ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON. 



541 



what is now called the philosophy of language. 

 In his great though very unequal work, "On 

 the Human Understanding," he pointed out that 

 words were not the signs of things, but that in 

 their origin they were always the signs of con- 

 cepts ; that language begins in fact where ab- 

 straction begins, and that the reason why ani- 

 mals have no language is that they do not pos- 

 sess the power of abstraction. This observation 

 was little regarded at the time, till it was re- 

 marked how completely, and yet how undesign- 

 edly, it had been confirmed in our own time by 

 the discoveries of the comparative philology. 1 

 When it had been shown by a very considerable 

 amount of evidence that every word in every 

 language that had been carefully analyzed was 

 formed from a root, and that every root expressed 

 an abstract idea, a concept, not a percept, then 

 the coincidence between Locke and Bopp became 

 startling, and gave a new impulse to a new phi- 

 losophy both of language and thought. Lange, 

 in his " History of Materialism," has called Locke's 

 work " On the Human Understanding " a " Criti- 

 cism of Language." We may go further, and 

 say that, together with Kant's " Criticism of 

 Reason," it forms the true starting-point of mod- 

 ern philosophy. 



leibnitz's " manadologie." 



But, before we leave Leibnitz and the lesson 

 which Noire thinks should be learned from him 

 even at the present day, we must endeavor to see 

 more clearly how Leibnitz freed himself from the 

 charm of Spinoza's monistic philosophy, and how 

 Noire, who calls his own philosophy Monismus, 

 yet breaks loose from Spinoza, by admitting not 

 one monon, but many mona. The escape from 

 the %v Kctl irav is not so easy to those who have 

 once been under its spell, as Leibnitz would have 

 us believe. His well-known remark, " Spinoza 

 aurait raison, s'il n'y avait point de monades," is 

 rather the saying of a philosophical cavalier, and 

 might be met by the easy retort, '' Leibnitz aurait 

 raison, s'il n'y avait point de substance." Nor 

 did Leibnitz by any means shake off the almost 

 irrepressible longing of the human mind after the 

 One, as the source of the Many. At first sight 

 his monads seem to form a real republic of small 

 divinities ; but not only is there for them all a 

 " preestablished harmony," but in the end his 

 monads are represented as created by one monad, 

 which itself is not created. There is an " unite 

 primitive ou substance simple originaire dont 



1 See M. M.'s " Lectures on the Science of Lan- 

 guage ," vol. i., p. 405. 



toutes les monades creees ou derivatives sont des 

 fulgurations continuelles, de moment en mo- 

 ment." 1 Are these fulgurations pour ainsi dire 

 a very real advance on Spinoza's modes? The 

 real solution, if there can be a solution of what 

 is in reality one of the so-called antinomies of the 

 human mind, would seem to lie in our clearly un- 

 derstanding that we can never conceive the Many 

 without the One, nor the One without the Many ; 

 but it will be best to let Prof. Noire speak for 

 himself: 8 



" Spinoza's doctrine received its necessary com- 

 plement through the great Leibnitz. That the In- 

 finite alone exists and can be conceived by itself 

 only ; that all single phenomena are throughout 

 dependent on the Eternal and the Infinite ; that the 

 two true attributes of substance, namely, extension 

 and thought, cannot be given to us by experience, 

 but must be conceived immediately; that our imagi- 

 nation misleads us when it attempts to count and 

 measure, where, according to their nature, count- 

 ing and measuring are impossible — all these were 

 precious truths which, difficult to understand, could 

 ripen and bear fruit at a much later time only. 



" The principle of individuality remained en- 

 tirely neglected in the philosophy of Spinoza. In- 

 dividual beings are nothing but modifications, af- 

 fections of the One-and-AU, the eternal and infi- 

 nite God-world. Nature, however, there can be no 

 doubt, is entirely founded on individuality, and 

 higher knowledge as well as higher reality arises 

 only through the combination of forces which were 

 originally distinct. ' Spinoza aurait raison, sHl 

 n'y avait Point de monades.'' With these words the 

 opposition of the philosophy of Leibnitz to that of 

 Spinoza is clearly pronounced. The thought of an 

 evolution of the world has already pierced through 

 the mind of Leibnitz. 



" That the lowest monad consists in extreme 

 limitation, most perfect isolation and exclusion ; 

 that with the progress of evolution higher monads 

 are formed, endowed with constantly brighter per- 

 ception, and having the law of their existence in 

 themselves ; that an inner quality is given to all 

 beings down to the lowest inorganic matter, deter- 

 mining their form and expressed in'it, until the 

 highest form of existence, man, lets shine forth the 

 light of his intelligence as the very crown of crea- 

 tion, illuminating himself and the world around : 

 this is the object and the true kernel of Leibnitz's 

 ' Monadologie.' 



" And if man himself is a true individual, there- 

 fore a being in active and passive relation to the 

 rest of the world, it follows that all his endeavors, 

 and all his acts, and all his knowledge, proceed 

 from his limited nature only. Absorption in the 



i "Monadologie," §47. 



2 "Einleitnngund Beirrundung einer monistischen 

 Erkennmiss-lehre," p. 126. 



