W.D. Clarke’s Reviews > Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections > Status Update

For it would be the most unreasonable thing in the world to imagine that the mind of man is the most perfect modification that an infinite being could produce, acting in accordance with the full power of his forces.

If I did not remember that I am not writing a book against this man, but merely a few brief remarks in passing....

["Merely", since the (rather testy) article on Spinoza is but a mere fifty pages in length after all]

B. writes of a Chinese sect, Foe Kiao, for whom

'there is nothing to seek, nor anything to put one's hopes on, except the nothingness and the vacuum that is the principle of all things.'

Appropriately enough then,

Those who attached themselves most ardently to the contemplation of this 1st principle formed a *new* sect called Vu Guei Ko...of the idle or the do-nothings.

A great minister of state... was advised not to let his oldest son learn ancient philosophy because, as he was told, there was nothing in that philosophy but puerilities and foolishness. 'I have also been told,' he replied, 'that there is much foolishness in the new philosophy. Thus, having to choose between ancient and new foolishness, I ought to prefer the old to the new one.'

Cartesian dualism, the absolute distinction between body and soul, to the rescue:

How do we treat beasts? We make them tear each other apart for our pleasure. We kill them to nourish ourselves. We dissect their entrails while they are living to satisfy our curiosity, and we do all this as a result of the dominion God has given us over the beasts [...] Now is it not cruel and unjust to submit an innocent soul...

... the reasons for doubting being themselves doubtful. We must then doubt if it is necessary to doubt. How great a chaos, and how great a torment for the human mind!

Pyrrho's indifference was astonishing. He did not like anything, nor was he ever angry about anything. No one was ever more completely persuaded than he of the vanity of things. When he spoke, it did not matter to him whether anyone listened or not; and even if he saw that his audience went away, he continued speaking. He kept house with his sister and shared even the smallest household chores with her.

I offer the testimony of the philosophical commentator (124).
(Note 124: The philosophical commentator is, of course, Pierre Bayle himself.)

You've just got to admire the chutzpah!

The Manicheans were divided into two orders, the elect and the auditors. The former were not allowed to engage in farming or even gathering fruit. The others were allowed to do so, and were assured that the murders they were committing by doing this would be pardoned through the intercession of the divine particles which were liberated from their prison [when] the elect at them.

If a dog differs from a stone, its is not because the dog is composed of a body and a soul, and the stone of a body only. It is solely because the dog is composed of parts so put together that they make a machine, which the arrangement of the parts of the stone do not. This is Descartes' view.

Ah, René, René...
https://youtu.be/Cog7vYXTHIo