Minds, Forms, and Spirits:

The Nature of Cartesian

Disenchantment

Han van Ruler

What is Descartes’s contribution to Enlightenment? Undoubtedly, Cartesian

philosophy added to the conflict between philosophical and theological views
which divided intellectual life in the Dutch Republic towards the end of its “Golden
Age.”1 Although not everyone was as explicit as Lodewijk Meyer, who said that
his theological doubts were inspired by Descartes’s philosophical method,
Cartesianism along with Copernicanism, Socinianism, and Cocceianism played
an important part in the growing skepticism towards the authority of Scripture.2
Apart from Descartes’s general method, however, specific Cartesian ideas en-
couraged a new view towards nature and towards God’s role in governing it. In
physics and physiology the new philosophy replaced the image of mind working
on matter with the image of a self sufficient mechanism. This new causal meta-
phor led to a typically Cartesian form of “disenchantment.” In this article I
argue that on account of their approval of a Cartesian theory of causality, even
authors with sincere religious motives came close to accepting radical and nearly
Spinozistic ideas. I start with disenchantment in a very literal sense: Balthasar
Bekker’s denial of the activities of devils, angels, and other spirits. A compari-
son of Bekker’s arguments with those of another Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx
will, I hope, bring out the nature and importance of what I shall present as

1
See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806
(Oxford, 1995), 637-99 and 889-933; and Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reac-
tions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-1650 (Carbondale, Ill., 1992).
2
See L. Meyer, Philosophia S. Scripturæ Interpres (Amsterdam, 1666), Prologus:
“quemadmodum illi in Philosophiâ, sic & mihi in Theologiâ liceret, conduceretque in dubium
revocare, quicquid in dubium revocari posset.” Cocceians, the followers of the Leiden theolo-
gian Johannes Coccejus (1603-69), contributed to the development of the science of Biblical
criticism but were by no means disloyal members of the Reformed Church. See Israel, The
Dutch Republic, 660-69, 690-99, 909-16.
381
Copyright 2000 by the Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.
382 Han van Ruler

Descartes’s “mechanical reduction” in physics. Finally, I argue that the Carte-

sian separation of mind and body gave rise to a form of disenchantment that
reached far beyond contemporary debates.

Devils, Ghosts, and God’s Omnipotence

Balthasar Bekker’s classic book The World Bewitched (1691-93) does not
so much deal with the practice of sorcery as with its theory. Bekker offers a
wide range of theological and philosophical arguments in order to combat the
idea that ghosts, devils, and angels influence natural or historical events. In
particular Bekker draws some important conclusions from the philosophy of
Descartes. Yet it is immediately clear to the reader that the motives for his cri-
tique are religious rather than philosophical.3 The World Bewitched is not writ-
ten as a scientific assault on superstition. Bekker, at the time serving as a Cal-
vinist minister in Amsterdam, presents his work as a new and perhaps final
phase in the perfection of Christianity. For two centuries it had been a goal of the
Protestant Reformation to accentuate God’s majesty and to establish the idea of
His absolute power over creation. Bekker’s World again expresses this idea. His
denial that ghosts and devils are active in the world is a logical consequence of
the belief that there is no room for demigods in nature. Bekker thus adds a final
touch to the project of the Reformation. The World Bewitched will testify to the
fact “that I return as much of the honor of His Power and Wisdom to the Al-
mighty, as they took from Him who gave it to the Devil. I ban [the Devil] from
the World and I bind him in Hell.”4 Removing devils and spirits from nature,
Bekker aims to distinguish superstition from true faith. The battle against super-
stitious beliefs had formed a characteristic element of Protestant tactics. Dutch
Calvinists, for instance, took offense at the continuing practices of blessings and
incantations.5 Bekker wanted to go even further. The Protestantization of Chris-
tian dogma could only be completed by making everything in nature’s course
depend on God’s unique power and providence.6 “Science” in our sense of the
word was a subsidiary matter.7 Still, Bekker saw the new scientific theories of
his day as useful allies. In particular it was the new philosophy of Descartes that
attracted him. Following Descartes, Bekker reasons “that I think, that I will,

3
See W. P. C. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, de bestrijder van het bijgeloof (The Hague,
1906); and Wiep van Bunge’s Einleitung to Bekker, Die bezauberte Welt (1693) in Freidenker
der europäischen Aufklärung, I, vii, 1 (Stuttgart, 1997).
4
Balthasar Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld (Amsterdam, 1691), “Voorrede,” unpaginated.
5
See A. Th. van Deursen, Mensen van klein vermogen: Het kopergeld van de zeventiende
eeuw (Amsterdam, 1991), 276-82; also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London
1991), ch. 3, “The Impact of the Reformation,” 58-89.
6
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 137, argues that since the days of Luther and Calvin,
too little attention has been given to the project of purging religion of superstitious elements.
7
Cf. De Betoverde Weereld, II, 7 and IV, 10.
Cartesian Disenchantment 383

[and] that I understand something,” without any part of my body being involved
in this type of consciousness. Mind and body in fact have nothing in common:

My thoughts, my will and my intellect cannot be measured in yards or

inches, nor can they be weighed in pounds: but my Body, my flesh and
bone and my blood will keep their size and weight, or they will not be
what they are.... That is why I keep myself to this; that a Mind is a
thinking substance [selfstandigheid] and a Body an extended
[uitgestrekte] one.8

Again in accordance with Descartes, Bekker deduces God’s existence from the
idea of perfection.9 Yet both the distinction of body and soul and God’s perfec-
tion are given new explanatory roles in the context of Bekker’s disenchantment.
Since God is both perfect and unique, He does not allow semi-deities or other
cooperative beings beside Him. All things natural—including the tiny animals
that had just been discovered with the help of the microscope10—are governed
by a single Ruler and Creator of the world. Thus from God’s perfection alone it
is evident that there is no room for any activity of devils or of spirits in nature.
A second argument is based on the Cartesian distinction between body and
mind. We know the mind, or the soul, only in so far as we know our own mind.
Accordingly, if we are to say anything with regard to minds or spirits in general,
our judgment must be based on the experience that we have of our own mental
faculties. However, if we focus on the activity of our soul, we easily see that it
never influences another soul except by making use of the body as intermediary.
Moreover, the mutual influence between body and soul is such that certain move-
ments are always linked to specific experiences. The will to stand up, to sit, to lie
down, to eat, to drink, to speak, to read, or to write always expresses itself in
specific bodily movements; and the same is true the other way round: a certain
impression on our senses always results in a specific mental experience. We do
not understand this interaction of body and mind; yet we must accept the fact
that God connected body and mind in the way we continually experience. It
makes no sense to speculate about alternative forms of mind-matter interaction.
A human soul joined to a tree or to a stone will never form a human being. Not
only does our soul need a body through which it can express itself, it also needs

8
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 7.
9
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 8-9. Cf. the third of Descartes’s Meditations: “The
Existence of God,” Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris, 1982),
(hereafter AT), VII, 34-52; The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John Cottingham, Rob-
ert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge, 1985-91) (hereafter CSM), II,
24-36.
10
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, IV, 10, shows a deep admiration for the work of the
“diligent and inquisitive Antonius van Leewenhoek of Delft.”
384 Han van Ruler

a human body, even a complete and well-trained human body.11 For this reason
alone, it is very unlikely that a devil or an angel could simply tie itself to a
natural object, or even to the body of a woman or man.
When The World Bewitched was published, Bekker received a host of hos-
tile reactions.12 This was partly due to the persistence of superstitious beliefs. As
Andrew Fix has pointed out, the belief in active spirits was still very much alive
in Amsterdam at the time when Balthasar Bekker came to work there as a vicar.13
Besides popular conviction, however, it was the Bible itself that seemed to en-
hance the belief in good and evil forces. Accordingly, Bekker had to question a
literal reading of the Scriptures and, as a result, has been described as an adher-
ent of the theory of “accommodation,” i.e., the view that God’s Word is written
in a form which is adapted to average intellectual capacities.14 Bekker refuses to
interpret the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge. Moreover, since he ex-
plains Biblical references to devils and angels using scientific and historical
arguments and since he gives priority to “philosophical” interpretations, it is not
without reason that his method has been characterized as a “Cartesian” form of
hermeneutics.15 It would be wrong, however, to reduce his “Cartesianism” to the
way in which he interprets Scripture. It is his way of understanding the relation
between matter and mind which is the most typically Cartesian aspect of his
work.

Angels and Occasionalism

In a follow-up to his first study of Bekker’s Cartesianism, Andrew Fix con-

siderably changed his former ideas about Bekker’s influence on the Enlighten-
ment. Fix argues that there is no evidence for a decrease in superstition under the
influence of Descartes, since Cartesians were found on either side of the spec-
trum—both among the defenders of the activity of ghosts and among those, like
Bekker, who criticized such ideas. Henricus Groenewegen, for example, defended
the thesis that ghosts could influence bodies without themselves being embodied.
Indeed, according to Groenewegen, this truth applies to God Himself:

God is a spirit; so if God acts on [werkt op] a body, a Spirit acts on a

body. Nobody can deny that God is a Spirit; nor can anyone deny that,
as the Creator and keeper [onderhouder] of all things, He acts on the

11
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 42-43.
12
Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 224 ff.
13
Andrew Fix, “Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Balthasar
Bekker and the Collegiants,” JHI, 50 (1989), 536-39.
14
Wiep van Bunge, “Balthasar Bekker’s Cartesian Hermeneutics and the Challenge of
Spinozism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 1 (1993), 55-79.
15
Van Bunge, “Balthasar Bekkers Cartesian Hermeneutics,” 72ff.
Cartesian Disenchantment 385

matter that He has created and which He sustains [onderhoud] day by

day. Thus it follows that a Spirit acts on a Body.16

We know from experience that God has also provided some of His creations
with certain powers. We know, for instance, that there is a causal relationship
between the human mind and the human body and between bodies among them-
selves. There seems to be no reason to doubt that individual spirits and angels
might not just as well influence the course of events as we know it. According to
Groenewegen, the Bible makes it sufficiently clear that angels and devils do in
fact influence earthly events.17
Another reaction to The World Bewitched also mentioned by Fix, is that of
Johannes van Aalst and Paulus Steenwinkel, both, like Groenewegen, ministers
of the church.18 They, too, defended the possibility that angels at least influence
the course of things. Moreover, they expressly mention Cartesian arguments in
support of their view. According to Steenwinkel and Van Aalst, the nature of the
soul does not include anything but “thought.” This, however, implies that the
activity of the soul is necessarily restricted to thought. In other words although
the soul may think and although it may will, it cannot do anything else. The
human will is so to speak “confined to the soul, without any action or power
flowing from it.”19 It is only through the will of God that the activity of the soul
may result in certain effects taking place in the body. But if this occurs through
God’s will, why should not God allow angels to act on our souls as well, or on
our bodies, or on other material things? Again, according to Van Aalst and
Steenwinkel, Scripture bears witness to the fact that this is indeed the case.20
Van Aalst’s and Steenwinkel’s reaction is influenced to an important degree
by the work of the Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx.21 Geulincx had been
one of the very first Cartesians to formulate what has become known as the
theory of “occasionalism”: the view that all relations of cause and effect are
directly dependent on God. He has an original argument for this view, linking all
forms of activity to the conscious experience of an act. We ourselves are active
when we think and will. When we move our bodies, however, the situation is
more complicated. Though we may take full credit for our thoughts—in this

16
Henricus Groenewegen, Pneumatica, ofte Leere van de Geesten (Amsterdam, 1692),
quoted in Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 240. See also Andrew Fix, “Balthasar Bekker and the
Crisis of Cartesianism,” History of European Ideas, 17 (1993), 582.
17
Fix, “Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism,” 581-83.
18
Cf. Knuttel, Balthasar Bekker, 244 ff.
19
Johannes Aalstius and Paulus Steenwinkel, Zedige Aanmerkingen, quoted in Knuttel,
Balthasar Bekker, 245.
20
Fix, “Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism,” 583-84.
21
Here and elsewhere, Van Aalst and Steenwinkel expose their approval of Geulincx’s
ideas and indirectly contributed to their diffusion by introducing others to his works. See Arnold
Geulings, Geest en Wereldkunde (Dordrecht, 1696), 3-4.
386 Han van Ruler

case for the decision to move—there is no way in which we can account for the
relation between our mental experience and the physical result that seems to
follow. Geulincx therefore argues that there must be a causal source, different
from myself, which is responsible for all activities that exceed the “I.” Not only
must an independent source be looked for in order to account for the involuntary
phenomena which enter our consciousness, but also for other natural phenom-
ena. We see the activity of things around us: a fire warms, the Sun shines, and a
stone falls down. On second thought, however, we may not ascribe the same sort
of activity to these objects which we ascribe to our soul when we experience its
activity in judgment and thought. For the forms of activity outside our own
minds, such as the interaction of body and soul or of physical bodies among
themselves, another Spirit must be responsible. This Spirit can be none other
than God, who holds the world of nature in His hands.22
In the discussion on the activity of spirits Van Aalst and Steenwinkel take
advantage of Geulincx’s philosophical position. If God is the true cause of all
interaction of body and soul, nothing prevents Him from securing the causal
efficaciousness of other spirits as well, in particular the activity of angels. Thus,
the discussions following the publication of The World Bewitched show that
Cartesians could just as easily defend the activity of spirits. Andrew Fix rightly
concludes that opposite views were held within the Cartesian camp itself. As a
consequence Fix also retracted his earlier view concerning the influence of
Cartesianism on the Enlightenment. However, the case is not that simple, since
Descartes’s new way of dealing with matter and mind did not relate to devils and
angels alone.

Philosophical Demigods

Balthasar Bekker’s disenchantment reached further than everyday popular

belief. For Bekker, divine power is axiomatic. God’s absolute power was threat-
ened by the supposed power of angels and devils. Apart from such individual
spirits, however, God’s perfect sovereignty also ruled out abstract philosophical
principles that might act as “statholders and mediators” of divine omnipotence.
Thus, Aristotle’s forms and Plato’s ideas are put on a par with the demigods of
superstition: “No Intelligences ... no Ideas, no Demons, no Semi-deities: God
alone is all in all.”23 In particular Bekker criticizes the Aristotelian idea of
“concomitant Spirits” (bygestelde Geesten),24 which were thought to be respon-
sible for the motions of heavenly bodies. Aristotle’s theory of the animation of

22
Arnold Geulincx, Metaphysica Vera, in: Sämtliche Schriften in fünf Bänden, ed. H.J. de
Vleeschauwer (hereafter: Opera) (Stuttgart, 1968), II, 147-50.
23
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 16.
24
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 132.
Cartesian Disenchantment 387

heavenly bodies is nothing but an academic sequel to the childish belief in devils,
ghosts, and witchcraft.25
Despite the fact that others quoted his works in opposition to Bekker, Arnold
Geulincx shared this view to an important extent. Geulincx also emphasizes the
uniqueness of divine power. Geulincx, too, criticizes the idea of introducing
other causal principles than God’s omnipresent will. In a speech at the start of
the 1652 Saturnalia, a festive week of less formal disputations at Leuven Uni-
versity, the young professor Geulincx took a swipe at the tendency of natural
philosophers to depict the natural world as being animated.26 In poetry, says
Geulincx, this may not be a problem. Physics, however, should be freed from
animistic explanations. According to Geulincx, all philosophers had tradition-
ally explained nature with the use of concepts drawn from human mental expe-
rience. Stoics, Platonists, and Pythagorians attribute virtue, sense, and even
thought to the world. According to the Aristotelian tradition, nature has fears
and impediments, desires and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, forms and
intelligences, powers and potencies.27
Bekker and Geulincx both welcomed Descartes’s philosophy as an alterna-
tive. In particular it gave them a philosophical foundation for their religious
intention to link nature in a more direct manner to the activity of God. By its
strict separation of the physical and the mental realms, Cartesianism does with-
out any causal agencies apart from God and man. In fact, according to Descartes,
“all forms of inanimate bodies” are to be explained through “the motion, size,
shape, and arrangement” of their material parts.28 In so far as bodily change can
be accounted for in terms of the mutual influence of moving parts of matter, the
whole of physical nature may be compared to a machine. This mechanistic view
reveals a fundamental change in the notion of causality. According to Descartes,
all bodily changes may be explained as the direct result of previous bodily states
according to a law-like process. In such a causal scheme mentalistic “forces”
are redundant.
As we saw, Balthasar Bekker rejected the idea of “concomitant Spirits”
which were intended to account for the regular motion of heavenly bodies. Car-
tesian natural philosophy could do without such independent centers of causal-
ity, since it explains the motion of bodies on the basis of the motion of the sur-
rounding matter. In other words no “spirits” are needed to initiate movement as
demigods of change. The same applies to all other sources of causality. In scho-

25
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, 131-32. Rainer Specht, Commercium, Mentis et Cor-
poris (Stuttgart, 1966), 157-58, points to Robert Fludd and Nicolas Malebranche, who also
held the idea that Aristotelianism is a source of idolatry.
26
The lecture and the text of the Quæstiones quodlibeticæ to which it forms an introduc-
tion were later republished as Saturnalia (Leiden, 1665). See Geulincx, Opera, I, 1-147.
27
Geulincx, Opera, I, 17-18.
28
Descartes, Le Monde, AT XI, 26; CSM I, 89.
388 Han van Ruler

lastic physics “substantial forms” were held to be responsible for the activity of
natural objects as the initiators of movement. Descartes considered such “prin-
ciples” superfluous. He preferred not to commit himself and “for the sake of
peace with the philosophers” did not explicitly deny the existence of “what they
further suppose to exist in bodies, such as their substantial forms.” At the same
time he was confident that his new philosophy had no need for them.29
Descartes addresses the school philosophers, but his criticism of their way
of doing natural philosophy reaches beyond Peripatetic thought. Indeed, a range
of philosophical schools kept to the idea that the problems and the explanations
of natural philosophy should be put in terms of the interplay of active and pas-
sive forces. Aristotelians saw the form as the active principle in a physical pro-
cess and regarded matter as being passive. Alternative sixteenth- and seven-
teenth-century philosophies came up with other principles but nonetheless main-
tained the dualistic scheme. Few contemporaries interpreted material elements
simply as different kinds of matter. More often than not elements were classified
according to their active or passive characteristics. Whether they were of a Pla-
tonic, Neo-Stoic, alchemical, or eclectic nature, the philosophical “principles”
which were brought forward as alternatives to Aristotelian matter and form,
followed the same pattern. Moreover, the alternative philosophies explicitly pre-
sented activity as being of a “spiritual” nature. On top of this, many accepted the
Platonic-Paracelcist idea that nature as a whole was governed by a Soul—a
hidden spiritual force which was often heaped together with the Stoic pneuma
and the Holy Spirit of Christianity.
With Descartes nature was cleansed of such spiritual or would-be spiritual
forms. The strict separation of body and mind and the mechanistic conception of
physical processes thus went hand in hand and put an end to the ongoing philo-
sophical quest for active principles.30 Geulincx and Bekker, who were both in-
spired by the religious motive of securing the uniqueness of Divine efficacious-
ness, greeted Cartesianism with open arms. Yet the deanimation of the material
world unmistakably kindled the fire of irreligion, since the Cartesian ban on
active principles put all forms of spiritual intervention at risk.

God as Spirit

Following the publication of the first, Leeuwarden edition, The World Be-
witched was so fiercely attacked that Bekker felt the need to complain about its
reception in the preface to Book II, which was printed in Amsterdam: “people
have thus described it, and have publicly (although not in this city) preached
about it [in such a way as if] I taught that there is neither Hell nor Devil—

29
Descartes, Météores, AT VI, 239.
30
J. A. van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality (Leiden, 1995), 310-15.
Cartesian Disenchantment 389

which God forbid....”31 Bekker never denied the existence of the devil or of hell.
What he denies is that the devil can influence worldly events. This misinterpre-
tation was not, however, the only one. In W. P. C. Knuttel’s biography of Bekker
we also find the example of the Utrecht minister Henricus Brinck, who was of
the opinion that, according to Bekker, God has no influence on humans.32
This again is an opinion Bekker never held. Nevertheless, it is quite logical
that he was associated with it. If there can be no activity of spirits in the material
world, the question soon arises whether God Himself, being of a spiritual nature,
could actually influence the course of things. Bekker anticipated such possible
objections. The view that God might be regarded as a spirit is exactly what
Bekker denies at various points in The World Bewitched. Despite our habit of
seeing God as a spirit—a habit which, by the way, we also come across in
Scripture—God has no affinities whatsoever with the kind of spirit that we know,
i.e., with the human mind, or soul. Body and soul, says Bekker, are “substances”
(Selfstandigheden), but at the same time they are creatures (Schepselen).33 Since
there is an “infinite” difference between created and uncreated substance, body
and soul are both equally far removed from their Creator. “I only call [God] a
Spirit,” Bekker writes, “since I cannot find a word in any language, with which
I could characterise Him in the right way.” God, however, does not share any-
thing with created spirits but this name. Bekker in particular levels his criticism
at those classical and modern philosophers who present the human soul as “a
part of God’s spirit.”34 This expression from Horace (divinae particula aurae,
“a parcel of God’s breath”) is founded on the Stoic conviction that individual
human spirits are part and parcel of the Spirit of the World.35 We find the idea in
modern times as well. With regard to the origin of the human soul Justus Lipsius
writes that “we are, as it were, [God’s] limbs and parts.”36 It is of crucial impor-
tance to Bekker to say that God cannot be compared to a created spirit. Bekker
denies that any spirits apart from human spirits influence the course of events in
nature.37 If God be regarded a spirit He would—as Bekker’s opponents were
quick to point out—not be able to influence either man or nature.
Geulincx’s position is potentially even more dangerous. Whereas Bekker
rejected the Stoic view concerning the identity of human and divine souls, this
idea is taken up anew in a quasi-Cartesian form by Geulincx. Comparing the

31
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, “Voorrede.”
32
H. Brinck, Toet-steen der waarheid (Utrecht, 1691), “Voorrede,” quoted in Knuttel,
Balthasar Bekker, 235.
33
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 6. Cf. Descartes, AT VIII-I, 24; CSM I, 210.
34
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 9.
35
Cf. Horace, Satires II, 2, 79, and René Descartes et Martin Schoock, La Querelle d’Utrecht,
tr. Theo Verbeek (Paris, 1988), 470, n. 63.
36
See Jacqueline Lagrée, Juste Lipse. La Restauration du stoïcisme (Paris, 1994), 74.
37
As for the existence of an animal soul, Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 23, keeps his
options open.
390 Han van Ruler

relationship between God and individual minds with the relationship between
individual material things and nature as a whole, the Flemish philosopher in fact
welds God and human souls together to form a single substantial unity. Our
mind is a modus of the divine spirit in the same way as bodily objects are modi
of material substance.38 But when minds are so to speak cosubstantial with God
and at the same time incapable of moving matter, the question arises how God
Himself could influence the course of things.
Contemporaries never confronted occasionalist philosophers with this ob-
jection. It was only in 1739 that David Hume spoke out against “the Carte-
sians,” arguing that their position could lead to the blasphemous conclusion that
no force is to be met with in God. If, says Hume, “no impression, either from
sensation or reflection, implies any force or efficacy, ’tis equally impossible to
discover or even imagine any such principle in the deity.”39 If all spiritual influ-
ence on nature is denied, God’s activity in nature will have to be reconsidered.
Bekker simply denies that God is a spirit in the usual sense of the word. Geulincx
is, as we have seen, less observant; but he is aware of the necessary restrictions
in comparing God with human souls. Geulincx argues that, in a certain sense,
the influence of God’s will on nature remains mysterious (ineffabilis), since we
cannot deduce any form of influence on matter from the notion of spiritual activ-
ity alone. The will can desire a form of bodily movement, but desiring motion is
not a form of motion itself. Thus, when we say that “God moves [matter] through
His will,” we do not really understand what we are saying. Nevertheless, Geulincx
is willing to keep to the idea that God governs nature through the activity of His
will. The will of a spirit of “infinite power” is simply incomparable to our own.40
Both Bekker and Geulincx take the necessary steps to exclude God from
their Cartesian iconoclasm. God is not a spirit in the usual sense of the word.
What they do not seem to have taken into account, however, is that, traditionally,
the idea of causality was itself put into spiritual terms. Bekker’s disenchantment
is specifically directed against devils, ghosts, and witches. Yet being developed
along the lines of the Cartesian mechanization of nature and the mind-matter
dualism that accompanies it, this disenchantment points to a more fundamental
form of disenchantment by which nature is stripped of its centers of spontaneous
activity. In pre-Cartesian physics all natural activity is explained by active forces
influencing what is passive. If this anthropomorphic metaphor is abandoned,
there is, contrary to what Bekker and Geulincx expected, not more but ulti-

38
Geulincx, Opera, II, 237-39 and 273. The argument is based on the idea that the infinite
has metaphysical and epistemological priority over finite things, which, as parts, are like residues
of the whole; see Eugène Terraillon, La Morale de Geulincx dans ses rapports avec la philosophie
de Descartes (Paris, 1912), 37-39.
39
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch
(Oxford, 1978), 160.
40
Geulincx, Opera, II, 502, thesis VIII.
Cartesian Disenchantment 391

mately less reason to talk of God in physics. Accordingly, the Cartesian God is
surprisingly disinclined to interfere with nature’s course.

God and Nature Coalesce

Despite Bekker’s theological motivations, the philosophical notion of God’s

power and perfection necessarily led to a reinterpretation of those Biblical texts
in which angels and devils are reported to actively partake in historical events41
In other words even the strangest phenomena might be explained in naturalistic
terms. Bekker, for instance, explains telepathic experiences by the idea of diffu-
sions of “sympathetic” particles from the human body. Although in this case he
shows himself to be a very uncritical natural philosopher and a bad mechanicist
at that, it is clear that he favors naturalistic explanations, indicating how “what
is often associated with Witchcraft or the work of Devils” may also be explained
“naturally.”42
Balthasar Bekker objects to Geulincx’s view that God is directly responsible
for all natural activity, since he disapproves of involving God in every natural
operation. When, says Bekker, we ask ourselves whether horses can fly, it would
be preposterous to argue that in view of God’s Almighty Power, horses are in-
deed able to fly: “the question was not what God is able to do, but what a horse
is able to do.” Accordingly, following the Scholastics, we should only talk of
God’s “influence” and “concurrence” with respect to the usual, law-governed
course of nature. It is of no interest to science to know what kind of divine
assistance would be needed in order for trees to grow on the sea or ships to sail
in the mountains. Bekker seems to have no philosophical problems with reintro-
ducing Scholastic notions like “concurrence.” He simply links his common sensical
view of nature to the Biblical word of Genesis: God preserves things according
to the specific way in which He created them—in other words, He creates and
keeps all beings “after their kind.”43
Geulincx’s position seems to be the very opposite to Bekker’s in this respect.
According to Geulincx, each and every natural activity is a direct consequence
of God’s will. Yet here again there are more similarities than differences between
Bekker and Geulincx, as both authors reveal a diminished concern for the excep-
tional. Bekker’s unwillingness to mention God in every instance forms part of
his strategy to emphasize the common course of nature. The “daily rule of divine

41
Thus, Bekker interprets the devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert not as a personal
confrontation with the Evil One, but as an inner conflict of Christ. Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld,
II, 133.
42
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, IV, 10, 13.
43
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, II, 40. Apart from Genesis 1:1, 12, 21 and 24-25, Bekker
quotes Revelation 4:11, Psalms 65:10-14 and 104:14-15, Hosea 2:20-21, Hebrews 6:7 and
James 5:7.
392 Han van Ruler

omniscience” and “the continual efficacy of divine omnipotence” should be un-

derstood in terms of nature’s normal course. Showing a preference for natural
explanations over explanations that introduce the activity of individual spirits or
of God, Bekker stresses the importance of interpreting nature as governed by a
fundamental regularity. Geulincx links all natural action directly to the activity
of God. This, however, does not mean that he is concerned with exceptional
occurrences or extraordinary phenomena. On the contrary God’s omnipresence
leaves no room for the exceptional.
With Geulincx, the fact that we know God from His works leads to a fasci-
nation with the common course of nature and not with the anomalous. Instead of
miracles, it is the miraculous character of everyday phenomena which invari-
ably amazes him. Thus, Geulincx uses the term “miracle” (miraculum,
wonderwerk) only in relation to his idea of seeing the world as a “spectacle”
(spectaculum, schouwspel) of wonderful phenomena and not in its traditional
religious sense. The laws of nature depend only on God’s free will:

So that it is really of equal significance and in itself as much of a miracle

that, upon the command of my will, my tongue trembles in my mouth
when I say “Earth” as that the Earth itself would tremble upon the same
command; the only difference is, that it has pleased God that the one
thing happens at a certain moment of time, but not the other.44

The identification of God’s will with natural law is a recurrent theme in post-
Cartesian philosophy. Likewise with Bekker and Geulincx. In Geulincx a state-
ment concerning the will of God maybe quite literally a statement of physics.
Bekker holds on to the idea of a personal Divinity, operating independently from
nature. Even so, his emphasis on natural explanations and “disanimation” of
nature along Cartesian lines leave little room for a kind of divine government in
terms of an actively intervening spiritual force. The theological world-view based
on the dualistic terminology of active principles acting on passive matter is re-
placed by a deterministic view of nature which does not admit of spiritual or
would-be spiritual interference in natural processes. The only remaining way to
interpret nature in religious terms is by reformulating physical insights in a theo-
logical phraseology, just as Spinoza consistently did.
With respect to Bekker’s biblical hermeneutics, Wiep van Bunge concluded
that “[the] best way [for Bekker] to have defended himself against the accusa-
tion of being a Spinozist would probably have been to become one.”45 We may
now see in what way Bekker—and Geulincx, for that matter—approach
Spinozism also in a philosophical sense. Both authors had much affinity with the
44
Geulincx, Opera, III, 36 and 280. See also Arnout Geulincx, Van de hoofddeugden, De
eerste tuchtverhandeling, ed. Cornelis Verhoeven (Baarn, 1986), 97, and Victor Vander Haeghen,
Geulincx: Étude sur sa vie, sa philosophie et ses ouvrages, Diss. Liège 1886 (Gent, 1886), 77.
45
Van Bunge, “Balthasar Bekkers Cartesian Hermeneutics,” 79.
Cartesian Disenchantment 393

new natural philosophy which did without spirits or other centers of causation.
Yet in the alliance of Protestantism and Cartesianism which they formed, all
seeds of a naturalistic world-view are present. In particular their Christian
Cartesianism embodies the germs of Spinozism. Along with devils and angels
God Himself gets into a tight corner. Furthermore, God and nature continue to
draw closer. As the image of spiritual activity is ruled out as a causal metaphor
for natural change, the subjective view of nature in terms of human experience is
replaced by an objectivist view in which the scientific and the metaphysico-
theological descriptions of the world are increasingly seen as two sides of the
same coin.
As Andrew Fix has argued before, Bekker’s Cartesianism functioned pri-
marily as an ad hoc argument against spirits.46 Cartesianism, however, brought
with it more than Bekker had hoped for: a new conception of causality, replacing
the old metaphor of active spirits acting on passive matter. Bekker wrote The
World Bewitched at a time when Spinoza was already known as a notorious
atheist. He therefore explicitly rejects the “foolish aberration of Spinoza, who
intermingles God and World.”47 Spinoza, says Bekker, is someone who “boarded”
Descartes’s foundations “too broadly.” Thereby, however, Bekker himself con-
firmed that Cartesianism was a slippery slope.

Descartes and Modern Thought

Both Aristotelian critics and occasionalist and Leibnizian followers of

Descartes were, in their reaction to the mechanical philosophy, intrigued by the
same question: “If forms do not activate matter, then what does?” The idea
was—and often still is—that something must be responsible for action; some-
thing must do the causal work. From a Cartesian standpoint this is ultimately the
wrong question. Indeed the very idea behind Cartesian physics is that the meta-
phor of mind acting on matter is no longer valid as a scientific explanation. The
natural world is matter without form. Although metaphysical theories of anal-
ogy might cover up things in the case of God, the role of independent forces in
nature had come to an end. Arguing that it must be God who is responsible for
change in a world without forms, occasionalism in fact held on to the old causal
metaphor that Descartes had done away with. This may also serve as an answer
to the question whether Descartes himself was an occasionalist. Indeed he was
not. The reason is not that he had other ways of dealing with the problems of
mind-body dualism or that he never really elaborated the idea of God’s continu-
ous creation.48 The reason is that, starting with Le Monde, he had made it his

46
Andrew C. Fix, “Hoe cartesiaans was Balthasar Bekker?” It Beaken, 58 (1996), 118-37.
47
Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld, I, “Voorrede.”
48
See Daniel Garber, “How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance, and Oc-
casionalism,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987), 567-80, and Descartes’ Metaphysical
Physics (Chicago, 1992), 263-305; also Van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality, 274-76.
394 Han van Ruler

task to substitute the form-matter, active-passive, type of causal argumentation

with a new, mechanical, one. It was exactly the old anthropomorphic concept of
causality that occasionalism reintroduced.
Looking back, we may consider the consequences of the Cartesian ban on
active principles over a longer period. Even today anthropomorphic ideas play
an important role in our conception of nature. In common schoolbook represen-
tations we explain the phenomenon of gravity for instance in dualistic terms: an
active force pulling away at passive lumps of matter. Some of us may be aware
of the fact that this is only a manner of speaking, that in fact this account of
gravity is based on the law-like regularity of observed phenomena, expressed in
a mathematical way. It is to seventeenth-century thought, and to Isaac Newton
in particular, that we owe this kind of mathematical representation. Yet the math-
ematical law itself leaves open the question of its interpretation. The possibility
of interpreting the law of gravity in mere positivistic terms, i.e., as a precise
formulation of observed regularities without considering the question of causal-
ity, is a typically nineteenth-century idea. The seventeenth century did, however,
witness its own revolution with regard to causal interpretations of nature.
Descartes’s strict distinction between mental and bodily events is nowadays mostly
interpreted with respect to the question of mind-body interactionism. Descartes
himself, however, was not so much occupied with this question as with the re-
moval of mentalistic terms from physics. As he wrote to Princess Elisabeth:

when we suppose that heaviness is a real quality, of which all we know

is that it has the power to move the body that possesses it towards the
centre of the earth, we have no difficulty in conceiving how it moves this
body or how it is joined to it.49

The real quality of gravity is like an active force carrying a body to the center of
the Earth. Yet we must, says Descartes, be skeptical of such real qualities, of
such “powers” in nature. That we represent nature in this way is the result of an
anthropomorphic projection. We ourselves have the experience of a power that
moves the body. Interpreting nature as being ridden with active forces, we call
upon our “primitive notion” of the unity of body and soul. We should, however,
where physics is concerned, make use of the primitive notion of material exten-
sion. As Descartes explained to Princess Elisabeth: “I think we have hitherto
confused the notion of the soul’s power to act on the body with the power one
body has to act on another.”50
Although many of his contemporaries were prone to ridicule, along with
Molière, the unproductive Scholastic concepts of real qualities and substantial
forms, only a few were able to draw the consequences from Descartes’s argu-

49
Descartes to Princess Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 667; CSM III, 219.
50
Idem.
Cartesian Disenchantment 395

ments against them. Balthasar Bekker saw the possibility of applying Descartes’s
arguments to superstitious beliefs. Arnold Geulincx was one of the few who saw
what Descartes’s philosophy meant for the traditional, anthropomorphic way of
doing physics and was exceptional in his way of explicitly discussing the meta-
phor of animation which lay concealed in the traditional philosophical accounts
of nature.51 But Descartes’s separation of body and soul should not merely be
seen in relation to the question of superstition or to the critique of ancient and
medieval philosophies. In fact Descartes introduced a new model of natural cau-
sality, the most striking feature of which is that nature contains no “little souls,”
no spontaneous centers of activity.52 The modern concept of determinism is a
direct consequence of this idea. The substitution of active spirits by natural
causes is reflected in the substitution in natural philosophy of spontaneous cen-
ters of causation by outward, “material” circumstances. Nature, in other words,
is stripped of its anthropomorphic properties, its active faculties—which is ex-
actly what Descartes meant when he said that he could do without the “forms.”
A choice in favor of Descartes implied a redefinition of God’s relation to
nature. Considering the consequences of Descartes’s disenchantment in the long
run, we may conclude that the mechanical reduction of reality had a lasting
effect on our way of seeing the physical world, even though specific mechanistic
explanations in physics were soon to be forgotten. Rather than by exorcising
superstition or promoting a more allegorical reading of the Bible, it was by
rejecting the image of body and soul and by replacing it with that of the machine
that Descartes influenced our concept of nature. Spiritual activity was no longer
accepted as a model for natural change. As a result, even Cartesians of strong
faith were prone to accept ideas that were typical of the Age of Reason.

Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

51
He may have been influenced by Willem van Gutschoven. In a 1651 university disputa-
tion, Van Gutschoven criticized the Scholastic notions of “sympathy, antipathy, antiperistatis,
magnetic forces, influence of heavenly bodies, occult qualities” and other “powerful faculties,”
arguing that “for us, matter and motion suffice.” Student lecture notes show that this would
remain the accepted view at Leuven university until as late as 1766. Cf. G. Vanpaemel, Echo’s
van een wetenschappelijke revolutie. De mechanistische natuurwetenschap aan de Leuvense
Artesfaculteit (1650-1797) (Brussel, 1986), 82-84.
52
Descartes to Mersenne, 26 April 1643, AT III, 648; CSM III, 216: “I do not suppose that
there are in nature any real qualities, which are attached to substances, like so many little souls
to their bodies.” On Descartes’s idea that Scholastic theory attributes a form of substantiality to
the “qualities” themselves, see: Descartes to Princess Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 667;
CSM III, 219: “We imagined these qualities to be real, that is to say to have an existence distinct
from that of bodies, and so to be substances, although we called them qualities.” Descartes
seems to regard the notions of “real quality” and “substantial form” as being interchangeable.
See also Les Météores, AT VI, 239.