OF KNOWLEDGE. 



329 



Just as the position taken up by Descartes lent 

 itself to a twofold development, the one leading into 



understanding of what he had 

 expounded in his ' Theodicce ' and 

 in his various contributions to 

 contemporary learned periodicals 

 in which, as he says, he " accom- 

 modated himself to the language 

 of the schools or to the style of the 

 Cartesians," it being first written 

 in the German language. The 

 ' Theodicee ' had been written some 

 years earlier at the request of the 

 Queen of Prussia, in order to 

 counteract the sceptical spirit which 

 was " sjjread through the writings 

 of Hobbes, Bayle, Gassendi, the 

 Socinians and Arminians, &c. His 

 most important work, the 'Nou- 

 veaux Essais,' was similarly com- 

 posed after the appearance of 

 Locke's famous 'Essay,' and forms 

 a kind of running coiumentary to 

 Locke's doctrines. Whilst the two 

 former works were published dur- 

 ing Leibniz's lifetime, the latter, 

 which is by far the most instructive 

 and permanently important, was 

 not published by Leibniz himself — 

 because Locke had died in the 

 meantime — but very much later, in 

 the year 1765, nearly fifty years 

 after Leibniz's death. In conse- 

 quence of this disjointed form of 

 composition, and still more, of 

 publication of Leibniz's Works, it 

 has been impossible to settle with 

 even approximate certainty many 

 important features of his sys- 

 tem, the latter still remaining a 

 problem to historians of philos- 

 ophy. The same circumstance 

 further had the effect of allow- 

 ing a very one-sided and insuffi- 

 cient version of Leibniz's ideas 

 to get hold of the philosophical 

 mind in Germany during the first 

 two-thirds of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. Leibnizianism was no more 

 identical with Leibniz's real teach- 

 ing than Newtonianism in France, 

 or Darwinism in Germany, have 



been identical with the doctrines of 

 their respective authors. "When 

 the 'Nouveaux Essais' were printed 

 in 1765 they excited great atten- 

 tion. Lessing was going to trans- 

 late them. That the life of the 

 soul transcends all that is clear and 

 distinctly conscious, and is rooted 

 in dimly traceable depths, meant 

 insight of the highest value for 

 literature ; this was just struggling 

 out of the intellectual dryness of 

 the Enlightenment, and out of 

 insipid correctness to an unfolding 

 full of genius ; it opened a view all 

 the more valuable, as coming from 

 the same thinker whom Germany 

 honoured as the father and hero of 

 its Enlightenment. In this direc- 

 tion Leibniz worked especially upon 

 Herder; we see it not only in his 

 aesthetic views, but still more in his 

 prize essay ' On Knowing and Feel- 

 ing of the Human Soul.' Under 

 the preponderance of the methodo- 

 logical point of view, the Leibnizo- 

 Wolffian school had strained the 

 opposition between rational and 

 empirical knowledge as far as 

 possible, and had treated under- 

 standing and sensibility as two 

 separate ' faculties. ' The Berlin 

 Academy desired an examination of 

 the mutual relation of these two 

 separated powers, and of the share 

 which each has in human know- 

 ledge. Herder represented the 

 true Leibniz — as he appeared in 

 the 'Nouveaux Essais' — agaiu.-t 

 the prevailing system of the 

 schools : he emphasised in his 

 treatise the living unity of man's 

 psychical life, and showed that 

 sensibility and understanding are 

 not two different sources of know- 

 ledge, but only the diMerenb stages 

 of one and the same living activity 

 with which the ' monad ' compre- 

 hends the universe within itself" 

 (Windelband loc. cit., p. 388). 



