ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY 165 



Leibnitian influence reasserts itself, and Wolff becomes 

 confused. His ruthless logic gives way. * Besides the 

 possibility of a being, something else is still needed for 

 its existence.' * Existence or reality is the complement of 

 possibility 1 .' As an illustration of what he means he 

 takes the case of a tree which is potentially in the seed, 

 but which requires for its actual development (its exis- 

 tence as a tree) the co-operation or complement of other 

 existing things. Thus Wolff returns to the Leibnitian 

 distinction between the ' possible' and the 'compossible,' 

 after he has emptied of all meaning the principle of 

 sufficient reason, on which the distinction rests. To put 

 it otherwise, . if the actual existing ' something ' is more 

 than a merely possible ' something ' (as Wolff's position 

 here implies), then there must be a middle term between 

 the actual 'something' and 'nothing.' And this, of 

 course, is flatly contradictory of Wolff's original principle. 

 Thus while Wolff makes a show of logical completeness 

 and system, he is really hacking in pieces the philosophy 

 of Leibniz. He is fascinated by its individualist element, 

 the self-sufficiency and mutual exclusiveness of the Monads, 

 which we have seen to be connected, in the thinking of 

 Leibniz, with the survival of a narrow interpretation of 

 the principle of contradiction 2 . Wolff carries to an ex- 

 treme this tendency (which, after all, is not the supreme 

 power in Leibniz's thought), and gives us, as the outcome 

 of the bare principle of contradiction, an abstract indi- 

 vidualism, just as Spinoza had already from the same 

 principle developed an abstract universalism or pantheism. 

 It is because of the essentially dogmatic character of the 

 principle that such extremes can each be represented as 

 flowing from it. As employed by Spinoza and by Wolff 

 the principle can legitimately yield nothing but the bare 

 self-identity of the data or assumptions with which each 

 begins his work. Accordingly (as in this case) if the 



1 Ontologia, 173, 174. 



2 This Introduction, Part ii. p. 68. 



