iv.] SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ 349 



becoming is concentrated or which mark its apogee: it 

 supposed them all known, and gathered them up into a 

 single concept, form of forms, idea of ideas, like the God 

 of Aristotle. The new philosophy was going to take each 

 of the laws which condition a becoming in relation to others 

 and which are as the permanent substratum of phenomena: 

 it would suppose them all known, and would gather them 

 up into a unity which also would express them eminently, 

 but which, like the God of Aristotle and for the same 

 reasons, must remain immutably shut up in itself. 



True, this return to the ancient philosophy was not with- 

 out great difficulties. When a Plato, an Aristotle, or a 

 Plotinus melt all the concepts of their science into a single 

 one, in so doing they embrace the whole of the real, for 

 concepts are supposed to represent the things themselves, 

 and to possess at least as much positive content. But a 

 law, in general, expresses only a relation, and physical 

 laws in particular express only quantitative relations be- 

 tween concrete things. So that if a modern philosopher 

 works with the laws of the new science as the Greek philoso- 

 pher did with the concepts of the ancient science, if he makes 

 all the conclusions of a physics supposed omniscient con- 

 verge on a single point, he neglects what is concrete in the 

 phenomena — the qualities perceived, the perceptions them- 

 selves. His synthesis comprises, it seems, only a fraction 

 of reality. In fact, the first result of the new science was 

 to cut the real into two halves, quantity and quality, the 

 former being credited to the account of bodies and the latter 

 to the account of souls. The ancients had raised no such 

 barriers either between quality and quantity or between 

 soul and body. For them, the mathematical concepts 

 were concepts like the others, related to the others and 

 fitting quite naturally into the hierarchy of the Ideas. 

 Neither was the body then defined by geometrical extension, 



