334 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



mind to trace phenomena back to their antecedent 

 causes, but not less so to understand their purpose 

 and meaning. 1 He appreciated the philosophies of 

 Descartes and Spinoza inasmuch as they laid stress. 

 upon the deductive mathematical treatment, but he 

 could not agree with Spinoza, who discarded altogether 

 and treated with scorn all teleological explanations. In 

 Leibniz philosophical thought arrived at the position 

 which, with certain interruptions, it still occupies at 

 the present day; its task being, not to afford new 

 knowledge, but to mediate between the claims of two 

 kinds of knowledge : that which deals with things 



1 From the point of view of the 

 problem of knowledge we may thus 

 say that Leibniz distinctly an- 

 nounced three kinds of knowledge, 

 founded upon the law of contra- 

 diction (mathematical or metaphys- 

 ical truths), the law of sufficient 

 reason (all contingent truths found 

 by observation and experience, trac- 

 ing the causal connection of things), 

 and the law of final causes through 

 which the apparent contingency in 

 nature is raised to the position of 

 necessity, inasmuch as in and 

 through the contingent facts and 

 events in the world a definite 

 plan, the design of the Divine 

 Creator, is realised. Lotze re- 

 marks that this reduces the whole 

 scheme of Leibniz to a mathe- 

 matical conception. ' ' The whole 

 world has its reality from God, 

 and indeed in this way that in the 

 mind of God there existed many 

 consistent schemes, among which 

 He admitted that which contained 

 the smallest amount of evil and the 

 greatest perfection. Such a scheme 

 he could not alter or improve, but 

 only admit or reject, as a whole. 

 We see from this ;that also with 

 Leibniz the whole content of reality 



resembles a mathematical formula 

 in which each part is rigidly de- 

 termined by others and itself de- 

 termines them, so that not only 

 does the past include the future, 

 but also the latter the past" 

 (Lotze, Syllabus of Lectures on 

 'German Philosophy since Kant,' 

 1882, p. 7). We shall see further 

 on how Lotze himself attempted 

 to modify this scheme of Leibniz, 

 giving it a freer, not purely logical, 

 consistency. Whether we admit 

 this rigidity in Leibniz's concep- 

 tion or not, it is quite clear that, 

 so far as the problem of knowledge 

 is concerned, Leibniz admitted the 

 necessity of considering the pur- 

 pose or meaning of things as a 

 clue for finding the mechanical 

 causes through which it was at- 

 tained : a rule which was applied 

 in the shallow and popular phil- 

 osophy of the Aufktiirung to put 

 forward trivial explanations which 

 made the whole ridiculous. This 

 was quite contrary to the spirit of 

 Leibniz ; for we may say that if 

 Spinoza taught us to contemplate 

 things "sub specie aeterni," Leibniz 

 taught us to contemplate them, 

 "sub specie universi." 



