s scientiªc practice. The latter point sets him off from Descartes and gives Malebranche’s scientiªc naturalism a distinctly different ºavor than Descartes’. In Part I, I provide some essential background to the debate over how to interpret Malebranche’s theory of occasionalism. In Part II, I consider Malebranche’s theory of preformation, including some motivations he may have had for holding the theory, and the supposed connection of preformation with supernaturalism. In Part III, I present what I take to be one of Malebranche’s arguments for preformation—the argument from functional holism. In Part IV, I show how one may try to use this ªrst argument, and the conception of living beings that it implies, as support for an interpretation of occasionalism that likens it to the pre-established harmony. I argue against this attempt, showing that Malebranche sees a strict separation between metaphysics and at least some scientiªc investigations of the natural world. In Part V, I present what I take to be two other reasons why Malebranche might endorse preformation, showing why these reasons preclude the sort of generation theory Kant suggests for the occasionalist without collapsing occasionalism into the pre-established harmony at the same time.

I. Occasionalism In a letter of March 4, 1687, Arnauld challenges Leibniz to distinguish between the pre-established harmony and the position of the occasionalists. In Arnauld’s estimation, the pre-established harmony says the same thing in other terms that those say who maintain that my will is the occasional cause for the movement of my arm and that God is its real cause; for they do not claim that God does this at the moment by a new act of will each time that I wish to raise my arm, but by a single act of the eternal will by which he has chosen to do everything which he has foreseen that it will be necessary to do, in order that the universe might be such as he has decided it ought to be (letter of March 4, 1687: G II, p. 84/CA, p. 173). That is, according to Arnauld, both the pre-established harmony and occasionalism assume that God acts in general ways, not by exercising a discrete and particular volition for each event in the natural world. Earlier in their correspondence (July 14, 1686), Leibniz insists upon a distinction—the system of occasional causes in fact does afªrm that for every natural event God exercises a discrete act of will: “at every moment” God in- terferes with “the ordinary events of life” (G II, pp. 57–58/CA, p. 134). And in direct answer to Arnauld’s challenge, he writes in a letter of Octo- ber 9, 1687, that the occasionalists understand the problem of mind-body

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interaction—a subspecies of the more general problem of causation that occasionalism and the pre-established harmony are meant to solve—as a problem that requires the solution of a deus ex machina (G II, p. 113/CA, p. 214).7 Steven Nadler captures the two interpretations as follows: In fact, at least two distinct and apparently incompatible readings of his [Malebranche’s] theory [of occasionalism] emerge, and we are left to chose between two different pictures of causation and God’s role therein. On one picture [Leibniz’s reading], God’s activity as cause is constant and ubiquitous, and is required in order to maintain a lawlike correspondence in the state of things. The other picture [Arnauld’s reading] more closely resembles Leibniz’s preestablished harmony, with God originally establishing such a correspondence once and for all by means of a few general volitions (Nadler 1993, p. 31).8 As is clear from the quotations from Arnauld and Nadler, the dispute over how to interpret Malebranche’s speciªc form of occasionalism often amounts to a dispute over how to interpret his understanding of God’s general and particular volitions. Andrew Pessin helpfully identiªes two ways of interpreting what Malebranche means by this distinction between kinds of divine volitions. The ªrst way is to distinguish between volitions with general content (that apply uniformly to all particular events) and volitions with speciªc or particular content (that apply to a single event only). The second way is to say that all volitions have particular content—each volition applies to a single event only—but that general volitions are lawful or nomic while particular volitions are not lawful or are anomic (Pessin 2001, pp. 77–79). If God’s general volitions have general 7. Leibniz’s main worry here is with the mediated “interaction” between two different kinds of substances rather than with God’s direct action in the world. Accordingly, what makes occasionalism miraculous is not that it attributes all “natural” effects to the will of God, but that, in the speciªc case of mind-body interaction, God must break the laws of bodies (or souls) to account for the fact that a different kind of substance, governed by entirely different laws, has causally “inºuenced” a body (or soul). See Rutherford (1993) and Sleigh (1990, pp. 167–69) for treatments of this issue. Nonetheless, Leibniz elsewhere makes clear that occasionalism is miraculous because it posits God’s constant activity in the so-called natural world: “The system of the perpetual caretaker, who represents in the one [soul] what happens in the other [body], rather like a man who is employed constantly to synchronize two inferior clocks which cannot keep the time by themselves . . . is the system of occasional causes,” and this “would need a perpetual miracle” because this is “something which exceeds the power of created things” (G IV, p. 520/NS, p. 82). 8. For texts that favor Leibniz’s reading, see, for example, (OC XII, pp. 161–2/DMR VII, p. 117; OC XII, p. 164/DMR VII, p. 119; OC II, p. 313/ST, p. 448; OC II, p. 431/ST, pp. 516–17). For texts that appear to more readily support Arnauld’s reading, see, for example, (OC V, p. 35/TNG I, XXII, pp. 119–20; OC V, p. 67/TNG II, III, p. 139).

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content that apply uniformly to all particular events (Pessin’s ªrst suggestion which captures Arnauld’s idea), it seems that God’s general volitions would require further speciªcation to account for the particular effects we witness in the natural world (Jolley 2002, p. 254). In De Ipsa Natura, Leibniz himself notes that particular effects require speciªc, particular causes, and suggests two possibilities, neither of which can accommodate Arnauld’s reading of occasionalism: “. . . has that volitions or command [God’s], or, if you prefer, divine law that was once laid down, bestowed a mere extrinsic denomination, as it were, on things? Or, on the other hand, has it conferred some kind of enduring impression produced in the thing itself...?”(GIV,pp.506–7/AG, p. 158). In the ªrst case (which is Leibniz’s interpretation of occasionalism), God’s command “must always be renewed in the future,” and in the second case (which is Leibniz’s own pre-established harmony), “a certain efªcacy has been placed in things” (G IV, p. 507/AG, pp. 158–9), and this efªcacy can further specify God’s general volition.9 When Arnauld likens occasionalism to the pre- established harmony, he does not intend to say that Malebranche, like Leibniz, attributes activity to creatures. Rather (in what is surely an early misunderstanding of the pre-established harmony) he writes: “according to you [Leibniz], every time that I wish to raise my arm, it is the will of God which is the real and efªcient cause of this movement” (letter of March 4, 1687: G II, p. 85/CA, p. 174). And so, the Arnauldian interpretation of occasionalism must identify something besides active efªcacy in the natural world as that which speciªes God’s general volitions into particular natural events. Without sorting out the metaphysics of this, let this further speciªcation of God’s power be a creature’s passive causal contribution to an effect.10

9. See Nadler (1995, p. 507), for a discussion of Leibniz on this point. Helen Hattab, in a related discussion of Descartes’ theory of causation, presents the problem thus: “How can God’s unchanging, eternal volition produce determinate and changing motions in the world? If bodies lack intrinsic forces and thus do not function as the secondary causes that determine the motions with respect to kind, then what does?” (Hattab 2000, p. 107). If God’s volitions are general, then perhaps created beings must have efªcacy to further determine God’s non-speciªc volitions to speciªc effects. Hattab does not argue for this conclusion, but rather for the efªcacy of nature’s laws. 10. Alfred Freddoso presents this as a possibility for the occasionalist: God acts as the most general cause in the world, creatures are secondary causes, and “a substance is a general cause with respect to an effect E when its causal inºuence has had to be channeled (or, better, speciªed) toward E by some further [particular or secondary] cause” (Freddoso 1988, p. 80n8) which itself might have a “passive” causality. I believe that in his discussion of the relation between God’s general will and occasionalism in Malebranche, Patrick Riley attributes something like Freddoso’s account to Malebranche (Riley 1992, pp. 51ff).

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These, then, are the two interpretations of occasionalism that Nadler calls, respectively, the traditional and the alternative interpretations. First, God’s general volitions are understood to have particular content and are general because they are lawful or nomic, and thus, God’s volitions need no further channeling to account for particular natural events. Second, God’s general volitions are understood to have general content that must be further channeled by something distinct from God, perhaps some passive causal contribution from creatures. I suggest, wholly for heuristic purposes, a third interpretation which collapses occasionalism into the pre-established harmony. According to this interpretation, we take God’s general volitions as volitions with general content that require further speciªcation. We assume that creatures are what further specify God’s activity, and we suggest that they do so by an active, efªcacious power. I follow Nadler’s terminology relative to the ªrst two interpretations of occasionalism, and I call the third option the “radical” interpretation, and I do so because it undermines the guiding premise of occasionalism as a general doctrine—the premise that created beings have no active, efªcacious power. I do not put this forward as a viable interpretation of occasionalism; it is not, and I dismiss it eventually. But if we take seriously Kant’s suggestion of the relation between causation and generation theories, it is this third interpretation that must capture Malebranche’s theory of causation, precisely because it captures the natural efªcacy (however limited) of creatures implied by preformation. Indeed, one of Malebranche’s reasons for endorsing preformation relies on the premise that organisms are actually efªcacious, an efªcacy that seems to positively preclude God’s active involvement in their functional behavior. Thus preformation seems to provide an argument for the active independence of creatures. I offer this account in order to show how Malebranche would reject it, and what this rejection can tell us about his understanding of science.

II. Preformation: mechanism and the microscope Jacques Roger and others argue that preformation was a perfectly reasonable theory for those in the seventeenth century to endorse because, faced with limitations of a nascent and unsophisticated brand of mechanism—that is, the idea that all changes in the phenomenal material world are explained in terms of extended matter moving according to a few general laws of motion—preformation was the most sensible solution to the problem of generation. Roger suggests that, for followers of Descartes, preformation theory represents a way of overcoming problems with Des- cartes’ generation theory without sacriªcing his more foundational me-

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chanical metaphysics and physics (Roger [1963] 1997, ch. 6). In Des- cartes’ model, the seminal ºuid from the female and male mix in the uterus, the resulting mass begins a rapid vortical motion due to an ex- treme heat caused by fermentation upon mixing, and from this liq- uid—moving according to the governing laws—the heart, brain, and other body parts emerge one by one until a living being is formed (AT XI, pp. 253ff/CSM I, pp. 322ff). Malebranche’s reaction to the sheer improba- bility of this proposal is typical: “The sketch by this philosopher can help us understand how the laws of motion sufªce to cause the parts of animals to grow little by little. But that these laws are able to form them and con- nect them all together is something no one will ever prove” (OC XII, p. 264/DMR XI, p. 205). And so the fetus must be preformed by God. Further support for preformation was found in discoveries made with the help of the microscope, and one interesting way of approaching Malebranche’s reasons for endorsing preformationism is to take account of his reaction to these discoveries. Although there are many relevant discoveries, the detection of moving creatures at the sub-visible level is most crucial for the matter at hand. Malebranche cites the 12 November 1668 edition of Le Journal des Sçavans as providing an account of the crucial data (OC I, p. 80n/ST, p. 25). The entry that most clearly provokes Malebranche’s interest is an account, gleaned from an Italian journal, of extremely small animals observed with a microscope (Journal [1668] 1685, pp. 433–4). The account gives details of the construction of the microscope, together with the following observation made with it: “If one observes with this microscope, small grains of sand that have been passed through a sieve, one actually sees an animal that has several feet, a white back, and is full of scales” (ibid, p. 434). What should be born in mind is that these microscopic creatures can be seen to have speciªc body parts and can be seen to actually move.11

11. There is a second entry in the same issue of the Journal that poses potential problems for Malebranche’s theory of generation—a notice of the book Arborum Historiae, collected under the name of Ulyssis Aldrovandi (Journal [1668] 1685, pp. 423–6). This notice includes reference to “some curious observations touching on the generation of insects, and in particular that touch on the metamorphosis of several animals that develop in certain swellings” found on a particular type of tree (ibid., p. 426). These observations suggest that there may be “lots of other animals generated in plants,” that furthermore metamor- phose from one type of animal (a grub in this case) to quite another (a ºy). The reason why this may pose a challenge to Malebranche’s theory of generation is that the notion of animals springing forth from trees with no need of parents of their own species is reminiscent of spontaneous generation which undermines Malebranche’s speciªc version of preformation, ovism, which requires animals be encased within the ovaries of the ªrst female member of each species, and thus requires at least one parent (see Farley 1977, pp. 16ff).

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Malebranche’s reaction to the discovery of apparently living animals undetected by the unaided eye is noteworthy because he has two distinct evaluations of the empirical data’s signiªcance, and each supports a different argument in favor of preformation. In an early chapter of The Search After Truth (hereafter Search) in which he deals with “[t]he errors of vision with regard to absolute extension...[and t]he consequence of these errors with regard to invisible objects” (OC I, p. 79/ST, p. 25), he writes of the discovery of tiny animals: With magnifying glasses, we can easily see animals much smaller than an almost invisible grain of sand; we have seen some even a thousand times smaller. These living atoms walk as well as other animals. Thus, they have legs and feet, and bones in their legs to support them....They have muscles to move them, as well as ten- dons and an inªnity of ªbers in each muscle; ªnally, they have blood or very subtle and delicate animal spirits to ªll or move these muscles in succession. Without this, it is impossible to conceive how they should live, nourish themselves, and move their tiny bodies from place to place....[T]hese little bodies are necessarily composed [of all their parts] in order to live and carry out the things we see them do....Ourvision is very limited, but it must not limit its object....Wehave clear mathematical demonstra- tions of the inªnite divisibility of matter, and although our imagination is shocked at the thought, this leads us to believe that there might be smaller and smaller animals to inªnity....Experimenta- tion has already partially rectiªed our errors by enabling us to see

In addition to the speciªc microscopic discovery Malebranche does cite, there are other such discoveries of which he was aware. These include the discoveries by Marcello Malpighi, Jan Swammerdam, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Malebranche indicates his fa- miliarity with some of these discoveries in the Search (OC III, pp. 347–8/EST “On Optics,” p. 747), but more prevalently in the Dialogues (OC XII, pp. 226–30/DMR X, pp. 174– 76). Malpighi’s contributions to this story center around his dissection of chicken’s eggs and his conclusion that “the ªrst ªlaments of the chick pre-exist in the egg and have a deeper origin, exactly as [the embryo] in the eggs of a plant” (Malpighi [1672] 1966, p. 945). Swammerdam’s observations are varied: he demonstrated that the complete but- terºy is encased in the chrysalis, thus suggesting that the complete animal is already formed—although hidden—and not a new formation (Swammerdam [1737] 1970, p. 137); he also claimed that the black spot found in frogs’ eggs may be considered the frog already formed. And ªnally, Leeuwenhoek discovered the spermatozoa, though he—and virtually everyone else who knew of this discovery—took these to be already fully-formed animals. For Leeuwenhoek’s discussion of his discovery see, especially, his letter to Grew of March 18, 1678 (Leeuwenhoek [1678–80] 1941, II, p. 327), and his letter to Hooke of April 5, 1680 (Leeuwenhoek [1678–80] 1941, III, p. 203).

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animals a thousand times smaller than a mite—why would we have them be the last and smallest of all?...[T]here are always tiny animals to be found with microscopes, but not always microscopes to ªnd them....[T]he mind need not stop with the eyes, for the mind’s vision is much more extensive than the body’s (OC I, pp. 79–81/ST, pp. 25–7). One of Malebranche’s reactions here to microscopic discoveries—his “negative” evaluation—is the belief that these discoveries prove the unre- liability of our senses for the purposes of gaining knowledge of the size of material things. In our attempts to gain knowledge of the small and large in the material world, our vision and imagination alike quickly reach limits, but these are limits in ourselves only, not in the external world. This is proven when our vision as aided by the microscope is extended beyond its normal range, and we see that the world really contains much smaller bodies than those we can see with our eyes unaided. And so, Malebranche strikes a negative tone, proposing that microscopic discoveries urge us to ignore sense and imagination, and to rely on reason in order to recognize that God is an “inªnite craftsman.” He thus concludes that “reason teaches us that the smallest of all objects would not be small by itself, since it is composed of an inªnite number of parts from each one of which God could fashion an earth...”(OCI,pp.83–4/ST, pp. 28–9). Malebranche’s other reaction to microscopic discoveries—his “positive” evaluation—is the belief that these discoveries nonetheless tell us something important about the subvisible world, and it is what we see or sense through the microscope that provides us with this information. We need not dismiss our vision and turn to reason alone to tell us about the nature of the world. Our vision tells us something at least—and this is the fact that there are moving, and thus living, organisms much smaller than those that we can see with the naked eye. And as Malebranche says, these beings must be fully formed—”these little bodies are necessarily composed [of all their parts]”—because only this can explain how they live and realize the behaviors that we see them perform.12

12. Andrew Pyle emphasizes what I have called the negative evaluation of the empirical data in Malebranche: “The argument for pre-existence [preformation] can then be formu- lated as an argument from elimination: once you have dismissed all those accounts that manifestly fail to satisfy the intellect, you will ªnd that only pre-existence remains” (Pyle 2003, p. 170). Even if we accept the exclusive focus on intellectual knowledge (though Pyle notes the role of the empirical in Malebranche’s approach to physiology later [Pyle 2003, pp. 182ff]), we might still invoke Kant’s suggestion as an objection to the claim that (divine) preformation (or pre-existence) is the only remaining possibility: the intellect might well conceive of God’s directly giving organic form to the matter upon insemination

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These two general lines of support for the preformation doctrine—the endorsement of mechanism and the discoveries made with the microscope—are related to each other in instructive ways, which we can see through a consideration of the supposed supernatural character of preformationism. As Roger suggests, preformationism is inconsistent with Descartes’ attempts to construct an explanatory ediªce based solely on natural bits of matter in lawful motion. In admitting that nature itself (its matter and laws) is incapable of explaining all natural phenomena, this line of reasoning goes, the preformationists destroy Cartesian science; indeed, preformation is wholly unscientiªc (Roger [1963] 1997, p. 128). Preformationism does not remain true to mechanism proper because, shifting the burden entirely to God, the theory thereby undermines mechanism as a natural philosophy about the workings of the physical world while—ironically—attempting to save mechanism.13 As an essentially supernatural theory, preformationism is not properly conªned to the realm of natural, physical explanations, which is where Roger believes Descartes keeps his speculations regarding the formation of fetuses. In this way, Roger’s evaluation of the preformation theory is in line with A. J. Pyle’s: “the theory [of preformation] is a supernaturalist theory par excellence” (Pyle 1987, p. 246). But this assessment needs some clariªcation and qualiªcation. Spe- ciªcally, if we accept Kant’s evaluation of generation theories, the wholly supernatural theory is not preformation, but is rather the theory according to which God directly forms the organic body, part after part, upon each new impregnation. Further, according to Kant’s suggestion, preformation leaves at least some room for the power of nature to achieve effects we experience: mothers nourish their young, species preserve themselves, and so forth. In fact, I think Malebranche posits preformation in order to avoid supernaturalism. This can be shown in two ways. First (and this can accommodate the Roger-Pyle approach), Malebranche forces the recognition that generation is irredeemably supernatural—a fact Descartes failed to recognize—and as a consequence of the inherently supernatural character precisely in the manner Kant describes. I received Pyle’s book on Malebranche too late to be able to fully and fairly address his material on biology in this paper. 13. Roger believes that, despite preformationists’ intentions to the contrary, the turn to preformation is a complete betrayal of the Cartesian project: “Descartes’s entire system of thought found itself called into question by the destruction of his embryology. Contempo- raries thought, no doubt, that they were doing their master a favor by unburdening his system of its most vulnerable—because most theoretical—component. But as this component was, precisely, the most perfect expression of the Cartesian ambitions, it could not be abandoned without damage to the entire body of Descartes’s thought” (Roger [1963] 1997, pp. 356–7).

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of generation, it must occur at the Creation in order to preclude God’s acting supernaturally beyond Creation. I put this aside until Part V. Second, and this poses a challenge to the Roger-Pyle approach, Malebranche posits preformation in order to account for very natural facts about fully-formed organisms as independently active beings—facts that we learn by paying heed to what we sense with the aid of the microscope, facts that epigenesis cannot explain. I deal with this naturalism now.

III. The organic being: the argument for preformation from functional holism Malebranche contrasts the generation of organic beings with the formation of ªnitely complex structures. It is reasonable, he suggests, to explain the formation of the non-organic universe but not the formation of animals by appeal to general laws:“...there is a great difference between the formation of living and organized bodies, and that of the vortexes of which the universe is composed. An organized body contains an inªnity of parts that mutually depend upon one another in relation to particular ends, all of which must be actually formed in order to work as a whole.... But such is not the case with the formation of vortexes; they are naturally born from general laws...”(OCII,pp.343–4/ST, pp. 465–6). There are two crucial differences between the animal and the universe identiªed in this passage. First, animals are inªnitely complex while the universe is ªnitely complex. I return to this distinction in Part V. Second, organic parts alone “mutually depend upon one another in relation to particular ends, all of which must be actually formed in order to work as a whole.” Bearing this latter point in mind, consider Malebranche’s positive reaction to discoveries made with the microscope: our vision tells us at least that there are wholly-formed organisms much smaller than those that we can see with the naked eye. This leads to one of two arguments that I believe Malebranche offers in support of preformationism. I call this ªrst option the argument from functional holism. This position suggests that Male- branche sees organisms as active beings, partly independent even from God. Showing how this naturalism follows from the argument from functional holism then allows me to show how one might use Malebranche’s endorsement of preformationism to support the radical interpretation of occasionalism. There are clear hints of the connection between functional holism and preformationism in the passage quoted in the previous section concerning advances made with the microscope. Malebranche says, for example, that the tiny, moving organisms seen with the microscope must necessarily be composed of all their parts in order to be able to live and move at all. But

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here is a clearer expression of the connection from the sixth and ªnal book of the Search: An organized body contains an inªnity of parts that mutually depend upon one another in relation to particular ends, all of which must be actually formed in order to work as a whole. For it need not be imagined with Aristotle that the heart is the ªrst part to live and the last to die. The heart cannot beat without the inºuence of the animal spirits, nor can these be spread throughout the heart without the nerves, and the nerves originate in the brain, from which they receive the spirits. Moreover, the heart cannot beat and pump the blood through the arteries unless they, as well as the veins that return the blood to it, are already complete. In short, it is clear that a machine can only work when it is ªnished, and that hence the heart cannot live alone....[L]ife begins when spirits cause the organs to work, which cannot occur unless they are actually formed and connected. It would be wrong then to pretend to explain the formation of animals and plants and their parts, one after the other, on the basis of the simple and general laws governing the communication of motion; for they are differently connected to one another by virtue of different ends and different uses in the different species (OC II, pp. 343–4/ST, p. 465, emphases added). Living beings come as wholes; living machines cannot work and realize their purposes unless they are complete with all their essential parts intact and properly disposed to one another in such a way as to be able to function towards their ends. This view is consistent with Malebranche’s discussion of death: once the structure of a living being begins to be cor- rupted and loses some essential part (a heart, for example, as opposed to an inessential part such as a ªnger), the organism can no longer function towards its ends and is considered dead (OC III, p. 339/EST “On Optics,” p. 741). Malebranche seems to believe that the same applies equally to the organism before “birth.” A living machine cannot begin to function at all without the fully-coordinated structure necessary to accomplish the purposes of life. In short, the whole is functionally prior to its parts. But Malebranche seems to push this even further, suggesting that the whole must be temporally prior to its parts too; for example, the fully-formed and functioning organism must exist before the heart or nerves or brain are even able to exist. Perhaps what is driving this further belief is the position that a functioning whole cannot live and accomplish the functions of life—including building itself out of its parts—unless all the essential parts pre-exist in a speciªcally disposed and uniªed fashion to be able to function at all in life behaviors, including as a self-builder.

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At least three criticisms can be launched against this argument as I have presented it, one of which can be handled with relative ease, and two of which require a deeper examination of Malebranche’s conception of living beings.14 The ªrst criticism suggests that Malebranche’s worry in the passage just cited above amounts to the claim that the laws of motion, being few and general, cannot account for the huge variety of species. Prefor- mation, then, is meant to account not for the organic unity of living beings, but rather for the speciªc structures of the many and various species we ªnd around us. This criticism can be handled by simply conceding the point, at least in part. Malebranche is concerned with explaining how spe- ciªc structures are formed; he often focuses on this problem when evaluat- ing Descartes’ theory of generation, and preformationism solves this problem. Indeed, in the Search, Malebranche writes: “For although one can give some explanation of the formation of the fetus in general, as Descartes has tried successfully enough, nevertheless it is very difªcult...toexplain why a mare does not give birth to a calf, or a chicken lay an egg containing a partridge ...”(OCI,p.242/ST, p. 117; second emphasis added). To solve this problem, asserts Malebranche, “even in the ªrst animals and the ªrst plants [God] placed inªnitely small embryos that he foresaw would grow and develop as a result of the laws of motion in such a way as to preserve their species for all time” (OC II, p. 152/ST, p. 353). But conceding the point does not translate into the conclusion that preformation is introduced to solve only this problem. And for Malebranche, preformation is posited also to account for the brute fact of the functional holism of living organisms. (This much is suggested by his many references to the necessity that the organism be fully formed in order to live, and his recognition that sequential formation of parts denies that the organism is fully formed.) That brute fact cannot be accounted for by the sequential formation of organic parts. The second and third criticisms are, respectively, conceptual and textual, and together they constitute a formidable challenge to the argument from functional holism. According to the second criticism, Malebranche is not entitled to the conclusion that preformation follows from the essential nature of living beings as wholes. An equally viable conclusion is that the organism comes into being through sequential formation of parts, but that the organism is simply not alive until it is fully formed. This criticism alleges that, in asserting preformation rather than epigenesis, Malebranche simply assumes that the organism must always have been alive to be alive now—but there is no immediately obvious reason to ac-

14. I would like to thank Andrew Pessin for his insightful criticisms of another, related, paper which drew my attention to these difªculties.

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cept this assumption. Not even the microscopic discoveries can establish this because they do not tell us anything about Creation; they tell us only that these animals happen to be alive now, and not how they came to be alive. Another way of stating this criticism is to say that even if the whole is functionally prior to the parts in living beings—which is what the premise of functional holism maintains—this does not demand that the whole be temporally prior to the parts in order for a living being to eventually exist at all. A slightly different way of stating this criticism is to deny that one of the functions of life is self-generation, or the organism’s ability to build itself out of parts. The third criticism is textual and only serves to reinforce the previous criticism. In addition to his many references to preformation throughout the Search, Malebranche often suggests that fetuses form through a process more closely resembling epigenesis. In the passage quoted above, Male- branche praises Descartes’ general generation theory, faulting it only because it cannot account for species. He brieºy mentions preformation as a solution but only after providing a long explanation of an alternative possible solution: the animal spirits in the mother’s brain communicates her likeness to the animal spirits in the fetus’ brain in order to make the child resemble the mother. As Malebranche puts it,“...without this communication, women and animals could not easily bring forth young of the same species” (OC I, p. 242/ST, p. 117). A starker example is found in Elucidation Eight where he goes so far as to suggest that “this communication between the brain of the mother and that of her child is a very good arrangement...[b]ecause it is useful and perhaps necessary to the formation of the fetus” (OC III, p. 77/EST §8, p. 582; emphasis added).15 This only bolsters the claim that the organic body could be brought into existence part after part, and only after being fully formed be counted as alive. After all, this alternative to preformation is found in the very work where Malebranche states his preformationist theory appealing to functional holism.16

15. We also ªnd equivocation between preformation and a more epigenetic account of generation in the earliest edition of the Treatise on Nature and Grace: “God has given to each seed a germ which contains in miniature the plant and the fruit ...”(OCV,p.36/TNG, p. 120); and later Malebranche hypothesizes that “our soul, by its different movements, communicated to our body everything that is necessary to it to form it and to make it grow...”(OCV,pp.90–1/TNG II, §22, p. 146). 16. The advocate of the functional holism argument in favor of preformation may defend her position against this textual evidence. The text cited indicates a recognition that the suggested quasi-epigenetic approach to generation requires at least that the fetus’ brain be already formed. And so, the advocate of functional holism may continue, perhaps Malebranche believes that the essential parts of the organism must indeed be preformed to preserve the functional integrity of the living organism (thus retaining preformationism),

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Does, then, Malebranche simply and only occasionally assert preformation without an effective argument based on the organism’s functional unity to justify the assertion? The ªrst thing to be said in his defense is that he is not the only early modern to make the connection between functional holism and preformation. Perhaps the clearest example of this connection is found in Charles Bonnet’s Contemplation de la Nature:

One needs no Morgagni, no Haller, no Albinus [experimentalists who believed they had provided empirical proof for preformation] to see that all constituent parts of the body are so directly, so vari- ously, so manifoldly, intertwined as regards their function, that their relationship is so tight and so indivisible, that they must have originated all together at one and the same time. The artery implies the vein, their operation implies the nerves, which in their turn im- ply the brain and that by consequence the heart, and every single condition a whole row of other conditions (Bonnet [1769] 1964, p. 377).

According to Bonnet, that time of origination was at Creation when God formed organisms. So, one may defend Malebranche by noting his histori- cal context and noting that the functional holism argument was employed generally by early moderns to provide support for the preformation theory (Asma 1996, pp. 64–9), even if this is a weak argument for preformationism. But we can do more in defense of Malebranche, and the argument can be philosophically strengthened if we look more closely at what he says about the living organism, and if we examine some conceptual difªculties we ªnd in the notion that the fetus forms through sequential development of parts rather than preformation. Before dealing directly with Malebranche on this point, I brieºy consider the work of William Harvey and Aristotle, both of whom point to the need for the temporal priority of some kind of whole to the parts in order to account for the functional priority of the structured whole to the parts. Without such temporal priority, one needs to turn to God’s direct involvement in nature, or to proximate causal agents that Malebranche would ªnd unintelligible, in order to explain generation by epigensis. while the development of characteristics inessential to fetal life and functioning (speciªc or familial resemblance, for example) may proceed in a quasi-epigenetic fashion. I think this is a powerful defense, and I thank Saul Fisher for drawing my attention to this possibility. I nonetheless proceed on the assumption that Malebranche means something much stronger by these quasi-epigenetic statements—I proceed on the assumption that he means that parts essential to functioning form in sequence and thus are not preformed. I proceed on this assumption to show that the functional holism argument eventually prevails for Malebranche nonetheless.

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According to Harvey, the organic individual begins as a speck of blood, the ªrst living part from which the living organism grows, part emerging from part (e.g., Harvey [1651] 1981, pp. 230, 241–43, 277). Essential to the point at hand is Harvey’s position that, at this early stage, the organism is already a living individual, itself responsible for the sequential formation of its parts (e.g., Harvey [1651] 1981, pp. 200–1, 240). Fre- quently throughout his Disputation Touching the Generation of Animals, Harvey discusses what he calls the “paradox” of generation—though to be accurate, it is a paradox characteristic of a generation theory such as his own which seems to require an unformed organic individual bringing itself into formation part after part. Here is the paradox in Harvey’s words: “...thebody is nourished and increased before the organs dedicated to concoction [required for nourishment], namely, the stomach and the vis- cera, are formed” (Harvey [1651] 1981, p. 295). Further: “...itseems a paradox to say that the blood is created and made to move...before any organs for making it or giving it movement exist” (Harvey [1651] 1981, p. 294). Harvey eventually “solves” the difªculty by appealing to God and to incorporeal spirits as God’s instruments working in the world as the proximate efªcient cause of generation (e.g., Harvey [1651] 1981, p. 379). In essence, he thus denies the premise that the living individual is able to realize on its own the behaviors of life in its early stages; he denies that the living speck of blood can perform the living function of organic formation precisely because it lacks the integrated whole which alone is capable of functioning. It may be that there exists no temporally prior whole for Harvey but the result is the need to appeal to the sorts of occult qualities that Malebranche refuses to admit into his generation theory.17 For the materialist (or the dualist who leaves no organic role for the soul) to avoid such unintelligible explanations, he could posit the temporal priority of the whole to account for the functional priority of the uniªed whole. But for the materialist, this must be the material structure, which is the structure of the animal itself; this implies a preformationist stance.18 Indeed, that is precisely what Aristotle suggests must be the materialist’s approach, referring in particular to Hippocrates’ theory of generation. According to Hippocrates, the male and female both contribute semen which is drawn from all body parts and which thus provides the material

17. Malebranche, of course, posits God as the efªcient cause of generation no less than does Harvey. However, Malebranche does not appeal to incorporeal spirits acting causally (yet non-intelligibly, that is, non-mechanically) as God’s instruments in the world in order to explain generation, and so, he avoids the occult in a way that Harvey does not. 18. For more on the metaphysical presuppositions of Harvey’s theory of generation, see Bates (2000), Foote (1969), and French (1995).

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for all the parts needed to make the offspring. Aristotle launches a number of objections against the theory. According to one, Hippocrates’ theory does not really explain the generation of resembling offspring since generation is not merely the presence of all the body parts. Generation is

the assemblage of them....[W]ithout this assemblage, the parts would not have the resemblance [to the parents or to a given species]; so if there is something which sets to work later on to bring this assemblage about, then surely this something, and not the drawing of the semen from the whole of the body, will be the cause of resemblance. Further, if the parts of the body are scattered about within the semen, how do they live? If on the other hand, they are connected with each other, then surely they would be a tiny animal (Aristotle, 722a35ff).

Aristotle does not entertain this ªnal possibility, mainly because empirical evidence shows that such tiny animals do not pre-exist and that the parts of animals are formed successively, some clearly visible and functioning before others (Aristotle, 734a17–26). There are two distinct criticisms in this passage. First, the problem of generation is primarily a problem of assemblage, or efªcient cause. It is not enough that all the body parts are represented in the parental semen. These parts need to be properly arranged into an organic form that resembles others of its kind, and there must be an efªcient cause up to the task of doing so. The second criticism is that Hippocrates’ theory of generation cannot explain how the body parts, which supposedly exist in the semen, can be alive if they are unconnected to each other. To be alive and to function as the kinds of organic parts that they are, these parts must be found within a suitably-integrated whole. This ªnal suggestion can be pushed one step further to the conclusion that any materialist theory such as Hippocrates’ that posits actual, and fully-formed, material parts must posit that these always come connected into a whole in order for the parts to live. But since they must always be so connected—otherwise they would be dead parts incapable of coming together into a living whole— preformation on the early modern model (God creates all living beings at Creation—they enter nature as full-ºedged living animals) is a small step away. Moreover, once preformationism is posited, the problem of assemblage or efªcient cause becomes moot.19 19. In his own accounts, Aristotle explains the generation of organic beings by claim- ing that the adult male provides an actualized form, and in this way, he also posits a temporally pre-existing whole—albeit of a different ontological character than that of the materialist’s prior whole (Aristotle, 729b2–21).

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The view that the material or organic whole must exist temporally prior to the parts, in order to adequately explain the functional priority of whole over parts, will hold for Malebranche only if he has the sort of commitments regarding the nature of living beings expressed by Harvey vis à viz his own theory and Aristotle vis à viz Hippocrates’ theory. Most nota- ble among these commitments are (a) the idea that organic beings are independently functioning individuals at every stage of their life cycle, including the stage of generation itself, unless there is some special agent that functions in lieu of the organism at the stage of generation, and (b) the belief that a materialist (or a dualist with no natural role for the soul) must posit a fully-integrated organic body before any organ can be alive. For if Malebranche does so conceive of organisms, then it would be necessary that the individual be capable of bringing itself into formation, and this would therefore require that the individual have the appro- priate disposition of parts to function at all to accomplish this formation. He would, paradoxically, require that the individual already have its essential structure pre-formed, and this would be tantamount to eliminat- ing the stage of generation altogether. It would be tantamount to positing preformation. There is some textual evidence that Malebranche does have these sorts of commitments regarding living beings. Some evidence is found in his Dialogues, and here is one relevant passage from the Eleventh Dialogue: “I simply claim that all the organic parts of bees are formed in their larvae, and are so well proportioned to the laws of motion that they can grow through their own construction . . . without God intervening anew through extraordinary providence” (OC XII, p. 253/DMR XI, pp. 195–6, emphasis added). And in a discussion of Descartes’ “foolhardy” attempts to explain generation through sequential formation of parts, he writes that “[i]f seeds do not contain in miniature what we see enlarged in plants, general laws could never render them fertile....[A]ll organic parts of the apple tree are formed, and are so well proportioned to the laws of motion that through their own construction and the efªcacy of these laws they can grow without the assistance of a particular providence” (OC XII, 264–5/DMR XI, 205–6, emphasis added). In both passages, Malebranche urges us to accept the independence of living organisms, and their ability to function through their own construction without appeal to an external causal agent (God, in this case). This applies even to the life-stage of generation, as Malebranche’s dismissal in this context of Descartes’ generation theory attests. But to have this ability to function, even through the life stage of generation, organisms must have the proper construction. Hence, the life-stage of generation—the life-stage of the formation of the proper construction—is eliminated altogether. The animal must be preformed.

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Perhaps even more interesting is Malebranche’s discussion of further empirical data about living beings available through the dissection of chickens in various stages of development in the egg. Thus far, I have focused on his reaction to the microscopic discovery of moving insects, but later in the Search, he appeals to experimental data that establishes the existence of a seemingly isolated organ (the heart) in the developing chicken. Here is his reaction: “from the time this projecting point that is the heart of the chicken appears in a setting egg, the chicken is alive” (OC II, p. 344/ST, p. 465). This “projecting point” or heart is the ªrst and only organic part that the experimentalist sees as he dissects fertilized eggs in various days of maturity (OC II, p. 333/ST, p. 464). This brings to mind both Harvey’s contention that the ªrst speck of blood is already a living individual and Aristotle’s position that the beating heart is the ªrst living organic part. But in contrast with these two, Malebranche draws the preformationist—not the epigenetic—conclusion from this empirical data: for the heart to be alive, it cannot exist alone, but rather “[all organs] are actually formed and connected” (OC II, p. 344/ST, p. 465), even if they cannot yet be seen. Malebranche, then, does seem to be committed to the idea that even at the stage of generation, the organism is alive and functioning, and to be so it must be preformed.

IV. Occasionalism and preformation, metaphysics and science Let us return to the issues of supernaturalism and occasionalism. Recall that preformationism has been called a paradigmatic example of a supernatural “natural” philosophy. Generation is explained through appeal to God’s direct involvement in nature, not through the actions of nature itself. In Malebranche’s ªrst argument for preformation, I have shown that, while preformation may be a supernatural theory of generation, it is also introduced to account for the very natural fact of the functional unity of fully-formed living beings. Consider once again Kant’s idea of the occasionalist’s natural choice of theories of generation. Since nature is without power at all on the occasionalist view, God brings forth each organic being, part after part, upon each conception, and God continues to maintain organic beings in their activity after the formation is complete. On this picture, the unity and functions are imposed from without at organic formation by a mindful being and are maintained throughout organic life by the same being. On the theory of preformation, this complete dependence of the organism upon God need not hold. It is true that God has endowed the organism at Creation with the unity required for independent functioning to occur, thus rendering preformation as supernatural a theory of organic formation as is Kant’s suggested theory of generation for the occasionalist. But the functional holism argument for preformation is prem-

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ised on the idea that organisms are functionally independent and therefore do not depend upon God in order to function organically beyond the Creation, quite unlike the model of generation that has God directly forming the organism and maintaining organic activity through his ubiquitous involvement in nature. This line of reasoning might be brought in support of the radical interpretation of occasionalism in the following way. The argument from functional holism in favor of preformation indicates a belief that some natural substances, namely organic individuals, are independently active and capable of independent functioning. Such substances are internally ordered in such a way as to be naturally efªcacious and to be capable of realizing organic goals themselves without constant divine intervention. This takes seriously the idea of secondary or natural causes as being actively efªcacious, and as not having to rely on God as the external source of their efªcacy. Indeed, if either the traditional or the alternative interpretation of occasionalism is correct, then God directly building the organism and directly causing the heart to beat, the blood to circulate, and so on, even before the whole organism appears, would be entirely adequate to explain the phenomena. After all, on either the traditional or the alternative interpretation of occasionalism, all “natural” activity is appearance merely—the reality is that God’s will is the cause of all activity, and there is no contradiction in an omnipotent being willing that organic parts be active even if they are not interconnected with other “essential” organic parts that must still be formed. Moreover, in his recognition that a chicken’s heart appears ªrst, he has empirical data that could support this approach. The examples of Harvey and Aristotle, and Malebranche’s own reaction to Aristotle, only serve to underscore this point. Harvey starts with the idea that the ªrst lone organic part—a speck of blood—is already the living, functioning individual, but in light of the fact of functional holism which precludes adequate functioning in absence of the whole, he shores up his epigenesis by appealing to God’s working in the world through incorporeal spirits as divine instruments. Harvey could have avoided positing God’s activity in the world by admitting the prior-existing whole, which amounts to preformation. Preformation, then, but not epigenesis on Harvey’s model, is friendly to an account of nature that can do without God’s special involvement (or the involvement of unintelligible spirits) beyond Creation itself. The case of Aristotle is even more instructive. He denies that the unconnected body parts posited in Hippocrates’ theory can live because they are not integrated within a whole, yet according to Malebranche’s interpretation of him, Aristotle himself believes that the ªrst-formed organic part, the heart (unconnected to any organic parts since the rest of the whole is yet to form) is the ªrst part to live (OC II,

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p. 343/ST, p. 465). He could make such a claim on his theory, while Hip- pocrates cannot, because he posits a divine, ªfth element (the pneuma)as the instrument of the fully-actually form passed to the female by the male, an instrument that acts as the builder of the organism, bringing to actual- ity, and to life, the potentiality of the matter provided by the female (Aris- totle, 789b10ff). Malebranche would surely have a builder of organisms inªnitely more capable than the spirits that Harvey posits, or than Aristotle’s pneuma if he had appealed to God as immediately involved in the formation of organisms upon insemination. In reaction against Aristotle’s theory of generation, most particularly the idea that the heart forms ªrst, beats, and is alive, Malebranche says that “it need not be imagined with Aristotle that the heart is the ªrst part to live and the last to die. The heart cannot beat without the inºuence of the animal spirits ...”(OCII,p.344/ST, p. 465). But Harvey’s and Aristotle’s generation theories make it amply clear that organs can function without the whole of the organism if there is some active principle such as spirits or pneuma—or God—causing them to function. So if, as Malebranche claims, the heart cannot beat unless the pre-existing organic whole makes that activity possible, then God must not be the sole source of activity in the created world. Malebranche’s argument from functional holism seems, then, to suggest that God’s activity is not fully adequate to explain the natural behavior of organisms. The following, from the Search, provides textual evidence for the active independence of organisms in nature (and thus, for the radical interpretation of occasionalism): “Let us glorify God and let us recognize that in his limit- less wisdom he placed in the animals every principle of action necessary for the preservation of their life...”(OCII,p.152/ST, p. 353, emphasis added). This is how one might use Malebranche’s theory of preformation, premised on the functional holism of organisms, to settle an issue at the core of his metaphysics, namely his theory of causation. The argument cannot work, however, and I conceive of two primary reasons to reject it. Taken together, these reasons encourage the conclusion that Malebranche maintains an extremely strict divide between metaphysics and natural philosophy in a way that shows that he, no less than Descartes, wishes to preserve a place for the natural explanation of phenomena. The ªrst reason for rejecting the belief that functional holism establishes the activity of natural, organic beings (and thus supports the radical interpretation of Malebranche’s causation theory) is that this runs contrary to Malebranche’s general conception of nature. According to this conception, nature is wholly without active power. In his criticism of ancient

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philosophers’ forms of natural explanations, for example, Malebranche writes: For if we assume in accordance with their [the ancients] opinion, that bodies have certain entities distinct from matter in them, then, having no distinct idea of these entities, we can easily imagine that they are the true or major causes of the effects we see....[But] we...admit something divine in all bodies around us when we posit forms, faculties, qualities, virtues, or real beings capable of producing certain effects through the force of their nature....Per- haps it will be said that substantial forms, those plastic forms, for example, that produce animals and plants, do not know what they are doing and that, thus lacking intelligence, they have no relation to the divinities of the pagans. But who will be able to believe that what produces works that manifest a wisdom that surpasses all philosophers produces them without intelligence (OC II, pp. 309–10/ST, p. 446)? Implicit in this passage is a widespread early modern belief in the occult, because unintelligible, nature of some kinds of explanation.20 We have “no distinct idea” of the “forms, faculties, qualities, virtues or real beings” that we posit as causes to ‘explain’ the phenomenal effects. Consequently, such forms of “explanation” are really non-explanatory because they are non- intelligible. Simply naming a cause and saying it is required to produce the observed effect does not explain the mechanisms by which the effects are realized. Simply attributing intelligence to that cause because it is a necessary addition to that “explanation” does not make the “explanation” any more intelligible. We are still left with the question of how the intelli- gent power accomplishes its task. This rejection of certain kinds of natural, active causes because they are unintelligible need not translate into a rejection of all active secondary causes, however.21 Nonetheless, Malebranche is explicit about his belief

20. For an account of the meaning of “occult” as “unintelligible” in the seventeenth century, and the departure from Renaissance conceptions of the occult, see (Hutchison 1982). 21. In fact, Malebranche occasionally appeals to efªcacious laws as the cause of natural effects, and this would seem to attribute real causal activity to something in the created world (e.g., OC II, p. 314/ ST, p. 449; OC V, p. 147/TNG Illustrations I-II, p. 195; OC XII, p. 136/DMR XI, p. 195–96). Further, efªcacious laws are not unintelligible in the way that the “forms, faculties, qualities, virtues, or real beings” are unintelligible. These laws are not motivated and guided by their own intelligence, and they are few in number, indiscriminate in operation, and (most importantly) measurable in their effect, and thus

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that causal power applies to God alone: “our idea of cause or power to act...represents something divine” (OC II, p. 309/ST, p. 446; see also OC II, pp. 316–7/ST, p. 450–1; OC III, pp. 204–5/EST §15, p. 658; OC XII, pp. 165–6/DMR VII, p. 119). Divinity would seem not to apply to anything in nature—neither “forms” nor laws of nature unless these are identiªed with God himself—if the distinction between God and creation is to be maintained. To claim that God is efªcacious is, then, by the deªnition of God, to claim that he is fully efªcacious, and so it is redundant to posit power in anything created and distinct from God. The argument for God as sole active agent in nature is implied in the following passage of the Search: . . . when one thinks about the idea of God, i.e., of an inªnitely perfect and consequently all-powerful being, one knows there is such a connection [a necessary connection] between his will and the motion of all bodies, that it is impossible to conceive that He wills a body to be moved and that this body not be moved....Allnatu- ral forces are therefore nothing but the will of God, which is always efªcacious....There are therefore no forces, powers, or true causes in the material, sensible world; and it is not necessary to admit the existence of forms, faculties, and real qualities for producing effects that bodies do not produce and for sharing with God the force and power essential to him (OC II, pp. 313–14/ST, pp. 448–49, emphasis added). When Malebranche says that motion is divine, it is not just a bald assertion open to counter assertions. The claim follows from the nature of God himself, and the fact that God’s volition leaves no room for any other cause of natural force or motion.22 Thus, although preformation seems to estab- conform to a paradigm of intelligibility in early modern thought. Nonetheless, the general worry about unintelligible explanations can be pushed in a different direction for the efªcacious laws can still be seen as ontologically occult: What might a law be, distinct from any natural substance, in order to have power in the material world? See also Charles McCracken (1983, p. 90). One answer that has solid textual evidence is that the laws just are God’s volitions, and thus by citing efªcacious laws as the active cause of natural effects, Malebranche just is citing God as that cause (OC XII, pp. 293–4/DMR XII, p. 231; OC V, p. 67/TNG II, III, p. 139). See Pessin (2001, pp. 98–9) for a discussion of the relation between God and laws. For an extensive treatment of causally efªcacious laws in Malebranche, see Jolley (2002). 22. Nadler (1997, pp. 80ff) and Sleigh (1990, pp. 171ff), among others, both discuss the “necessary connection” argument for occasionalism found in the passage just quoted. According to Malebranche, the idea of causation is premised on the idea of necessary connection (OC II, p. 316/ST, p. 450), but nothing ªnite can provide that necessary connection. Therefore necessary connection, and consequently, causation (be it among ªnite bodies or between ªnite bodies and ªnite minds) depends upon God’s necessarily efªcacious

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lish that nature is actively efªcacious in the particular case of organisms, this runs counter to Malebranche’s general conception of the natural world having no active power. The second reason to reject the radical interpretation and to locate real activity externally to organic beings is that preformationism and the functional holism argument simply do not establish that organisms are independently active. Just as God might be the sole active cause of the part- after-part generation of organic bodies (Kant’s suggestion) and their continued functioning after they are fully formed, so too may God be the sole active cause of the generation-at-Creation of organic beings (preformation) and their continued functioning from Creation onwards. In other words, preformation does not preclude the conclusion that the independent functioning of fully-formed organisms is appearance merely, while God alone is really responsible for all the activity. Moreover, this option of God’s sole active power in the created world ªts more appropriately with Malebranche’s general conception of nature. But to make this claim stick, one would need to explain why Malebranche opts for preformationism as opposed to a more epigenetic account of generation, most especially in light of the arguments provided above that link preformationism with functional holism, and both of these with natural activity; that is, one would need to explain away claims such as the one that God gave animals “a principle of action” by which they can preserve their own lives (OC II, p. 152/ST, p. 353), presumably without a need of God’s activity. One possible way of easing the tension between nature as active (implied by Malebranche’s conception of organisms) and nature as stripped of all active efªcacy (implied by Malebranche’s general conception of nature) is to take heed of Malebranche’s claim regarding Descartes’ attempt to explain the natural formation of created beings despite the fact that, in strict metaphysical reality, the world was perfectly formed at Creation. Male- branche writes: Descartes...wanting to examine the nature of visible things... studie[d] their formation according to the laws of motion, which are inviolably observed in all cases. He never doubted this: that the world was created in the beginning with as much perfection as it now has so that...theearth not only had in itself the seeds of plants but was even partially covered by these plants. . . . And this thought is worthy of the power and vision of God: of his power, since in an instance he made

(because inªnite) will (OC II, pp. 128–9/ST, pp. 338–9; OC II, p. 316/ST, p. 450; OC XII, pp. 162–3/DMR VII, p. 117). This dovetails with my previous point, that if God provides a necessary connection between cause and effect, then any other connection is irrelevant or redundant.

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all his works in their greatest perfection; of his wisdom, because he thereby made it known that he perfectly foresaw everything that would necessarily happen in matter if it were agitated by the sim- plest means...(OCII,pp.342–43/ST, pp. 464–65; italicized passage is from Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, Part III, article 45).23

Here, Malebranche allows for a split between the explanation of natural phenomena as we sense them—the practice of natural philosophy—and the inner reality of nature as our reason understands it and as theological strictures require—the practice of metaphysics. Perhaps his argument for preformation from functional holism represents an explanation of the natural, experienced facts of fully-formed organisms without telling us how things are in strict metaphysical reality.24 The functioning organism may be fully dependent upon God in reality while only appearing to be independently active in the natural world, and as this view has it, Male- branche’s appeal to preformation represents an attempt to provide an explanation for the appearances. This seems to be one lesson to draw from his rejection of Aristotle’s theory of generation, especially the latter’s sup- position that the beating heart as the ªrst organic form to appear, is also the ªrst living part (OC II, p. 344/ST, p. 465). From the perspective of strict metaphysical reality, there is no reason to reject Aristotle’s supposi- tion, for it is entirely possible that God could make the heart beat before the rest of the organism forms, just as, for Aristotle, the pneuma starts to bring organic parts to life before the whole is formed. But given the facts of living beings, especially the fact of functional holism, the heart cannot naturally beat before other essential parts are formed and interconnected. Malebranche’s positive reaction to microscopic discoveries is especially germane, as is his heavy reliance here upon the empirical in general. We see tiny, moving beings (or a heart); self-movement (or an organic part) indicates life (OC III, pp. 211–2/EST §15, p. 661); hence, these moving beings (or this heart) are alive; but life requires an integrated structure of essential organic parts as our experience of living organisms attests; and so the natural explanation of any organic function is preformation. 23. Arguably, Malebranche is wrong in his interpretation of Descartes here. It is quite possible that Descartes’ explanation two articles later in the Principles accords more closely with Descartes’ considered view, put forth as a ªction, perhaps for reasons of theological prudence: “It may be possible to start from primeval chaos as described by the poets, i.e. a total confusion in all parts of the universe and deduce from it, in accordance with the laws of nature, the precise organization now to be found in things; and I once undertook to provide such an explanation” (AT IXb, pp. 125–26/CSM I, p. 257). 24. I thank Andrew Pessin for his suggesting this general strategy, and Brian Chance and Scott Edgar for their speciªc suggestions on how to develop the strategy in the case of generation.

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This split between metaphysical and theological truths (known by reason) and human study of the natural world (accomplished largely by sense, and necessary for our practical concerns) is made clear in the preface, and in early chapters, of the Search. Further, in the context of his discussion of life, Malebranche agrees that God alone really animates living bodies and that they consequently have no metaphysical “inner principle of their actions” that is different from God himself. But this metaphysical fact does not detract from the natural philosopher relying on “the same sensible proofs that have convinced [men] of the distinction they make between living things and those not living. They would still see animals perform certain actions such as eating, growing, crying, running, jumping and so forth, and they would see nothing similar in stones” (OC III, p. 211/EST §15, p. 661). In the business of science, it is useless to appeal to the real cause of natural effects because there is no natural, explanatory value there: “I grant that recourse to God or the universal cause should not be had when the explanation of particular effects is sought. For we would be ri- diculous were we to say, for example, that it is God who dries the road or who freezes the water of rivers....Inaword, we must give, if we can, the natural and particular cause of the effects in question” (OC III, p. 213/EST §15, p. 662; see also Nadler 2000, pp. 129ff). The natural cause of living functions is a fully-formed organism. This brings me back to the concern that opened this section of the paper: the supposed supernatural character of the preformation doctrine. As a theory of generation, it surely is supernatural. But in embracing the theory, Malebranche attempts to explain certain natural phenomena in terms of nature itself, without recourse to God. In this way, Malebranche, no less than Descartes, is trying to give a non-supernaturalist account of organic phenomena, except that each focuses their explanatory effort on different kinds of phenomena, and this leads to their different generation theories. Descartes focuses on the fact of generation. Malebranche focuses on the empirical facts of fully-formed, integrated, and functioning organisms. No less than Descartes, then, Malebranche wants to rely on natural explanations in the realm of science so far as this is possible. He may be a metaphysical supernaturalist, as his theory of occasionalism attests, but his functional holism argument for preformation, grounded in our empirical knowledge of the way living bodies naturally work and grounded in the empirical data provided by the microscope, preserves the explanatory naturalism that we ªnd in his predecessor even if it is aimed at a different set of facts about living beings.25

25. On this score, I diverge somewhat from Andrew Pyle who believes that Malebranche is both a metaphysical supernaturalist in the case of occasionalism and a

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V. Organic becoming: the argument for preformation from anti-supernaturalism This way of easing the tension between Malebranche’s claim to the impo- tency of nature in general on the one hand, and his claim to the active efªcacy of organisms on the other, gives rise to serious problems. One such problem is that Malebranche’s sundering of metaphysical knowledge from natural explanation seems especially strange in the speciªc case under in- vestigation, given that preformationism may provide a naturalist account of fully-formed organisms, but it is also surely meant to be a theory about strict metaphysical and theological reality as much as any theory can be: at Creation, God created all future organisms, fully formed and just waiting to grow and appear to our vision. Preformation is not only a theory that helps explain facts about fully-formed organisms; it is also, and primarily, a theory about generation, and on this front it is not a natural explanation but a thorough-going metaphysical one. In fact, in his discussion of Des- cartes, Malebranche indicates that it is the gradual formation of organisms that provides a natural explanation while something closer to preformation (the original perfection of the world) captures the metaphysical reality (OC II, p. 342/ST, p. 464), not the converse as suggested in the previous section. Second, if Malebranche does indeed intend to split metaphysical reality from natural explanation, it is still not entirely clear why divine preformation is the necessary theory of generation. The argument from functional holism relies heavily upon empirical data. Our experience of fully-formed organisms establishes that all organic parts must be fully-formed and properly inter-connected for the whole and each of its parts to be alive. If the experimentalist sees a moving body or an active organ with the aid of the microscope, she may impose her experiences of living things onto this data and assume that this moving being must also be fully-formed and integrated. But there is no scientiªc or natural reason to impose our experience of fully-grown organisms onto those not yet fully grown. To make the argument from functional holism to preformationism work, one needs to accept both the assumption that the organic individual is independently functioning at every life stage, including generation, and the assumption that organic parts can only be alive or become alive if integrated into a whole. But Malebranche has not given us any reason to accept these assumptions, and in fact, it would seem to be the business of science to es-

physical supernaturalist in the case of preformation (Pyle 2003, p. 159). My divergence is not on the issue of preformation as a theory of generation—I fully concur with Pyle that this is supernatural. My divergence is on the issue of preformation as a theory that tries to account for the functional holism of ªnished organisms—this is wholly natural, but only as a physical explanation.

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tablish the truth of these assumptions. To drive the force of this criticism home, recall one of the pieces of empirical data that Malebranche notes— the appearance in the egg, at an early stage, of the chicken’s heart. Malebranche assumes that this must indicate the presence of a fully-formed body. But why? It well might be that a chicken’s heart functions differently during organic formation than it does once it is fully formed, and that there is some other natural explanation, some other proximate efªcient cause, for the presence of a living heart than the claim that the whole body is pre-formed. It is the business of science to discover this. These problems become all the worse when we consider the fact that Malebranche has available a model of generation that could account for the gradual formation of parts (which is, after all what at least some of the empirical evidence suggests is the case), and could do so by appealing only to matter moving according to natural laws. Such an explanation is, after all, a natural and scientiªc account of the process of generation which is, in turn, a natural process in need of a natural, and not a metaphysical, explanation. This model, moreover, dovetails nicely with the suggestion Kant would later make as the model most amenable to the occasionalist. We ªnd this model in the very book which served as Malebranche’s introduction to Descartes’ philosophy (André 1896, pp. 11–12)—the 1664 Claude Clerselier edition of the Treatise on Man and Description of the Hu- man Body (hereafter Description). In the Description, Descartes writes: “If we knew well all the parts of the semen of any species of animal in particular, for example, of the human, we would be able to deduce from this alone, by reason which is wholly mathematical and certain, every ªgure and structure of each of its members...”(ATXI,p.277). In other words, the initial structure of the generative matter, together with the very few and simple laws of motion, will inevitably yield the ªnal structure of the ªnished animal of the proper species, and that structure emerges part after part. Malebranche himself recognizes the option of God’s forming the universe’s initial matter, in such a way that the laws of nature will bring forth from that initial structure all future phenomena: “You understand well, then, that ordinary providence is reduced principally to two things: the laws of the communication of motion, since everything happens in bodies by means of motion; and the wise arrangement God introduced into the order of his creatures at the time of their creation, so that his work could be con- served by the natural laws he resolved to follow” (OC XII, p. 244/DMR X, p. 187).26 Why did Malebranche not posit this—the suitably-arranged

26. This option—the predetermination of matter, even if it is not fully-formed as an organism—blurs the boundary between preformation and epigenesis, a point noted in footnote 1. As with preformation (and against epigenesis), matter is pre-determined and

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initial conditions of matter together with laws of motion—as his theory of generation? If his aim is to provide natural explanations for natural events and to not simply claim God as the direct cause of these events, this model would do a much better job of achieving that aim. I sketch here two possible reasons why Malebranche opts for divine preformation. This is provisional work merely and requires a more sustained treatment elsewhere. As background, it is helpful to consider his negative evaluation of the empirical data gleaned from microscopic investigations, according to which Malebranche urges us to ignore what our limited vision tells us, and to use reason instead to recognize that God can make inªnitely small organisms out of extended matter because extension is inªnitely divisible. Against preformationism, one may argue that organisms nested within the reproductive organs of the ªrst member of each species would have to be impossibly small in order to account for the thousands of generations that have passed since Creation. The idea that matter is inªnitely divisible, and that God as an inªnite craftsman could fashion organisms out of the tiniest part of it, debunks this argument against preformationism, rendering the theory conceptually possible: “So that according to this view, which will appear strange and incongruous only to those who measure the marvels of God’s inªnite power by the ideas of sense and imagination, it might be said: (1) that in a single apple seed there are apple trees, apples, and apple seeds, standing in the proportion of a fully grown tree to the tree in its seed, for an inªnite, or nearly inªnite number of centuries; (2) that nature’s role is only to unfold these tiny trees by providing perceptible growth for that outside its seed” (OC I, p. 82/ST, p. 27). Furthermore, reason also tells us that, in a display of divine glory, God makes use of the inªnite divisibility of matter to make inªnitely small organisms also inªnitely complex. One might argue that this latter fact makes preformation at Creation necessary in order to avoid supernaturalism. How so? This turns on Malebranche’s conception of the miraculous or supernatural, and here is a passage from the Dialogues that captures that conception: . . . when I say that God always follows the general laws he has prescribed for himself, I am talking only of his general and ordinary providence. I do not exclude miracles or effects which do not follow from his general laws. But further...when God performs a miracle and does not act as a consequence of the general laws which are known

pre-organized, and as with epigenesis (and against preformation), organic parts and the re- lations among them emerges sequentially out of matter not previous formed as organs and organisms.

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to us, I maintain either that God acts as a consequence of other laws unknown to us, or that what he does then is determined by certain circumstances he had in view from all eternity in undertaking that simple, eternal, and invariable act which contains both the general laws of his ordinary providence and also the exceptions to these very laws (OC XII, pp. 177–8/DMR VIII, pp. 130–1, emphases added).

Miracles, or the supernatural, occur when God’s actions are not in accord with his general laws. Malebranche rejects the belief that “[i]f bodies did not have a certain nature or force to act, and if God did all things, there would be only the supernatural in even the most ordinary effects” (OC III, p. 223/EST §15, p. 667). That is, he would reject Leibniz’s claim (made to Bayle) that the consistent activity of God in the workings of the natural world assumes a perpetual miracle because “even if God should do this [act through general laws] continuously, they would not cease to be miracles, taking this word, not in the popular sense of a rare and marvelous thing, but in the philosophical sense of what exceeds the power of created things ...”(GIV,p.520/NS, p. 82). Malebranche does interpret the miraculous, and thus supernatural, in the popular sense but adds rigor to the deªnition; miracles are rare and marvelous because they are different kinds of events than are non-miraculous events. They are events that are exceptions to God’s own self-prescribed general laws, be they laws of body or laws of the union of body and soul.27 Malebranche seems to believe that the fact of the inªnite complexity of organic bodies makes their generation necessarily miraculous. Noting that 27. This conception of Malebranche’s theory of the miraculous or supernatural is con- tentious. One might argue that the miraculous, and thus the supernatural, for Malebranche is an action that follows from God’s particular volitions rather than his general volitions. But this says nothing about laws. However, Malebranche himself makes the connection between God’s general volitions and his lawful activity on the one hand, and God’s particular volitions and his activity that is not in accordance with general laws on the other hand: “For if God made the pain of a pricking felt by a soul without the body’s being pricked, or without the same thing happening in the brain as if the body were pricked, he would not act by general laws of the union of the soul and the body, but by a particular will” (OC V, p. 67/TNG II, III, p. 139). If God acts miraculously (supernaturally) when he acts by particular volitions, this is just to say that God acts miraculously when he does not act by general laws. As Pessin puts it: “Note the direct link between generality –Ͼ nomicity and particularity –Ͼ anomicity. Malebranche does not ªrst explain the general/particular distinction as a difference in content and then claim that general content volitions better support nomic behavior. Rather he moves directly from ‘general/particular’ to ‘nomic/ anomic.’ That suggests he literally cashes out the general/particular distinction in terms of nomicity/anomicity” (Pessin 2001, p. 80). My gratitude to Sean Greenberg for bringing the objection regarding Malebranche’s meaning of the miraculous to my attention.

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“God follows general laws only in order to render his conduct uniform and to make it bear the character of his immutability ...,”Malebranche pro- poses that “...aninªnity of general laws—which would hardly make them general—would be required to be able to form the [inªnitely complex] organic bodies of plants and animals by following these laws exactly” (OC XII, p. 246/DMR X, p. 190). The general laws of motion could never bring an inªnitely complex organic being into existence. Per- haps what is driving Malebranche’s general belief here is that the feat of generation or inªnitely complex beings would require either that an inªnite number of general laws operate—but then they are not general; or that the few general laws operate for an inªnite, and hence endless, time in order for the initial generative matter (whatever its initial structure) to become an inªnitely complex structure due to the general laws—but this runs counter to our experience that organic beings do regularly appear throughout time, complete and ªnished. To form such a being without ex- pending an inªnite length of time necessary for such formation, God necessarily acts beyond the general laws of nature.28 Generation of animals, then, requires that God act not in accordance with general laws, and so generation is, for Malebranche, inherently and irredeemably miraculous. Miracles happen rarely, and generation, in the popular sense, is an extremely common occurrence. To avoid positing a near inªnite number of miraculous acts by God, we must therefore equate generation with Cre- ation—itself miraculous—and posit preformation (OC VIII, p. 781). Such reasoning might be derived from the connections Malebranche makes among the inªnite complexity of organisms, the miraculous nature of their formation (through God’s extraordinary providence), and the unique capacity of preformation theory to explain generation:

But since the laws of motion cannot construct bodies composed of an inªnity of organs, it is a necessity, therefore, that ºies be con- tained in the larvae from which they hatch....Isimply claim that all the organic parts of bees are formed in their larvae, and are so 28. Issues surrounding the metaphysics of time may complicate this conclusion. One may argue that to say God must act for an inªnite length of time in order to construct an inªnitely complex organism (thereby contradicting our experience of natural phenomena) is to falsely represent God as temporal—when in fact, God does not act for an inªnite length of time at all. But this approach does not ease the concern that arises as a result of the inªnite complexity of organisms and the generality of laws. The problem is not with God’s action per se, but with how such divine action (temporal or not) is realized in the natural world. The general laws of motion by which God’s action is realized in the world— being too few and too general—could not yield a fully-formed, inªnitely complex organism in a ªnite length of time. My appreciation to Saul Fisher for bringing this point to my attention.

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well proportioned to the laws of motion that they can grow through their own construction and through the efªcacy of these laws, and can assume the shape suitable to their condition, without God intervening anew through extraordinary providence (OC XII, p. 253/DMR XI, pp. 195–6, emphases added).

As further evidence that Malebranche holds this view, let us recall his notion that generation is to be contrasted with the formation of ªnitely complex structures such as the universe. It is reasonable, he suggests, to explain the formation of the non-organic universe (which is ªnitely complex) but not the formation of animals (which are inªnitely complex) by appeal to God’s ordinary (non-miraculous) providence (OC II, pp. 343– 4/ST, pp. 465–6). However, this suggestion as to why Malebranche opts for preformationism rather than for a generation theory according to which God forms the organism part after part is not without problems. Malebranche was aware of the inªnitesimal calculus at least as early as 1690 (Mancosu 1996, pp. 165ff), and so surely would have grasped the mathematical possibility of a small number of (general) laws bringing about an inªnitely complex organic body in a ªnite length of time.29 And so here is a provisional sketch of a second possible reason why Malebranche posits divine preformation. This turns on the inherently teleological character of organisms. Malebranche, quite unlike Descartes, is happy to speculate about the functional nature of living beings. His argument for functional holism makes liberal use of the notion of purposes. Organic parts work toward particular ends, and are formed and interconnected to be able to accomplish these ends (OC II, p. 343/ST, p. 465). But these ends, of course, are the intentions of God. Once Malebranche rejects the idea that the supernatural is whatever goes beyond the power of creatures (OC III, p. 223/EST §15, p. 667), he must replace it with something else to be able to maintain a distinction between the natural and the supernatural. One of the ways by which Malebranche manages to make the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is to say that the latter is God’s action in the world that is not in accordance with general laws. But another way by which Malebranche makes this distinction is to say that the supernatural is “the order in the intentions of God” (OC III, p. 224/EST §15, p. 668). If organisms embody orderly ends or purposes that reºect divine intentions, and if the formation of these creatures can be

1 29. That is, suppose the ªrst step of a process takes 2 of a second to complete, then the next step takes 1/4 of a second to complete, and the nth step takes 1/2n seconds to complete. Then the whole process takes one second, even if there are an inªnite number of steps because this is a series that converges. My gratitude to Donald Ainslie for bringing this mathematical point to my attention.

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achieved only by God acting with intentions, then perhaps the formation of organisms is supernatural for this reason, even if God can form them by acting entirely in accordance with general laws. Thus, it is the purposive- ness of organisms that makes their formation miraculous.30 And, in fact, it is the “intentionally purposive form” for which Kant is seeking an explanation in his discussion of generation and causation. But then this is no longer to be considered an issue of efªcient causes but rather one of ªnal causes. God may be the sole source of efªcacious power, and Malebranche can still claim that this is natural as long as the particular action of God is not carried out with intentions. If it is, it must be conªned to Creation. This suggestion is provisional merely, but for present purposes, all we need bear in mind is that Malebranche himself believes God goes beyond ordinary providence when a living being is generated. In order to retain a meaningful distinction between the supernatural (non-lawful, purposive), and the natural (lawful, non-purposive), Malebranche must conªne generation to Creation, which he does by positing preformation. Two points must be highlighted. First, the theory of the supernatural at work in this context is a theory based on God’s activity in nature that is not in accordance with general laws or that requires that he act with intention and purpose. It is not a theory based on God’s exclusive activity in the world. Nature may be without any power at all, and God alone may be causally responsible for natural phenomena, but as long as God acts lawfully and without special intention, the phenomena are indeed natural and not supernatural. This argument, then, provides no support for the radical interpretation of occasionalism. It also shows that Malebranche is trying to avoid allowing supernaturalism to encroach in the natural world by recognizing the irredeemably supernatural character of generation. Sec- ond, we can interpret Malebranche’s argument for preformation from functional holism as an explanation for at least some of the experienced phenomena of the world (the fact that fully-grown organisms appear to be independently active), while interpreting his argument for preformation from the miraculousness of generation as telling us something about

30. Keith Hutchison’s evaluation of the general conception of nature in the seventeenth century is relevant here. He believes that the mechanical turn of the seventeenth century required a turn to supernaturalism and did not at all represent a naturalist approach to the created world, writing: “[t]he mechanists’ conception of matter as totally barren was used to offer a guarantee that supernatural activity was ever-present in the universe. So radically supernatural was the world-view attached to the barren view of matter, that the distinction between natural and supernatural actions was effectively obliterated ...”(Hutchison 1983, p. 297). Malebranche would argue against this conception of supernaturalism, relying on some other criterion (God’s action beyond general laws, God’s purposive action) to establish the distinction.

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the strict metaphysical reality of the created world and its relation to God. If this captures Malebranche’s approach, then the argument from the miraculousness of generation alone accounts for the metaphysics of the created world, and so this argument by itself bears upon Malebranche’s metaphysics of causation. But this argument for preformation (that generation is necessarily miraculous and must therefore happen at Creation) cannot fully settle the debate over which of the remaining two interpretations of occasionalism is the correct one. Generation is a miracle in the sense of being a phenomenon that cannot come about by lawful, non- intentional efªcacy, whether that efªcacy is God’s alone (per the traditional interpretation) or partly nature’s passive power (per the alternative interpretation).

VI. Concluding remarks Despite the promise suggested by Kant’s schema regarding the relation between generation and causation, Malebranche’s endorsement of the theory of preformation cannot help settle the debate over how we are to interpret his theory of causation by occasionalism. Aside from this negative conclusion, investigating this promise, and studying how Malebranche engaged the work of naturalists in the seventeenth century, yield a better grasp of several issues concerning his theory of occasionalism—the meaning of supernaturalism, the conception of natural activity, and the meaning of God’s volitions. Perhaps more importantly, we can see that Male- branche limits the role of metaphysics in the practice of science in a way that Descartes would ªnd most amenable. That he does not go as far as Descartes does in this naturalism by explaining the generation of organisms exclusively in terms of matter in motion is the result of his belief that generation is irredeemably supernatural, whether that is due to their inªnite complexity or, more likely, to their purposive character, a purpos- iveness that Malebranche, but not Descartes, allows into scientiªc explanation.

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