IV 



SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ 



367 



Such was the case with Leibniz, as also with Spinoza. 

 We are not blind to the treasures of originality their 

 doctrines contain. Spinoza and Leibniz have poured 

 into them the whole content of their souls, rich with 

 the inventions of their genius and the acquisitions of 

 modern thought. And there are in each of them, es 

 pecially in Spinoza, flashes of intuition that break through 

 the system. But if we leave out of the two doctrines 

 what breathes life into them, if we retain the skeleton 

 only, we have before us the very picture of Platonism 

 and Aristotelianism seen through Cartesian mechanism. 

 They present to us a systematization of the new 

 physics, constructed on the model of the ancient 

 metaphysics. 



What, indeed, could the unification of physics be ? 

 The inspiring idea of that science was to isolate, within 

 the universe, systems of material points such that, the 

 position of each of these points being known at a given 

 moment, we could then calculate it for any moment 

 whatever. As, moreover, the systems thus defined were 

 the only ones on which the new science had hold, and 

 as it could not be known beforehand whether a system 

 satisfied or did not satisfy the desired condition, it was 

 useful to proceed always and everywhere as if the 

 condition was realized. There was in this a methodo 

 logical rule, a very natural rule, so natural, indeed, 

 that it was not even necessary to formulate it. For 

 simple common sense tells us that when we are 

 possessed of an effective instrument of research, and 

 are ignorant of the limits of its applicability, we should 

 act as if its applicability were unlimited ; there will 

 always be time to abate it. But the temptation must 

 have been great for the philosopher to hypostasize this 

 hope, or rather this impetus, of the new science, and to 



