ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ^ PHILOSOPHY 187 



precision to the problem by suggesting the most superficial 

 possible solution, reducing the principle of sufficient 

 reason to that of contradiction. This (though Wolff 

 perhaps did not realize it) was little better than telling 

 Leibniz that he had discovered a mare's nest. Kant, on 

 the other hand, gives positive precision to the problem by 

 the sharpness of his distinction between the absolute and 

 the relative, while Fichte and Schelling, in different ways, 

 endeavour to make explicit the unity to which the Kantian 

 divisions point. Their re-employment of the principle of 

 development or progressive self-realization, which is so 

 important a feature of Leibniz's thinking, brings us to the 

 verge of Hegel's solution of the problem. Hegel practi- 

 cally reverses the procedure of Wolff, by showing that the 

 principle of contradiction presupposes that of sufficient 

 reason, and that each by itself is an abstract expression 

 of the principle of self-consciousness 1 . The real is not 

 merely in se (as it would be if the abstract principle of 

 contradiction were ultimate), nor is it merely in alio (as it 

 would be if the abstract principle of sufficient reason were 

 ultimate, which, of course, no one maintains). But the 

 real is that which becomes itself through being in alio, 

 through being not itself. There is no such thing as a 

 purely analytic or a purely synthetic judgment ; but 

 when we attribute any quality to a subject, we attribute 

 to it not merely a difference from other things but a 

 oneness with that from which we differentiate it 2 . The 

 universe is a system of such perfect unity that the oppo- 

 sites it contains are all contraries and never contradictories. 

 Absolute contradictories or absolute differences are ab- 

 stractions. To say, as did Leibniz, that no two things are 

 exactly the same implies that no two things (not even the 

 most extreme opposites) are entirely different. A must 



1 See Caird's Hegel (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), chs. 7 

 and 8. Also Wallace, Prolegomena to the Logic of Hegel (and ed.), 

 ch. 30. 



2 Cf. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. ii. pp. 64 sqq. 



