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Dialogue IX

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Nicholas Jolley
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
David Scott
Affiliation:
Gonzaga University, Washington
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Summary

God always acts according to His nature. He has done everything for His glory in Jesus Christ, and He has not formed His plans without regard for the ways of executing them.

I. THEODORE. What do you think today, Aristes, of what we were talking about yesterday? Have you properly contemplated the notion of the infinite, of Being without restriction, of the infinitely perfect Being? And can you now envisage it in a completely pure way, without endowing it with the ideas of creatures, without as it were embodying it, without limiting it, without corrupting it to accommodate it to the weakness of the human mind?

ARISTES. Ah, Theodore, how difficult it is to separate the ideas of particular beings from the notion of Being! How difficult it is not to attribute to God what we sense in ourselves! We continually humanize the divinity, we naturally limit the infinite. This is because the mind wishes to comprehend what is incomprehensible, it wishes to see the invisible God. It seeks Him in the ideas of creatures, it fixes on its own sensations which touch and penetrate it. But how far all this is from representing the divinity! And what strange judgments are made about the attributes of God and His adorable providence by those people who judge the divine perfections by the inner feeling of what happens in themselves! I glimpse what I am telling you, but I still do not see it well enough to explain it.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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  • Dialogue IX
  • Nicolas Malebranche
  • Edited by Nicholas Jolley, University of California, San Diego, David Scott, Gonzaga University, Washington
  • Book: Malebranche: Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164092.013
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  • Dialogue IX
  • Nicolas Malebranche
  • Edited by Nicholas Jolley, University of California, San Diego, David Scott, Gonzaga University, Washington
  • Book: Malebranche: Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164092.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dialogue IX
  • Nicolas Malebranche
  • Edited by Nicholas Jolley, University of California, San Diego, David Scott, Gonzaga University, Washington
  • Book: Malebranche: Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164092.013
Available formats
×