THE SEVEN WORLD-PROBLEMS. 443 



of the impossible, unless God should bring it about designedly ; for 

 the whole world could not be so halved by a perpendicular plane bi- 

 secting the ass lengthwise that all should be equal on both sides. 

 Neither the parts of the world nor those of the ass could be so laid 

 out. " There would also always be many things within the ass and 

 without him which, although we may not remark them, would eventu- 

 ally determine him to turn to one side or the other. Although man is 

 free, which the ass is not, the case of a perfect balance of the motives 

 for two determinations appears to be impossible in him also ; and an 

 angel, or God, would always be able to provide an occasion for the 

 conclusion taken by the man, even though, on account of the far-reach- 

 ing concatenation of causes, that occasion is often very conrplicated 

 and incomprehensible to ourselves." 



Leibnitz availed himself of his optimism to find a place in deter- 

 minism for the responsibility of man and the righteousness of God. 

 Carrying out a fiction of Laurentius Valla, he describes in his " The- 

 odicy " how sad it was for Sextus Tarquinius to be obliged to commit 

 offenses for which punishment could not be spared him. Many worlds 

 were possible in which Tarquinius might have played a more or less 

 respectable part, have lived happily, and even have died in honor, full 

 of years and lamented ; but God was constrained to create this world, 

 in which Sextus Tarquinius should be a villain, because in his foresight 

 it would be the best, and the good would be in it, on the whole, at the 

 maximum. 



Monism can not derive any benefit from this idea, which, though 

 consistent with itself, is decidedly arbitrary and bears the stamp of the 

 unreal, and it must seek for itself its own position with reference to 

 the problem of free-will. When one has resolved to declare the sub- 

 jective feeling of free-will a delusion, it is as easy to reconcile apparent 

 freedom with necessity on monistic principles as by extreme dualism. 

 The fatalists of all periods have found no difficulty in it ; and the feel- 

 ing that was described by Cicero may be disputed away by one pos- 

 sessing a moderate dialectic versatility. Even in dreams, we feel free, 

 while the phantasms of our sense-substances are still playing with us. 

 "We know now, of many acts that are apparently performed deliberately 

 because they seem to have a purpose, that they are the involuntary 

 effects of certain arrangements of our nervous system, of the reflex 

 mechanism, and of the so-called automatic nerve-centers. When we 

 watch the flow of our thoughts, we soon remark how independently of 

 our will fancies come, pictures shine out and are extinguished. Need 

 our supposed willful acts really be much more voluntary ? If, more- 

 over, all our sensations, efforts, and conceptions are only the product 

 of certain material processes in our brain, then the molecular move- 

 ment with which the volition to raise the arm is connected and the 

 material impulse that causes the raising of the arm in a purely me- 

 chanical manner correspond, and there is no obscurity about it. 



