THE SEVEN WORLD-PROBLEMS. 439 



Recollecting how I have showed the hyper-mechanical nature of 

 this problem, and consequently its transcendence, it may be profitable 

 to consider how Leibnitz does this. He makes the bare assertion in 

 many places in his writings that consciousness can not arise through 

 any forms and movements, or, as Ave would now say, through any ar- 

 rangements and movements of matter. In his " Nouveaux Essais sur 

 l'Entendement Humain," he lets his advocate of sensualism, Philalethes, 

 say, almost in the words of Locke, whose views the work otherwise 

 opposes : " It may be proper to lay more stress on the question whether 

 a thinking being can proceed from an unthinking one without sensa- 

 tion and consciousness, like matter. It is tolerably clear that a mate- 

 rial particle can never bring about anything by itself, or impart motion 

 of itself to itself. Its motion must either have existed from eternity, 

 or have been imparted to it by a superior being. But, even if it were 

 from eternity, it could not beget consciousness. Divide matter as if in 

 order to animate it, into as small particles as you will ; give them what- 

 ever figures and motions you will ; make them into balls, cubes, or cyl- 

 inders, whose dimensions shall reach only a thousand-millionth part of 

 a philosophical foot. However small the particle may be, it will pro- 

 duce on other particles of the same order no different influence from 

 that which bodies an inch or a foot in diameter exercise upon each 

 other. We have the same right to expect to produce sensation, thought, 

 consciousness, by the combination of gross particles of matter of the 

 right shape and mode of motion, as by means of the most minute par- 

 ticles. The latter meet, jostle, and resist each other just as the coarser 

 particles do, and they can do no more. But if matter could imme- 

 diately and without instrumentality, or the help of forms and move- 

 ments, create of itself out of itself sensation, perception, and conscious- 

 ness, that would have to be an inseparable attribute of matter in all its 

 parts." Theophilus, representing the Leibnitzian idealism, approves 

 this conclusion as well founded and just, and says that he is of the 

 opinion of its originator, that " there is no combination or modification 

 of the particles of matter, however small they may be, that can beget 

 perception ; for, as can be clearly seen, the gross parts can not do it, 

 and all the processes in the small parts are proportional to those in the 

 gross ones." In his "Monadology," Leibnitz says more briefly : "We 

 are constrained to confess that perception and whatever depends upon 

 it are inexplainable upon mechanical principles ; that is, by reference 

 to forms and movements. If we could imagine a machine, the opera- 

 tion of which would manufacture thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, 

 and could think of it as enlarged in all its proportions, so that we could 

 go into it as into a mill, even then we would find in it nothing but 

 particles jostling each other, and never anything by which perception 

 could be explained." Thus, Leibnitz has reached the same conclusion 

 as we. Yet we may remark on this point, first, that Locke's demon- 

 stration as accepted by Leibnitz has lost its validity through the prog- 



