STATEMENT OF LEIBNIZ S PHILOSOPHY 139 



lowest class. As on the cognitive, so on the practical side 

 of his nature, the law of continuity holds. 



Feeling. Pleasure and Pain. ' Semi-pains ' and 

 1 Semi-pleasures.' 



The chief features of Leibniz's ethics are fixed by these 

 general considerations. In applying them it is necessary 

 for us, who have become familiar with post-Kantian 

 distinctions, to remember that the usual threefold 

 division of mental elements into cognition, feeling, and 

 will, is not of older date than the age of Kousseau *, and 

 accordingly that Leibniz still works with the Aristotelian 

 twofold division of the elements into theoretical and 

 practical. Thus the ' appetition ' of Leibniz covers both 

 feeling and will (in our sense of the terms), as well as the 

 lower forms of both, which are conscious and unconscious 

 forces more or less restrained from full activity, that is 

 to say, more or less potential or virtual. Accordingly, as 

 appetition and perception always accompany one another, 

 Leibniz maintains that there is no perception absolutely 

 colourless and entirely unchanging or at rest. Eveiy 

 perception has an element of feeling and activity, although 

 the degree of it may be infinitely small. If we can be 

 pardoned the anachronism of using a phrase which Lotze 

 has made familiar, we may say that every perception has 

 a ' value ' or ' worth ' ; but it must not be forgotten that 

 for Leibniz this value is not anything absolute or pre- 

 eminently real, but merely the unrealized potentiality of 

 clearness and distinctness in the perception 2 . 



Speaking then of human nature, which includes all 

 the varieties of perception and appetition, Leibniz says 

 that 'there are no perceptions which are entirely indifferent 

 to us, but when their effect is not observable we can call 

 them indifferent ; for pleasure and pain seem to consist in 



1 It is usually attributed to Tetens (circa 1750). But it first 

 comes into prominence through Kant. 



2 Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus, bk. iii. ch. 4, 4 (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 366). 



