Nicolas Malebranche, a French metaphysician, born in Paris, Aug. 6, 1638, died there, Oct. 13, 1715. In his childhood he was feeble, and was educated at home with great care. Intended for the priesthood, he studied philosophy at the college of La Marche and theology at the Sorbonne, and in 1660 entered the congregation of the Oratory. But he wearied of theological and critical studies, and his philosophical vocation was determined by reading the Traite de Vhomme of Descartes, which he accidentally met with, and which impressed him so strongly that his perusal was more than once interrupted by palpitations of the heart. From that time (1664) he devoted himself to philosophy, renouncing all other sciences except mathematics, aiming thus to enlighten his mind without burdening his memory. After ten years he produced his principal work, De la recherche de la verite (Paris, 1674), which received numerous additions, and in its 6th edition (1712) extended to four volumes. It was translated into English by Richard Sault (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1692-'4; 2d and 3d eds. by Thomas Taylor, fol, 1700 and 1720). In 1677 he published Conversations metaphysiqves et chretiennes, a discussion on the relation of philosophy to religion and Christian dogmas, which involved him in a long controversy with theologians and Cartesian metaphysicians, especially with Arnauld and Regis. In 1690 he was elected an honorary member of the academy of sciences.

Withering slowly away, till he was hardly more than a skeleton, he died "a tranquil spectator of his own long dissolution." His later more important publications, partly philosophical and partly religious, were the Traite de la nature et de la grace (1680); Meditations metaphysiqves et chretiennes (1683); Traite de morale (16S4); Entretiens sur la metaphysique et but la religion (1687); and Beponses de Malcbranche a Arnauld (4 vols., 1709). A complete edition of his works was published at Pans in 1712, in 11 vols. - The philosophical system of Malebranche begins with the admission of the Cartesian doctrine that mind and matter are utterly opposed and mutually impermeable, the mind knowing nothing but its own states, which it sees in self-consciousness. It is like one in the dark, who can perceive nothing but himself. To this he added that we are able to see external obiects in God, who is the light of our knowledge. He is the absolute substance, in whom exist alike the persona who know and the ideas which they know. He is the home of the world of ideas, as space is the home of physical bodies; and in him tin- mind knows objects other than itself.

Malebranche recognized, with Descartes, three substances: the thinking, the extended, and the infinite substance, or the soul, matter, and God; but there is throughout his system a tendency to reduce them to one. In Descartes they describe excentric circles; in Malebranche'they are concentric, including each other. Matter is grasped by the soul, and souls by the Deity; ideas enter the mind, the mind itself existing in God. Thus he marks the transition from Descartes to Spinoza, recognizing a personal God, but with pantheistic forms of thought, tending to reduce spirit and matter to one absolute substance. His most important works are contained in the edition by De Genoude (Paris, 1837), and in an edition by Jules Simon (2 vols., Paris, 1853). Laphilosophie de Male-hranche, by Olle-Laprune, received a prize from the French academy in 1872.