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LEIBNITZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM. 



LEIBNITZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM. 



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which the change or passage from perception to perception is accom- 

 plished, is an appetite (appetitus). By its action the monads are ever 

 attaining to new perception?, in which their whole activity consists, 

 and besides which nought else is in them ; consequently they may be 

 termed entelechies, as possessing a certain perfection and a certain 

 self-sufficiency by which they are the sources of their own activity. 

 In lifeless things perception is uncombined with consciousness; in 

 animated, it is combined with it and becomes apperception. The 

 monads endued with apperception may be called souls, and, in combi- 

 nation with the unconscious monads, constitute all animals ; the only 

 difference between man and the reSt of animals, as between God and 

 man, consisting in a higher degree of perfection. The unconscious 

 perception is also found in the monads endued with apperception, 

 when tliey are in a state of sleep or are stunned, for in sleep the soul 

 is without apperception, and like the other monads. All perceptions 

 however are closely dependent on each other ; and when consequently 

 the soul passes from sleep, the unconscious perceptions which it had 

 during that state form the link which connects its present thoughts 

 with the past. This fact affords an explanation of memory, and that 

 anticipation of like results from like causes which guides the conduct 

 of iill animals. Man however is distinguished from the rest by his 

 cognition of eternal and necessary truths; by these he rises to a know- 

 ledge both of his own and the Divine nature; and these constitute 

 what is called reason or mind. By these necessary truths man 

 becomes capable of the reflex art of distinguishing the subject (ego) 

 and the object (res), and furnishes him with the fundamental princi- 

 ples of all reasoning, namely, the principle of contradiction and the 

 law of sufficient reason. According to the former, whatever involves 

 a contradiction is false, and its opposite true ; the latter teaches that 

 nothing can be true or exist unless some reason exist why it should 

 be as it is, and not otherwise. This sufficient reason of all necessary 

 truths may be discovered by analysis, which arrives ultimately at the 

 primary notions which assume the form of identical propositions, and 

 are incapable of proof, but legitimate themselves. In the same manner 

 all contingent truths must have an ultimate cause, since otherwise an 

 infinite series of contingencies must be assumed in which reason 

 would be lost. This last cause of all things and of their mutual 

 dependence in the universe is God, who is absolute infinite perfection, 

 from whom all things derive their perfection, while they owe their 

 imperfection to their own nature, which, as finite, is incapable of 

 receiving into itself infinite perfection. The Divine intellect is also 

 the source of all eternal truths and ideas, and without God nothing 

 could possibly be actual, and nothing could exist necessarily. God 

 alone, a* possessing infinite perfection, exists of necessity ; for as 

 nothing obstructs his potentiality, he is without negation or contra- 

 diction, and is unlimited. But although the eternal truths have their 

 reason in the nature of God, they are not therefore arbitrary or deter- 

 mined by the will of God. This is the case only with contingent 

 truths. God, as the prime monad by whom all created monads were 

 produced, is omnipotent ; as the source of the ideas after which all 

 things were created and from which they receive their nature, he is 

 intelligent, and he also possesses a will which creates those finite 

 things which his intelligence recognises as the best possible. These 

 lame properties of intelligence and will coustitute the subject, or ego, 

 in man, by which he is capable of perceiving or desiring. While how- 

 ever these attributes are in the highest degree of perfection in the 

 Deity, in finite things they are variously limited, according to the 

 respective degrees of perfection. 



As imperfect, the activity of the created monads tends without 

 themselves ; consequently they possess activity so far as they possess 

 clear perceptions (apperception), and are passive so far as they perci ivc 

 obscurely. Of two composite substances, that is the more perfect 

 which possesses the ground of the contingent changes of the lattt-r : 

 but simple substances cannot exert any influence on each other, unless 

 by the intervention of the Deity, who at the creation arranged them 

 in due co-ordination with each other. This adjustment of the monads 

 was in accordance with certain sufficient reasons in each monad, by 

 which the Divine will was moved to place the passivity of one and the 

 activity of one in an harn.onial relation ; this sufficient reason was 

 their comparative perfection : hence the famous principle of Leibnitz, 

 which has been designated by the term Optimism that of all possible 

 worlds, God has chosen and produced the best. 



As every monad stands in harmonious relation to all others, it 

 expresses the relations of all, and i, as it were, a mirror of the uni- 

 verse which is represented in a peculiar manner by each. Hence the 

 greatest possible variety id combined with the greatest possible 

 harmony. God alona can embrace all these relations, while finite 

 minds have only a very obscure perception of them. All in the world 

 is full, and bound together into one continuous and coherent whole. 

 The motion of each single monad, whether simple or in aggregation, 

 affects all according to distance; and God therefore sees all future 

 things, as well as present and past. But the soul is only cognisant of 

 what is present to it ; and although indeed it represents the whole 

 universe, yet the infinity of objects surpasses its capacity, and its 

 clearest representations are of those which immediately affect the body 

 with which it is united. The soul pursues its own laws, and the body 

 likewise its own ; both however, by reason of the harmony established 

 at the creation among all monads, as representatives of the universe, 



act in unison. The soul strives after means and ends, and works by 

 the laws of final causes ; the body, by those of efficient causes. Both 

 species of causes are in harmony with each other. Such is the system 

 of pre-established harmony, according to which the body and soul act 

 independently of each other, and each as if the other did not exist, 

 and yet nevertheless both as if they had an influence on each other. 

 This harmonious relation of the body and soul Leibnitz illustrates by 

 the supposition of two clocks, one of which points, while the other 

 strikes the hour : both harmonise in their movements, but nevertheless 

 are independent of each other. 



The power and goodness of God are displayed in the whole universe, 

 but it is in the moral world that they are chiefly visible. Between 

 the natural and the moral worlds, or between God as creator of the 

 mundane machine and as ruler of spirits, the strictest harmony sub- 

 sists. God as architect of the world is consistent with himself as 

 lawgiver; and agreeably to the mechanical regulation of the course of 

 nature, every transgression is followed by punishment, as every good 

 act is by rewards, since all is so disposed as to contribute to the good 

 and happiness of the whole. This is the grand principle of the 

 ' Theodice'e." In this work Leibnitz shows that God, as all -powerful, 

 all-wise, and all-good, has chosen and created the best of all possible 

 worlds, notwithstanding the seeming objections which may be drawn 

 from the existence of evil. If a better constitution of things had been 

 possible, God would have chosen it in preference ; and even if another 

 equally good had been possible, there would not have been any suffi- 

 cient reason for the existence of the present world. The existence of 

 evil is both metaphysical and physical. As to the former, the ante- 

 cedent will of God designed infinite good ; but this was not possible, 

 since the multiplicity of things necessarily limit each other, and this 

 limitation is evil. But evil may also be considered as physical and 

 moral. Physical evil is a necessary consequence of the limitation of 

 finite things. Moral evil however waa not necessary, but became a 

 consequence of metaphysical and physical. But the less evil must be 

 admitted for the sake of greater good ; and evil is inseparable from 

 the best world, as the sum of finite beings to whom defect and imper- 

 fection necessarily cling by nature. God therefore permitted its 

 existence : for as the world contains a good incomparably greater 

 than its attendant evil, it would have been inconsistent with the 

 Divine goodness and wisdom not to have realised the best possible 

 world, in consequence of the comparatively little evil which would 

 come into existence with it. 



A more immediate source of evil is the freedom of the human will, 

 which however exists for the sake of a greater good, namely, the 

 possible meritoriousness of man and his consequent adaptation to a 

 state of felicity to be attained by his spontaneous acts. This freedom 

 of man is intermediate between a stringent necessity and a lawless 

 caprice. That man is free who, of several courses which in certain 

 circumstances are physically possible, chooses that which appears the 

 most desirable. This choice however cannot be without a motive of 

 sufficient reason, which however is of such a nature as to incline only, 

 and not to compel. Every event in the universe takes place according 

 to necessity ; but the necessity of human actions is of a peculiar kind ; 

 'it is simply moral, and is not destructive of its contrary, and consists 

 merely in the choice of the best. Even the Divine omniscience is not 

 destructive of human liberty. God unquestionably knows all future 

 events, and among these consequently the acts of all individuals in all 

 time who act and sin freely. This prescience however does not make 

 the contingency of human actions a necessity. 



Such waa the philosophical system by which Leibnitz sought to 

 correct the erroneous opinions of his age, which had been drawn from 

 the theory and established on the authority of Descartes. The broad 

 and marked distinction which the latter had drawn between matter 

 and mind had led to an inexplicable difficulty as to the reciprocal 

 action of the body and soul, to get rid of which Spiuosa had advanced 

 his theory of substance, and denied or got rid of the difference. 

 Leibnitz attempted to solve this difficulty by resolving all things into 

 spirit, and assuming nothing but mental powers or forces. Neverthe- 

 less he has only presented the dualism of the Cartesian theory under 

 another form ; and the equal difficulty of explaining the community 

 of action between the conscious and unconscious forces, so as to 

 account for the reciprocal influence of body and mind, forced him to 

 have recourse to the gratuitous assumption of the pre-established 

 harmony. As to the charge of fatalism, which Dugald Stewart has 

 objected to, his objection seems to have arisen from that antagonism 

 of error which takes refuge from a blind necessity in irrational chance. 

 The theory of optimism has been the subject of the satire of Voltaire, 

 but it is not more misrepresented in ' Cundide ' than in the ' Essay on 

 Man.' Pope and Leibnitz agree in the position that of all possible 

 systems infinite wisdom must form the best; but by the coherency of 

 all, the former understood the co-existence of all grades of perfection, 

 from nothing up to Deity ; tbe latter, that mutual dependence of all 

 in the world by which each single entity is a reason of all others. By 

 the fullness of creation Leibnitz denied the existence of any gap in the 

 causal order of co-existent things; Pope asserted by it the unbroken 

 series of all degrees of perfection. The Divine permission of evil, 

 Pope referred to the indisposition of the Deity to disturb general by 

 occasional laws. There is consequently evil in the world which tho 

 Deity might have got rid of, if he were willing in certain cases to 



