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In two other respects the philosophy of Descartes was important. First: it brought to completion, or very nearly to completion, the dualism of mind and matter which began with Plato and was developed, largely for religious reasons, by Christian philosophy. Ignoring the curious transactions in the pineal gland, which were dropped by the followers of Descartes, the Cartesian system presents two parallel but independent worlds, that of mind and that of matter, each of which can be studied without reference to the other. That the mind does not move the body was a new idea, due explicitly to Geulincx but implicitly to Descartes. It had the advantage of making it possible to say that the body does not move the mind. There is a considerable discussion in the Meditations as to why the mind feels 'sorrow' when the body is thirsty. The correct Cartesian answer was that the body and the mind were like two clocks, and that when one indicated 'thirst' the other indicated 'sorrow'. From the religious point of view, however, there was a grave drawback to this theory; and this brings me to the second characteristic
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