## 1. Life and Writings



Le Grand lived in London for many years before retiring to Oxfordshire
towards the close of his life in 1695. His philosophy was generally
well-received at the University of Cambridge, perhaps owing to the
influence of some leading Neo-Platonists there such as John Smith,
Henry More, and Ralph Cudworth, who were at least initially
sympathetic to Descartes's ideas. John Smith, author of
*Select Discourses* (1660), and the earliest recorded partisan
of the Cartesian philosophy in England, was the first to introduce the
study of Descartes to Cambridge. Henry More corresponded with
Descartes, and was sympathetic until about 1665, when he launched the
most vigorous attack on Cartesianism in the age, in his
*Enchiridion Metaphysicum* (1671). Cudworth, like More although
with less venom, objected to Descartes's mechanistic account of
the material world in his *The True Intellectual System of the
Universe* (1678). It was Le Grand who debated and defended
Descartes's philosophy to these and other English critics.



According to Anthony Wood, a contemporary of Le Grand's and an
historian at Oxford, Le Grand's *Institutio Philosophiae,
secundum principia Domini Renati Descartes* (1672), was a
"must read" at Cambridge. (Wood, 1691, p. 620) Further
attesting to the attention it attracted, Jean Robert Armogathe has
detailed how the 1678 edition of this work came to be placed on the
Index in 1709 because of its anti-scholastic arguments. (Armogathe,
2003) Le Grand also published a Latin edition of Jacques
Rohault's *Traite de physique* (1671), at the time
an enormously popular physics text, using Bonet's 1674 Latin
translation with added commentary, *Jacobi Rohaulti tractatus
physicus* (1682). In 1697, Samuel Clarke published a new Latin
edition with annotations, and this along with subsequent annotated
editions were largely responsible for the work's continued
popularity as a textbook in universities in England. (Dobre,
Babes, Bujor, and Vida, 2021) According to Benjamin Hoadly, the
editor of Clarke's *The Works* (1738), at the time of
Clarke's entrance to Cambridge in 1691, Rohault's
*Traite* was the standard modern scientific text, and
Newton's *Principia* (1687), had not yet been accepted:
"The philosophy of Des Cartes was then the established
philosophy of that university, and the system of nature hardly allowed
to be explained any otherwise than his principles ... . The Great
Sir Isaac Newton had indeed then published his *Principia*. But
this book was but for the few." Clarke's Latin translation
of the *Traite* underwent four editions and became the
new preferred Cambridge textbook, as the Cartesian physics gave way to
that of Newton early in the eighteenth century.



Antoine Le Grand's most substantial work, *An Entire Body of
Philosophy According to the Principles Of the Famous Renate des
Cartes* (1694), is a Cartesian tract from beginning to end. The
work is a translation and compilation by Richard Bloom of three of Le
Grand's Latin works, which includes alterations and additions by
Le Grand himself. It is based on Le Grand's *Institutio*
(1672), *Historia naturae* (1673), and *Dissertatio de
carentia sensus et cogitationis in brutis* (1675). The first book,
*The Institution*, is divided into ten parts and provides a
treatment of the general nature of things according to
Descartes's principles; book two, *The History of
Nature*, illustrates the operation of these first principles in
nature, by means of a great variety of reported experiments and
examples. In this book, Le Grand applied the general Cartesian
principles to the study of particular bodies and their qualities,
showing how such principles can explain all natural phenomena. His
extensive discussion includes bodies as various as the loadstone,
plants, and insects. And finally, in the third book, *A
Dissertation of the Want of Sense and Knowledge in Brute Animals*,
he argued against the supposed link of life and sense from Plato
onwards. Following a brief survey of various hypotheses on the nature
of soul by Aristotle, Gassendi, Fabri, and Descartes, he argues along
with Descartes that bodies are soulless and animals are mere machines.
In the Preface, Le Grand states, " ... this whole work
contains nothing else, but his [Descartes's] opinions, or what
may clearly and distinctly be deduced from them." (Le Grand,
1694, Preface, end of section iii, unpaginated)



At Oxford, Le Grand's ideas were not well received. Samuel
Parker aligned Hobbes's mechanism with that of Descartes,
charging both with atheism. Parker's condemnations led to the
banning of Descartes's philosophy at Oxford, quashing its public
entrance at the university. Le Grand responded to Parker's
charges of atheism in his *Apologia de Descartes* (1679),
challenging Parker's criticisms by offering various proofs of
God's existence. Another long-time, Oxford critic of Le Grand
was the English secular priest and Aristotelian, John Sergeant.
Sergeant, best known for his criticisms of Locke's philosophy,
was also highly critical of the Cartesian philosophy. Le Grand
responded to Sergeant's criticisms of the Cartesian criterion of
truth in his *Dissertatio de ratione cognoscendi* (1679). A
second major controversy occurred between the two authors late in Le
Grand's life, this time over the nature of ideas. This dispute
led Le Grand to write a series of short pieces, published later as
*Several Smaller Pieces Against M. J. Sergeant* (1698), no
longer extant. (Bouillier, 1854, vol. 2, p. 495, fn.1) In response,
Sergeant attacked the Cartesian idea of extension, to which the aging
Le Grand never publicly responded. Le Grand died at the home of a
wealthy farmer in Oxfordshire, where he had served as a tutor until
his death in 1699.


## 2. Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy



Le Grand defended the first principles of Descartes's philosophy
with great fidelity. He held to Descartes's dualism of mind and
body and that the essence of mind is thought and the essence of matter
is extension. Like Descartes, he also asserted that in the human being
the mind and body are united and interact, and that while humans have
souls, brutes and other living things are mere machines. In natural
philosophy, Le Grand defended the Cartesian physics that material
things operate in a plenum and move by means of vortical motions
according to the laws of motion. Le Grand did not make any substantial
revisions to Cartesian metaphysics or physics. However, he did make
two important contributions: first, he provided clarifications and
elaborations of Descartes's account of motion which had direct
consequences for the Cartesian account of matter, causation, and
mind-body interaction; secondly, he extended the application of
Cartesian physics, treating in detail such subjects as metals, plants,
insects, animals, and the human body. Both contributions represented
important developments of the Cartesian science, against the
prevailing Scholastic-Aristotelian science.



Le Grand's contribution to the Cartesian account of motion may
either be seen as an extension or a revision of Descartes's,
somewhat ambiguous, treatment. Le Grand took seriously the claim that
God is the total and efficient cause of motion in the universe, and
that matter is entirely passive, and hence bodies are incapable of
self-movement, or of moving other bodies. In his *Entire Body of
Philosophy*, he argued that since a body may be in motion or at
rest and yet still remain a body, motion must be a mode non-essential
to matter. Moreover, given that matter itself is inert, it cannot be
the source of the order and direction of moving bodies. Accordingly,
God infused motion into the universe and laid down the laws of motion
to govern it. Thus, motion itself as well as the orderly movement of
bodies derive from God who acts as the effective principle. While the
specific position, constitution, and configuration of the parts of a
particular body determine how certain local motions are communicated,
the source and ultimate direction of the motion itself is God. What
this means for body-body interaction is that bodies function as
secondary causes, directing local motions in virtue of the specific
configurations of their parts. (1694, Book I, part iv, p. 116) Kenneth
Clatterbaugh argues that Le Grand's position on body-body
causation amounts to occasionalism. Clatterbaugh identifies four
positions that he claims commit Le Grand to the occasionalist doctrine
articulated by Malebranche: 1) that there are no accidents; 2) that
motion is identical to the will of God; 3) that conservation and
creation are the same such that God creates bodies and their motions
continuously; and 4) that the Divine Will and Intellect are one.
(Clatterbaugh, 1999) However, Le Grand's references to universal
and secondary causes, and his commitment to the created nature of laws
and eternal truths make the occasionalist ascription a complicated
one. (See discussion of the Creation Doctrine below in section 3.)



Le Grand's account of body-body interaction clears the way to
explain mind-body interaction and union. In the same way as with
finite bodies, God functions as the effective principle of finite
minds, providing the ultimate source of change: "... there
is nothing, besides motion, which can strike the organs of the senses,
or affect the mind itself." (1694, book I, part viii, p. 284)
Although mind and matter are substances sharing no common properties,
it is in virtue of God acting as the effective principle that mind and
body are capable of interaction. This kind of interaction is no more
or no less problematic than the interaction of two physical bodies.
According to Le Grand, the causal interaction between bodies and
between minds and bodies are facts dependent upon God's will and
known only by experience. The real question is not about whether there
can be interaction, but rather, how particular interactions in fact
occur: "The union of the soul and body consists in an actual
dependency of all the cogitations of the soul, upon certain motions of
the body; and of some certain motions of the body upon some
cogitations of the soul." (1694, book I, part xi, p. 325) As
there is no mode of union of mind and body (for modes belong only to
substances), what is required is the actual "mutual commerce of
actions and passions." (*Ibid.*, p. 325)



As with interaction, Le Grand described the mind-body union in terms
directly borrowed from Descartes. However, Le Grand explicated in more
detailed terms than did Descartes the nature of the mind-body union.
According to Le Grand, there are three kinds of union, each possessing
their own principle that brings about that union: the first is that of
two minds whose principle of union is love; the second is that of two
physical bodies whose principle of union is local presence; and the
third is that of the mind and body whose principle of union is actual
mutual dependence. Just as two physical bodies are joined by physical
contact, and as two minds are joined by love, the mind and body are
joined by a mutually dependent activity. So long as the body actually
receives its specific motions dependently on the soul, and the soul
actually receives its local motions (passions) dependently on the
body, then the spirit and the body are joined. Although there can be
no mode common to mind and matter, there is this mutual action and
hence a similitude and relation: "This similitude and relation
we have formerly affirmed to consist in action and passion."
(*Ibid.*, p. 325) In other words, just as the body is capable
of receiving and transmitting local motions since motion is a mode of
matter, the mind is capable of varying passions since passions are a
mode of the mind. It is by the mutual commerce of such motions and
passions that the mind and body are said to be united. The mutual
activity said to occur between the mind and the body is a property
which follows only from the union of mind and body and cannot proceed
from either alone, "And the truth is, since neither body can
think, nor mind be capable of dimension, there can be no mode common
to mind and body, except a mutual acting of each upon each, from which
alone the properties of both can follow." (1694, p. 325).



In natural philosophy, Le Grand extended Descartes's physics to
include phenomena that would now be classified as metallurgy,
entomology, botany, biology, physiology, medicine, psychology, and
psychiatry. Book II of the *Entire Body of Philosophy*,
entitled *The History of Nature*, catalogues and critically
discusses the latest experiments of his time, as well as the theories
of the ancients and moderns. Prominent in his discussions is the
importance of secondary causes in nature (both exemplary and secondary
efficient causes), and the need for experiments, not just as tools of
confirmation, but also as a means of discovering the true nature of
things. This was due to his application of mechanism to explain not
only the behavior of material bodies but also the entire institution
of nature. Le Grand believed that God laid down the laws of nature and
the principles of being by acting as the primary efficient cause, and
that the operation of these laws and principles manifested themselves
in nature in the form of secondary causes and effects. Although the
laws and their specific mechanisms of operation are not visible,
secondary causes and their effects are. These causes and effects then
are known by experience and are the starting point of all science,
which is characterized by reasoning from effects (observed in nature)
to causes (first principles discerned by reason). Book III of the
*Entire Body of Philosophy*, entitled *A Dissertation of the
Want of Sense and Knowledge in Brute Animals*, extends
Descartes's treatment of the mechanization of the sensitive soul
to explain sensory, motor, and appetitive functions. In addition to
defending Descartes's controversial theses that life functions
are reducible to material motions and that animals are mere machines,
he provides an account of how cartesian organic bodies have identity
over time. (Adriaenssen, 2018) As Hatfield shows, Le Grand's
compendium of nature demonstrates the magnitude of the Cartesian
project to mechanize life and the soul. Its detailed observations and
rich descriptions lay the groundwork for Cartesian physiology and
psychology. (Hatfield, 2013)


## 3. Epistemology



Le Grand's account of sensations and ideas is orthodox in its
Cartesianism, although ampliative in interesting ways. Sensory
impressions are what mediate the external object and our mind's
idea of it, and they consist in nothing more than the immediate
motions of the sensory organs in the body. Such motions are produced
by a natural necessity and they share no similarity or affinity with
the particular objects that cause them. Like Descartes, Le Grand used
the example of a sword wounding the body to illustrate the
non-resemblance or dissimilitude of the relations between external
objects and sensations, and sensations and ideas. (1694, book I, part
ix, p. 327) A sword that produces pain in us is nothing like our
sensation or idea of pain, nor is our idea of pain anything like our
sensation of pain. Yet, we maintain that there is a causal and
representational relation between the sword and the idea it produces.
In addition, Le Grand like Descartes made a clear distinction between
sensory impressions and ideas. Sensory impressions are particular,
quantifiable motions, whereas ideas are representational and
propositional in character. Given that sensations are non-resembling
and non-representational it follows that ideas, which are essentially
representational, could not be derived from sensations. Due to the
lack of any form of similitude or affinity between object/sensation,
and sensation/idea, it follows that there is no such relation that
holds between an idea and an external (material) object. From this
lack of similitude, Le Grand concluded that adventitious ideas (coming
from material objects outside us) must be innate or inbred in the
mind. For, if the external object is not like the idea we form of it,
then the only explanation remaining is that the mind is responsible
for it. Likewise, fictitious ideas, such as sirens and chimeras, have
no exemplar outside the mind and so must be formed according to forms
natural to the human mind. And finally, common notions such as
substance, truth, goodness, equity, and God, as well as axioms such as
'the same thing cannot be and not be,' must also be
innate, that is, they must proceed from the mind alone, since all
corporeal motions are particular but these notions are universal.
According to Le Grand, innate ideas do not proceed from the senses or
the imagination but "are congenite and inbred with the said
mind, from their original" (1694, book I, part ix, p. 328). By
this Le Grand meant that the mind or thought itself, not any of its
faculties such as sense, imagination, or intellection, is the
principle or original of such ideas. These ideas are formed in the
mind by the mind and from the mind.



Thus, as Descartes held, there are three kinds of ideas, adventitious,
fictitious, and innate, which are distinguished by their differing
sources as well as the way in which they are inbred in the mind.
Adventitious ideas proceed from the senses, fictitious ideas proceed
from the imagination and the intellect, and innate ideas proceed from
thought itself, which acts as their ground or original. Nonetheless,
all ideas, regardless of their source or origin, depend on the mind in
some essential way for their form. But this gives rise to the problem
of explaining how ideas can be said to represent, if they in no way
resemble their objects. (Watson, 1966, chapter 6) This problem is
especially acute for Cartesians who held that there is a modal
difference between what is found at the level of sensory perception
and intellection, such that impressions cannot contain any of the
properties found at the level of ideas. What arrives at our faculty of
thinking from the senses is not ideas such as we form them in our
thought, as the scholastic empiricists held, but rather only various
particular motions emitted by external objects. (1694, book I, part
ix, p. 328)



Le Grand's solution to the problem of how ideas represent their
objects absent similitude was to employ the notion of substitution or
'supplying a stead'--wherein the cause (the object)
contains all the properties found in the effect (the idea) not
actually but in virtue of its ability to supply the substitute
properties or proxies. According to Le Grand, "[the] relation of
substitution is that which intervenes betwixt the sign, and that which
is signified by it." (1694, book I, part I, p. 17) Such a
relation, "...is nothing else but a mode of our
understanding, comparing one thing with others, because of some
properties or acts that are found in them." (*Ibid.*, p.
17). By virtue of a kind of causal concomitance of the
signed-signified pairs there arises a signifying relation. Descartes
himself never develops the notion of representation in terms of
substitution, although he came close to suggesting it in the French
version of the Third Meditation, in which he claimed that such things
as extension, shape, position and movement may be contained in him
eminently, "...and as it were the garments under which
corporeal substance appears to us." (1985-91, II, fn.1, p.
31). One could conceivably interpret this to mean that the garments of
corporeal substance, namely extension, shape, position and movement
are the garments supplied by the mind as the forms or the conceptions
under which the mind grasps material things. Although the mind itself
is not extended, shaped, locally positioned or moved, it dresses
material substance in these properties in order to perceive particular
material things. But there is no suggestion in Descartes regarding how
the dressing is related to the material object grasped. Le
Grand's notion of substitution provided an explication of this
relation, and constitutes his contribution to the Cartesian dialectic
on ideas.



Le Grand was one of the few Cartesians to see the connection Descartes
drew between the doctrine of the creation of essences and eternal
truths (Creation Doctrine) and establishing the proper foundation of
human knowledge and certainty. The thesis is that God is the efficient
cause of all things equally in their existence and essence, including
the truths we call eternal. Given the immutability and indivisibility
of God's will, once God chose to create the world in its being
and essence, it could not be changed. In 1630, Descartes introduced
the Creation Doctrine in his correspondence with Mersenne to explain
the sense in which the truths of mathematics, such as 2+2=4, are
necessarily true but *could have been otherwise.* According to
Descartes, such truths are created, "The mathematical truths
which you call eternal have been laid down by God and depend on him
entirely no less than the rest of his creatures."
(1985-91, III, p. 23) The sense in which God *could have
made* a universe in which 2+2 did not equal 4, or *not willed a
world at all*, is beyond our grasp. What we know is that once the
eternal truths are established in their being according to God's
will, they become necessary and knowable to the human intellect,
"In general we can assert that God can do everything that is
within our grasp but not that he cannot do what is beyond our grasp.
It would be rash to think that our imagination reaches as far as his
power." (1985-91, III, p. 23)



Although Descartes promised to expand on this idea in his physics, and
pleads with Mersenne to test the idea out on others (without
mentioning his name), he seems instead to have abandoned it or decided
not to publish on it further. (*Ibid.*, p. 23) Le Grand was
among a minority of Descartes's successors to take up a defense
of the Creation Doctrine. Le Grand draws on Descartes's analogy
of God laying down the eternal truths in the manner that a king lays
down the laws of his kingdom: "The case of God and a king are
very different. A king can change his laws because his will is
changeable, but God's will is unchangeable; for it is his
perfection that he acts in a most constant and invariable manner ...
Wherefore tho' I cannot comprehend how it should not be true,
that one and five are six; yet I understand clearly enough that it is
impossible there should be anything in the whole universe of things
which does not depend on him." (1694, book I, part ii, p. 63)
The main worry that critics such as Malebranche had of this doctrine
was that it would remove any necessary foundation for the propositions
of science and theology, making them contingent and uncertain. Le
Grand's answer is that whereas the creation of true and
immutable natures was the work of God's free will (not dictated
according to his Wisdom, as Malebranche and other critics held), once
created, they are necessary. In order to tie this necessity to the
immutability of God's will without limiting God in any way, Le
Grand drew on a Scholastic distinction between antecedent and
consequent necessity. He argued that true and immutable natures, such
as mathematical truths, only possessed a consequent necessity. God did
not will that 5+1=6 because he saw it could not be otherwise, but in
virtue of his free will, 5+1 [necessarily] = 6; therefore it could not
be otherwise. As Descartes put this same point, "And even if God
has willed that some truths should be necessary, this does not mean
that he willed them necessarily; for it is one thing to will that they
be necessary, and quite another to will this necessarily, or to be
necessitated to will it." (1985-91, III, p. 235). For
nothing outside of God, not even the eternal truths or immutable
essences, necessitate that God act in one way or another, but rather,
they are themselves eternal and immutable in virtue of the fact that
God, whose existence is necessary and immutable, willed them in their
essence and existence. Eternal truths and immutable essences are
necessary only in that they presuppose and are consequent to the act
of God who caused them. (Easton, 2009)



Echoing Descartes in part VI of the *Discourse on Method*, Le
Grand held that God implanted certain simple, true, and immutable
ideas in our minds so that we could have a science of nature. God also
created nature with powers so ample and vast that observation becomes
more and more necessary to advance our knowledge. Like Descartes,
while Le Grand retains the essential role of reason in knowing
immutable essences, laws, and truths it is tempered by the realization
that the effects in nature are so numerous that observation is needed
to connect our understanding to them. This dependence means that
truths of natural philosophy must be sought after in the effects of
nature, and not in something independent of those effects. In other
words, our search for the truths of nature is in the specific
operations of things, and even though our understanding of these
truths is importantly independent of these specific operations, our
discovery of them is not. (see also, Hatfield, 2013)


## 4. Ethics



Le Grand's early ethical and political writings are not
Cartesian. In *Le Sage des Stoiques, ou l'Homme sans
Passions, Selon les Sentiments de Seneque* (1662),
later translated and published as *Man Without Passions*
(1675), he expounds the Stoical doctrines of Seneca, for which the
goal of the moral person is to expunge the passions. He later rejected
this view of the passions and argued the Cartesian view that the
passions ought to be trained (not expunged) in the moral life. Le
Grand also wrote a curious political treatise, *Scydromedia*
(1669), which is a semi-fictional, utopian work describing his vision
of the ideal state.



There is nothing innovative in Le Grand's moral theory, yet his
discussions are rich with references to ancient and contemporary
theories. He borrows from the ancient Atomists, the Stoics, the
Scholastics, and the "Moralists" of his time, and frames
it, where possible, in Cartesian terms. Le Grand acknowledges that
Descartes himself wrote little on ethics, but he argues that
Descartes's treatment of the soul and the passions provides a
solid foundation for the treatment of moral matters. According to Le
Grand, the object of ethics is right reason, its end is the perfection
of man, and it is an active not a speculative science. An example of
his reconciling project can be seen in Book I, Part X of his
*Entire Body of Philosophy* (1694), where Le Grand attempted to
reconcile the doctrines of Seneca and Epicurus on the role of pleasure
in the virtuous life, by drawing on Descartes's theory of the
passions. (1694, p. 347) He argues that pleasure has a role to play in
the moral life, since virtue depends on free will (as the Stoics held)
and pleasure derives from the satisfaction of the mind in possessing
the good (as Epicurus held). What Descartes's theory provided
was an explanation of how pleasure (a passion) could aid the will in
choosing the right course of action, while maintaining the voluntary
nature of the will and virtue.



In summary, Le Grand is worthy of study for his contribution to the
reception and development of Cartesianism in the latter half of the
seventeenth century. He expanded the application of Descartes's
natural philosophy to a variety of observations and experiments of his
day, and advanced Descartes's ideas regarding the mechanization
of nature, the causal interaction and union of minds and bodies, the
nature of representation and truth, and in the realm of morals, how
Descartes's theory of the passions provides an important account
of virtue. No less important is the fact that he spent most of his
life in England, where his contact with members of the Royal Society
and the universities of Cambridge and Oxford had a lasting impact on
the reception of Descartes's ideas in England, Germany, and
France.