ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY 185 



sufficient reason to that of contradiction, but he practically 

 endeavours to do without the former principle as far as 

 possible. The task of philosophy he regards as that of 

 eliminating the contradictions that appear in common 

 consciousness by transforming the ideas which are given 

 in it *. This transformation, for Herbart, practically 

 means abstraction. Every bit of experience, being given, 

 has something real in it 2 . But its reality is that which 

 it is, apart from conditions or relations to other things. 

 The real is always something, a quale, a ' this ' or ' that ' 

 of some kind. But it is absolute position (in the Fichtean 

 sense) or affirmation without negation ; it has absolute 

 self-identity, so that it is perfectly simple and not, like 

 the Monad of Leibniz, a substance involving in its unity 

 a plurality of qualities ; and it is pure quality, without 

 any quantitative element or aspect, so that it is neither 

 a divisible totality nor an unbroken continuum. These 

 * reals, ' like the Monads, are infinite in number, and each 

 is different from every other. But they are absolutely 

 unalterable, they have no characteristic analogous to the 

 perception of Leibniz, and they are not impenetrable, for 

 any number of them may equally be thought as occupying 

 or as not occupying the same point in space. Like the 

 Monads, no one ' real ' can act upon another ; otherwise 

 they would cease to be absolute. And each ' real ' is the 

 immediate cause of one and only one phenomenon of 

 experience, so that the static variety of the world is due to 

 the power of 'self-preservation' (SeWsterhaltung) in each 

 ' real. ' The actual changes which we find in experience 

 are due to the different aspects in which the ' reals ' appear, 

 when they are in different relations to one another, 

 although their true natures remain unchanged (as in the 

 phenomena of colour contrasts). And these 'different 



1 ' Mere uncritical experience or merely empirical knowledge 

 only offers problems ; it suggests gaps, which indeed further re- 

 flexion serves at first only to deepen into contradictions.' Wallace, 

 Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, p. Ixiii. 



2 * Wieviel Schein, soviel Hindeutung auf s Sein.' 



