24 definitions
The Automaton (n.) is creation, not man: God made the world by the simplest and most general paths, and man submits to them.
Fall (n.) was necessary not because Christ came to deliver us from it but so that Christ could come: Adam had to fall in order for salvation to be dispensed.
The Fall (n.) was needed by God: Adam had to fall so that Christ could come down and deliver some of us.
Freedom (n.) depends on our ignorance: if divine causality became directly observable, it would make us God's slaves and God a horrifying tyrant — an idea Kant took up.
God (n.) in Malebranche's account loves only himself and merely uses man to promulgate his own glory, as the saint uses others' suffering for the narcissistic satisfaction of helping them.
God (n.) the Father, by Malebranche's perverse logic, was never happier than while watching his son die on the Cross.
Grace (n.) must remain masked, uncorrelated with our deeds; a directly perceptible divine intervention would turn man into a slavish animal and deprive him of faith grounded in free choice.
Grace (n.) in Malebranche's materialist theory falls like rain on a cultivated field or a barren hillside, blind like fate, which is why the peasant must still till his field.
Happiness (n.) in this life is a pagan arrogance: we are all sinners, and must wait for the next life to be truly happy.
A Machine (n.) is better the less it needs its maker: the finest keeps its whole sequence of working inside itself, rather than being tended by its constructor.
A Miracle (n.) is a confession that the machine was not good enough: God should not have to step in again and again.
The Saint (n.) who sacrifices himself for the suffering secretly needs them to suffer — like the husband who would leave his crippled wife if she got well and had a career.