96 



METAPHYSICS. 



Metaphy- 

 sics. 



the universe itself, that sufficient reason must be found 

 in wreathing. It cannot be found in tlie course of con- 

 tingent events, because a contingency does not imply a 

 necessary cause ; and where the cause is not necessary, 

 the reason cannot be sufficient, why a tiling happen! as 

 it does, rather than otherwise. It cannot be discover- 

 ed in what are called the qualities and substance of 

 matter ; because matter is inert, and because every 

 change in its state being induced by a prior change, 

 the series would be infinite, and t!ie ultimate cause 

 could not be found. The sufficient reason, then, which 

 has occasioned the existence of every thing, can only be 

 attributed to some intellectual substance, bearing in it- 

 self the reason of its own being, together with the 

 knowledge why all things happen as they do, and not 

 otherwise. This substance accounts to itself alone for 

 all things, since it alone is acquainted with all things. 

 It acts from itself, and for itself; and it ordains the be- 

 ing of atoms, and of worlds, of monads, and of systems, 

 according to laws pre-established by infinite wisdom. 

 This substance is God. 



All things, therefore, act with each other, according 

 to that harmony which has been pre-established by God, 

 and which consequently is universal and necessary. 

 By him our bodies are pre-disposed to obey the voli- 

 tions <>f our souls. By him the individual monad, and 

 the universe itself, were regulated in every vicissitude 

 which they can experience. The soul acts not upon 

 the body, nor does the body influence the soul. Their 

 mutual concurrence was ordained by God himself, who, 

 in regulating the order of worlds, regulated also all that 

 they contain *." 



This is certainly a bold attempt to account for the 

 phenomena of the universe ; but we cannot perceive a 

 single advantage which it possesses over the system of 

 Malebranche to which it was opposed. It approaches 

 nearer to fatalism; for, according to the doctrine of 

 pre-established harmony, the deity is supposed to have 

 ordained all motion, and all change which may take 

 place in corporeal substances. The human body acts 

 m conjunction with the volitions of the soul, because it 

 was predisposed to do so from eternity ; and our limbs 

 are moved, and our organs of sense are affected, by the 

 immutable decrees of God himself. 



This doctrine avoids the interpositions of Deity sup- 

 posed by Malebranche ; it also avoids the notion enter- 

 tained by the author of the Syslcme. de la Nature, and 

 other materialists, who maintain, that there is an effi- 

 cient principle in every cause, which leads of itself, 

 and by its independent influence, to the production of 

 the effect. Hut it is clogged with difficulties equally 

 perplexing, and consequences equally revolting. We 

 cannot well see how any one can adopt it without ad- 

 mitting, that the Deity is the ultimate cause, if not the 

 immediate instrument, of evil. It might lead to infer, 

 that the Almighty could not be displeased with any ac- 

 tion which men may commit, since every action and 

 every volition are pre-ordained and pre-established to 

 accompany each other ; and we might suppose, that he 

 organized for the very purpose the hand which should 

 pollute his altars, and the tongue which should blas- 

 pheme his name. These consequences certainly were 



not intended to be deduced from this system by its v?ry Metapliy- 

 profound author ; though they may be shewn to result * ics 

 from that harmony which he thought was pre establish- > "Y"~~ 

 ed for a roffictent reason. 



But certainly one le-'ding principle of the Leibnitzian 

 system is not less applicable to t'lat of Malebranche, 

 who would readily hare subscribed to' the following 

 maxim of the opposite school. " Ce n'est pas dans les 

 corps qu'on pent decouvrir la raison pourquoi ils suivent 

 ces loix plutot que tout autres ; elle ne se trouve que 

 dans une etre distinct des corps." 



Before we leave Leibnitz and his school, which has 

 never had much influence in this country, we may re- 

 m.-irk, that they are careful to distinguish between the 

 rcaunn why a thing is as it is, and the cause of its being 

 as it is. This is particularly developed by Wolff, but 

 it had been noticed by Descartes long before : " There 

 is nothing which exists." says that philosopher, " re- 

 specting which we may not inquire into the cause of 

 its existence. Such inquiries may be extended to God 

 himself; not that he needs any cause of his existence, 

 but because the very immensity of his nature is the rea- 

 son why he cannot have a cause of his existence.'' Sir 

 William Drummond has, with much learning, traced 

 the monads of Leibnitz up to their Pythagorean source, 

 through all their windings, as discoverable in the writ- 

 ings of Hippocrates, Stobaeus, Sextus Empiricus, &c. ; 

 and has shewn how largely the German philosopher 

 has availed himself of the scattered fragments of Gre- 

 cian ontology, which occur in the rarer and less acces- 

 sible authors ; we must therefore transfer to his learn- 

 ing whatever deductions we may be disposed to make 

 from his originality- But his doctrine of sufficient rea- 

 son is also borrowed ; and its original may be found in 

 the forty-sixth chapter of Plato's Phaedon. Socrates is 

 introduced as saying, that he was delighted when he 

 found that Anaxagoras had assumed mind or intelli- 

 gence as the origin of all things. He conceived, that 

 this principle would be sufficient to account for any 

 thing being as it is ; because if mind orders all things, 

 they must be disposed in the situation and order which 

 is best ; and that if we wish to know why any thing is 

 produced, or is destroyed, or exists as it is, we have on- 

 ly to inquire in what respects these several accidents 

 and circumstances are most befitting in the cases in 

 question. If any thing, for instance, happens to man, 

 he is to consider that this, being regulated by supreme 

 intelligence, must be the best that could hefal him, and 

 he has only to inquire in what respects it is best for 

 him. In the same manner, after inquiring whether the 

 earth be flat or round, the next point is to shew, in what 

 respects that figure is best adapted to it. Were these 

 things once properly settled, Socrates conceived that he 

 would then have discovered a sufficient reason for the 

 existence of things as they are, and that it would be 

 unnecessary to search any farther into thek causes +. 

 We may easily perceive, then, that the doctrine for 

 which this prince of philosophers expressed a partiali- 

 ty, agrees, in many respects, with the sufficient reason 

 of Leibnitz, and also with the doctrine which Pope un- 

 dertook to illustrate without understanding it, that 

 " whatever is, is right." 



* Academical Questions, p. 326. 



f AKWA; , -rort ix /3jX<tf rnff Ai>aylf Kvafyfyvvtricovro;^ xm ^tynro? us atoet TfVf tit 9 SizKatrutat ri xxt crav-riv* awT/Of, retvrn ov ri act- 

 VIOL XffSttt TI, xa* |S|| fjtei rgairtv rivet tu l%"Vi ro rev vv tiyati tretvruv attrtoi' xett tyttfBfMlf* '-' rvro ovrus *%H* rev yt >v xoffuvvra, *rv>- xof- 

 fun. KCU uMfn, TiSiueu return, em v 0iA.Tiros ,%. *. r . x. Socrates, however, expresses his extreme regret at the disappointment of the 

 high expectations which he had formed, when he first heard of Anaxagoras having introduced mind as the principle and disposer of al) 

 things. For he says that he did not find him treating of one of the subjects on which he wished to be informed, but bringing in ai'rial, 

 ctherial, or watery fluids to account for the constitution of things ; and as the causes of the various phenomena which they exhibit. 



