Literature. — The Opera Omnia Occami appear never to have been fairly gathered together and printed in collected form. The date of such publication is some- times and variously given, but none such seems known to Brucker, to Tennemann, or to Ueberweg. Separate works were printed and reprinted to meet passing de- mands of theological or imperial controversy. The treatises in defence of temporal sovereignty were in- serted by Goldastus in his Monarchia Sancti Imperii liomani. Others were published in other collections, and several were edited separately. A list of his writ- ings is given by the antiquarian John Leland, I)e Sc7-ip- torihus Britannicis, and more completely in the Bibli- otheca Scriptorum Ordinis Minoritarum, and in Cave, Scriptores Ecclesiastiei. The liistorians of philosophy are of course compelled to notice Occam, but they do it in a brief and unsatisfactory manner. Ueberweg gives a clear summary of his characteristic positions, but is otherwise very inadequate. The most instructive essay on the Invincible Doctor is contained in the British Quarlerli/ Reviev, July, 1872, but this regards chiefly his theological aspects. In addition should be consult- ed Haureau, Philosophie Scholastique ; Caraman, Hist, de la Philusophie en France au Moyen Age ; Moreri, Dic- tionnaire H'lstorique; Raynaldus, Baronii Annalium Continiiatio ; Milman, IJist. Latin Christianity ; Rett- berg, Occam und Luther, in Theolog. Stud. ii. Krit, 1839 ; Schreiber, Die polit. u. relir;. Doctrinen witer Ludwiq dem. Baier. (Landshut, 1858); Ritter, Gesch. d. christl. Philosophie, iv, b7i sq. ; Dorner, Kntivickelunysgesch. v. d. Person Christi, ii, 447, 457, 607; Baur, Die christl. Lehre v. der Dreieinigkeit und Menschiverdung Gottes, ii, 866; KuUer, Realismus u. Nominalismus (Gotha, 1858), p. 162 ; Hallam, Introd. to the IJt. of Europe, vol. i ; The Academy, 1872, p. 264; Amer. c'h. Rev. April, 1873, art. viii. See also the references in AUibone, Diet, of Brit, and A mer. A uth. s. v. (G. F. H.) VII.— T
Occasionalism, or the doctrine of Occasional Causes, is the name of a religious philosophical theory marking an aera in the development of the philosophical doctrine as to the relation between spirit and matter, and especially between the human mind and the human body; or, perhaps better, the synchronous action of mind and body. The presupposition on which the system therefore rests is dualism, i. e. the antagonism between spirit and matter. Christianity, by means of revelation, had solved the question concerning this heathen view of antagonism, by considering matter as the medium and organ of the manifestations of the spirit. Yet in the Middle Ages the remembrance of the heathen dualistic view again got the ascendency, and scholasticism found itself unable to solve the prob- lem of removing that antagonism. While scholastic realism had for a long time permitted the occasional and material to be absorbed as insignificant in the general notion of the mind, the renewed nominalism (q. V. ; see also Occam) had used spiritual knowledge as the opponent of empiric reality, and the dualistic opposition between spirit and matter is therefore eqidv- alent to that between realism and nominalism. Des- cartes, the founder of modern philosophy, followed the consequences of this dualism. According to him, the essence of mind is thought; that of matter, extension; and these two counterbalance each other. Hence the mind and the body, taken in themselves, have noth- ing in common. The life of the body is a mechanical evolution, entirely distinct from the intellectual evolu- tion of the mind. Yet the soid can modify the evo- lutions of the body, as God (by a positive act) has con- nected it with the body, binding them together, and placing it in the pineal gland, where it is most inti- mately connected with the body. Descartes did not solve the problem of the maimer in which the mind and the body are united. Arnold Geulinx sought to solv-e it after the manner of De la Forge (see Sigwart, Gesch. d. Philosophie, ii, 198), by saying in his Ethica that mind and body work together through the co- operation of God. In case the will operates, God makes the body act accordingly ; and in case the bod}' is af- fected, God makes the mind to perceive it. Thus in the first case spontaneity, and in the second receptivitj', are but the reflex of divine actions; man becomes a simple spectator, for the action of his will, as well as that of his body, is a divine action. The causality is God, and therefore to be considered as absolute, un- avoidable. According to this theory, the body ceases to be the mediate cause whenever the mind assumes (though it is only in appearance) this position, and vice versa. The idea is that human receptivity and activity, proceeding sometimes from the mind, some- times from the body, are only perceptible as divine actions. Geulinx, therefore, draws no distinction be- tween the relative action of the creature and the iibso- lute action of God. His system of occasionalism is con- sequently incorrect, as his starting-point, the occasio, is fallacious. The system cannot be properlj- called casual- ism, but by its fatalism stands closely allied to panthe- ism. Malebranche tried to solve the question in a simi- lar manner, yet in his theory the mediate causes on both sides are still more restricted. In Descartes they stand opposed to each other, connected only at one point ; in Geulinx, they are alternately appearing and disappearing; in Malebranche, thej' really exist only in God; finally, according to Spinoza, they are two opposite human modes of representing the always iden- tical action of the unchangeable divine substance. Yet these notions correspond to two infinite attributes of the divine nature, which always reveal themselves whole : sometimes the all-powerful hoAy, sometimes the all-powerful mind. The opposition between mind and matter is therefore here onlj- an apparent opposi- tion. Leibnitz, who objected to the occasionalist hy- pothesis on the ground that it supposes a perpetual ac- tion of God upon creatures, and as but a modification