Colonel Malcolm again visited his native country, and soon after received the honour of knighthood. On his return to India in 1817 he was nominated the governor-general's political agent and brigadier-general to Sir F. Hislop. He served with great distinction in the war with the Mahrattas and the Pindarees, and received the thanks of the house of commons for his valour and skill. He was next appointed governor of the district of Malwah, which was in a very distracted state, and by his prudent and ingenious measures succeeded in restoring it to tranquillity and order. He returned once more to England in 1821 with the rank of major-general, and was rewarded for his eminent services with a pension from the East India Company of £1000 a year. In 1827 he was appointed governor of Bombay, an office which he held until 1830, when he finally quitted India amid loud expressions of gratitude and esteem from all classes of society. He sat for a short time in parliament as member for Launceston, and warmly opposed the reform bill. He died on the 30th of May, 1833. Sir John Malcolm was the author of a "History of Persia" in 2 vols., 4to, 1815; a "Sketch of the Political History of India from 1784 to 1811," 8vo; "Sketches of the Sikhs," 8vo, 1812; "Observations on the disturbances in the Madras Army," 8vo, 1812; "Persia," a poem, 8vo, 1814; and "Life of Lord Clive," a posthumous work.—(Life, by John W. Kaye, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1856.)—J. T.
MALCOLM, Sir Pulteney, G.C.B., and G.C.M.G., an eminent naval officer, elder brother of the preceding, was born in 1758. He entered the navy as a midshipman in 1778, and attained the rank of lieutenant in 1783. He served with such distinction in the West Indies, that he was made post-captain in 1794. He was subsequently employed in North America, the East Indies, and the China seas, and every where displayed conspicuous courage and professional skill. From 1798 till the peace of Amiens he served under Admiral Rainier in the Indian seas, and was shipwrecked in the Tagus on his homeward voyage. He was next employed in the Mediterranean, and commanded the Donegal in the fleet with which Nelson pursued the combined French and Spanish squadrons to the West Indies. After the victory of Trafalgar he was first under Collingwood and then under Sir John Duckworth, and took part with the latter in the naval fight off St. Domingo in February, 1806, for which he and his brother officers received the thanks of parliament. The next duty intrusted to Captain Malcolm was to carry the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley to Portugal, which he accomplished with perfect success. He then assisted in the attack upon the French ships in Aix roads, and subsequently in the blockade of Cherburg. In 1817 he attained the rank of vice-admiral, and was employed on the American station. He and his two brothers were invested at the same time in 1815 with the order of the Bath. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, Sir Pulteney was appointed commander-in-chief on that station, and performed the duties of his delicate and difficult office to the entire satisfaction of the illustrious exile himself. Sir Pulteney returned to England about the close of 1817, and spent the remainder of his useful life in retirement. He received the grand cross of the Bath in 1833, and attained the rank of full admiral in 1837. He died in 1838.—J. T.
MALDONADO, Lorenzo Ferrer, a Spanish adventurer, died, 1625. He attracted the notice of scientific men by professing to have discovered a passage across the continent of America, affording a short route to China and India; but his geographical details are so vague that it is impossible to decide how far his deception was wilful. He also professed to have discovered the means of ascertaining the longitude at sea. He wrote a book entitled "Imagen del mondo sobre la esfera, cosmografia, geografia, y arte de navegar," 1626.—F. M. W.
MALDONAT, John, a learned Spanish jesuit and biblical commentator, was born in 1534. He was educated at Salamanca, and subsequently taught Greek, philosophy, and divinity at that famous seat of learning. He assumed the habit of the order of the jesuits at Rome in 1562, and was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Clermont, Paris, and subsequently taught divinity in the same seminary with great success. Gregory XIII. had such a high opinion of Maldonat's talents and learning, that he sent for him to Rome to superintend the publication of the Septuagint. He died in 1583, in the fiftieth year of his age. Maldonat was regarded as one of the ablest and most learned men of his day. His commentaries on the scripture are of great value.—J T.
MALEBRANCHE, Nicolas, eminent among the metaphysicians of France in the most illustrious age of French philosophy, was born at Paris on the 6th of August, 1638, twelve years before the death of Des Cartes, and when that philosopher was giving his principal works to the world. Malebranche is the most conspicuous representative of philosophy in France in the end of the seventeenth and at the commencement of the eighteenth centuries. His father was secretary to the king, and his mother was of gentle blood. The philosopher was the youngest of ten children. Though his constitution was weak, he lived seventy-six years. The delicacy of his health did not permit him to attend a public school, and he was taught Latin and Greek by a domestic tutor. He afterwards attended a course of philosophy at the College de la Marche; and having chosen the ecclesiastical profession, he studied theology at the Sorbonne with a view to take orders. In his twenty-third year he was admitted to the famous congregation of the Oratory in Paris, a society distinguished for its moderation and learning. When he joined this society he at first, by the advice of his superiors, devoted himself to church history; but failing, as he says, to retain the facts in his memory, he grew weary of the study. Hebrew and rabbinical learning, to which he afterwards applied himself, was not more suited to his peculiar genius, which remained undeveloped until his twenty-sixth year, when Des Cartes' posthumous Traité de l'Homme, fell into his hands. The physiological and psychological doctrines of this book seemed to have an affinity for the taste of Malebranche, as his own writings abound in analogous speculations. Des Cartes opened a new world to him, awakening, according to Fontenelle, so great an enthusiasm in the young metaphysician, that he was obliged from time to time to lay the book aside, on account of the nervous agitation and palpitation which it induced. He abandoned ecclesiastical history and rabbinical lore, and plunged with ardour into the metaphysical and ethical speculations which absorbed his energy during the remainder of his life. In a few years Malebranche is said to have become as perfect a master of Cartesianism as Des Cartes himself, while he preserved his own originality in a remarkable manner; and when he appeared as an author clothed his doctrines with those graces of imagination and style which entitle him to a place among the most eloquent of modern philosophers.
The first and greatest work of Mallebranche, the "Recherche de la Verite," was published in 1674, ten years after his encounter with the physiological treatise of Des Cartes. This work is an analysis of human nature, in its relation to the errors induced by the Senses, Imagination, Understanding, Desires, and Passions, with a disquisition on the true Method of discovery. It is one of the most interesting treatises in the department of what may be called mixed or modified logic. The "Recherche" has gone through many editions, and has been translated into Latin and English. It is contained in six bonks. The first five treat of the occasions of error, and the sixth describes the method of avoiding them. Some of the physiological theories suggested, especially in the second book, are far remote from facts, but in many things Malebranche has anticipated later inquirers, over whom he has exercised no small influence. Hartley's fundamental principle of the interdependence of vibrations in the nervous system and our conscious states, is enunciated in the "Recherche." The theory of mental association is in some respects more fully developed by Malebranche than by Hobbes. The French metaphysician illustrates with great sagacity the origin of error in our judgments of sense, and denies that there is any necessary connection between the presence of ideas in sense and the existence of external objects, illustrating this by the phenomena of dreams and delirium, he ends by resting his belief in external reality on the authority of scripture, and is thus hindered by theological considerations from anticipating a theory of matter similar to that proposed about thirty years afterwards by Berkeley. But the idealism of Malebranche sprang from a different root. He could not find a basis of certainty sufficient to satisfy him, when ideas were regarded either as representations emanating from external objects, or as transient states of the mind that is conscious of them, and he sought, by exalting them to a higher sphere, and assigning them to God himself, the "place" of spirits, to have solid ground for our science of the surrounding universe. In this Divine Ideal or Intellectual World, we discern the scientific meaning of all things in God, through means of habitual abstraction from the misleading appearances of sense
