History of Modern Philosophy Part 10
The System of Nature, 1770, which bore on its t.i.tle page the name of Mirabaud, who had died 1760, proceeded from the company of freethinkers accustomed to meet in the hospitable house of Baron von Holbach (died 1789), a native of the Palatinate. Its real author was Holbach himself, although his friends Diderot, Naigeon, Lagrange, the mathematician, and the clever Grimm (died 1807) seem to have co-operated in the preparation of certain sections. The c.u.mbrous seriousness and the dry tone of this systematic combination of the radical ideas which the century had produced, were no doubt the chief causes of its unsympathetic reception by the public. Similarly unsuccessful was the popular account of materialism with which Holbach followed it, in 1772, and Helvetius's excerpts from the System of Nature, 1774.
Holbach applies himself to the despiritualization of nature and the destruction of religious prejudices with sincere faith in the sacred mission of unbelief-the happiness of humanity depends on atheism. "O Nature, sovereign of all beings, and ye her daughters, Virtue, Reason, and Truth, be forever our only divinities." What has made virtue so difficult and so rare? Religion, which divides men instead of uniting them. What has so long delayed the illumination of the reason, and the discovery of truth? Religion with its mischievous errors, G.o.d, spirit, freedom, immortality. Immortality exists only in the memory of later generations; man is the creature of a day; nothing is permanent but the great whole of nature and the eternal law of universal change. Can a clock broken into a thousand pieces continue to mark the hours? The senseless doctrine of freedom was invented only to solve the senseless problem of the justification of G.o.d in view of the existence of evil. Man is at every moment of his life a pa.s.sive instrument in the hands of necessity; the universe is an immeasurable and uninterrupted chain of actions and reactions, an eternal round of interchanging motions, ruled by laws, a change in which would at once alter the nature of all things. The most fatal error is the idea of human and divine spirits, which has been advanced by philosophers and adopted with applause by fools. The opinion that man is divided into two substances is based on the fact that, of the changes in our body, we directly perceive only the external molar movements, while, on the other hand, the inner motions of the invisible molecules are known only by their effects. These latter have been ascribed to the mind, which, moreover, we have adorned with properties whose emptiness is manifested by the fact that they are all mere negations of that which we know. Experience reveals to us only the extended, the corporeal, the divisible-but the mind is to be the opposite of all three, yet at the same time to possess the power (how, no man can tell) of acting on that which is material and of being acted upon by it. In thus dividing himself into body and soul, man has in reality only distinguished between his brain and himself. Man is a purely physical being. All so-called spiritual phenomena are functions of the brain, special cases of the operation of the universal forces of nature. Thought and volition are sensation, sensation is motion. The moving forces in the moral world are the same as those in the physical world; in the latter they are called attraction and repulsion, in the former, love and hate; that which the moralist terms self-love is the same instinct of self-preservation which is familiar in physics as the force of inertia.
As man has doubled himself, so also he has doubled nature. Evil gave the first impulse to the formation of the idea of G.o.d, pain and ignorance have been the parents of superst.i.tion; our sufferings were ascribed to unknown powers, of which we were in fear, but which, at the same time, we hoped to propitiate by prayer and sacrifice. The wise turned with their worship and reverence toward a more worthy object, to the great All; and, in fact, if we seek to give the word G.o.d a tenable meaning, it signifies active nature. The error lay in the dualistic view, in the distinction between nature and itself, i.e. its activity, and in the belief that the explanation of motion required a separate immaterial Mover. This a.s.sumption is, in the first place, false, for since the All is the complex of all that exists there can be nothing outside it; motion follows from the existence of the universe as necessarily as its other properties; the world does not receive it from without, but imparts it to itself by its own power. In the second place the a.s.sumption is useless; it explains nothing, but confuses the problems of natural science to the point of insolubility. In the third place it is self-contradictory, for after theology has removed the Deity as far away from man as possible, by means of the negative metaphysical predicates, it finds itself necessitated to bring the two together again through the moral attributes-which are neither compatible with one another nor with the meta-physical-and crowns the absurdity by the a.s.surance that we can please G.o.d by believing that which is incomprehensible. Finally, the a.s.sumption is dangerous; it draws men away from the present, disturbs their peace and enjoyment, stirs up hatred, and thus makes happiness and morality impossible. If, then, utility is the criterion of truth, theism-even in the mild form of deism-is proven erroneous by its disastrous consequences. All error is bane.
Matter and motion are alike eternal. Nature is an active, self-moving, living whole, an endless chain of causes and effects. All is in unceasing motion, all is cause (nothing is dead, nothing rests), all is effect (there is no spontaneous motion, none directed to an end). Order and disorder are not in nature, but only in our understanding; they are abstract ideas to denote that which is conformable to our nature and that which is contrary to it. The end of the All is itself alone, is life, activity; the universal goal of particular beings, like that of the universe, is the conservation of being.
Anthropology is for Holbach essentially reduced to two problems, the deduction of thought from motion, and of morality from the physical tendency to self-preservation. The forces of the soul are no other than those of the body. All mental faculties develop from sensation; sensations are motions in the brain which reveal to us motions without the brain. All the pa.s.sions may be reduced to love and hate, desire and aversion, and depend upon temperament, on the individual mixture of the fluid parts. Virtue is the equilibrium of the fluids. All human actions proceed from interest. Good and bad men are distinguished only by their organizations, and by the ideas they form concerning happiness. With the same necessity as that of the act itself, follow the love or contempt of fellow-men, the pleasure of self-esteem and the pain of repentance (regret for evil consequences, hence no evidence of freedom). Neither responsibility nor punishment is done away with by this necessity-have we not the right to protect ourselves against the stream which damages our fields, by building dikes and altering its course? The end of endeavor is permanent happiness, and this can be attained through virtue alone. The pa.s.sions which are useful to society compel the affection and approval of our fellows. In order to interest others in our welfare we must interest ourselves in theirs-nothing is more indispensable to man than man. The clever man acts morally, interest binds us to the good; love for others means love for the means to our own happiness. Virtue is the art of making ourselves happy through the happiness of others. Nature itself chastises immorality, since she makes the intemperate unhappy. Religion has hindered the recognition of these rules, has misunderstood the diseases of the soul, and applied false and ineffective remedies; the renunciation which she requires is opposed to human nature. The true moralist recognizes in medicine the key to the human heart; he will cure the mind through the body, control the pa.s.sions and hold them in check by other pa.s.sions instead of by sermons, and will teach men that the surest road to personal ends is to labor for the public good. Illumination is the way to virtue and to happiness.
Volney (Cha.s.seboeuf, died 1820; Catechism of the French Citizen, 1793, later under the t.i.tle Natural Law or Physical Principles of Morals deduced front the Organization of Man and of the Universe; further, The Ruins; Complete Works, 1821) belongs among the moralists of self-love, although, besides the egoistic interests, he takes account of the natural sympathetic impulses also. This is still more the case with Condorcet (Sketch of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind, 1794), who was influenced alike by Condillac and by Turgot, and who defends a tendency toward universal perfection both in the individual and in the race. Besides the selfish affections, which are directed as much to the injury as to the support of others, there lies in the organization of man a force which steadily tends toward the good, in the form of underived feelings of sympathy and benevolence, from which moral self-judgment is developed by the aid of reflection. The aim of true ethics and social art is not to make the "great" virtues universal, but to make them needless; the nearer the nations approximate to mental and moral perfection, the less they stand in need of these-happy the people in which good deeds are so customary that scarcely an opportunity is left for heroism. The chief instrument for the moral cultivation of the people is the development of the reason, the conscience, and the benevolent affections. Habituation to deeds of kindness is a source of pure and inexhaustible happiness. Sympathy with the good of others must be so cultivated that the sacrifice of personal enjoyment will be a sweeter joy than the pleasure itself. Let the child early learn to enjoy the delight of loving and of being loved. We must, finally, strive toward the gradual diminution of the inequalities of capacity, of property, and between ruler and ruled, for to abolish them is impossible.
Of the remaining philosophers of the revolutionary period mention may be made of the physician Cabanis (Relations of the Physical and the Moral in Man, 1799), and Destutt de Tracy (Elements of Ideology, 1801 seq.). The former is a materialist in psychology (the nerves are the man, ideas are secretions of the brain), considers consciousness a property of organic matter (the soul is not a being, but a faculty), and makes moral sympathy develop out of the animal instincts of preservation and nourishment. De Tracy, also, derives all psychical activity from organization and sensation. His doctrine of the will, though but briefly sketched, is interesting. The desires have a pa.s.sive and an active side (corresponding to the twofold action of the nerves, on themselves and on the muscles); on the one hand, they are feelings of pleasure or pain, and on the other, they lead us to action-will is need, and, at the same time, the source of the means for satisfying this need. Both these feelings and the external movements are probably based upon unconscious organic motions. The will is rightly identified with the personality, it is the ego itself, the totality of the physico-psychical life of man attaining to self-consciousness. The inner or organic life consists in the self-preserving functions of the individual, the outer or animal life, in the functions of relation (of sense, of motion, of speech, of reproduction); individual interests are rooted in the former, sympathy in the latter. The primal good is freedom, or the power to do what we will; the highest thing in life is love. In order to be happy we must avoid punishment, blame, and pangs of conscience.
4. Rousseau's Conflict with the Illumination.
The Genevese, Jean Jacques Rousseau[1] (1712-78), stands in a similar relation of opposition to the French Illumination as the Scottish School to the English, and Herder and Jacobi to the German. He points us away from the cold sophistical inferences of the understanding to the immediate conviction of feeling; from the imaginations of science to the unerring voice of the heart and the conscience; from the artificial conditions of culture to healthy nature. The vaunted Illumination is not the lever of progress, but the source of all degeneration; morality does not rest on the shrewd calculation of self-interest, but on original social and sympathetic instincts (love for the good is just as natural to the human heart as self-love; enthusiasm for virtue has nothing to do with our interest; what would it mean to give up one's life for the sake of advantage?); the truths of religion are not objects of thought, but of pious feeling.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Brockerhoff, Leipsic, 1863-74; L. Moreau, Paris, 1870.]
Rousseau commenced his career as an author with the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, 1750 (the discussion of a prize question, crowned by the Academy of Dijon), which he describes as entirely pernicious, and the Discourse on the Origin and the Bases of the Inequality among Men, 1753. By nature man is innocent and good, becoming evil only in society. Reflection, civilization, and egoism are unnatural. In the happy state of nature pity and innocent self-love (amour de soi) ruled, and the latter was first corrupted by the reason into the artificial feeling of selfishness (amour propre) in the course of social development-thinking man is a degenerate animal. Property has divided men into rich and poor; the magistracy, into strong and weak; arbitrary power, into masters and slaves. Wealth generated luxury with its artificial delights of science and the theater, which make us more unhappy and evil than we otherwise are; science, the child of vice, becomes in turn the mother of new vices. All nature, all that is characteristic, all that is good, has disappeared with advancing culture; the only relief from the universal degeneracy is to be hoped for from a return to nature on the part of the individual and society alike-from education and a state conformed to nature. The novel Emile is devoted to the pedagogical, and the Social Contract, or the Principles of Political Law, to the political problem. Both appeared in 1762, followed two years later by the Letters from the Mountain, a defense against the attacks of the clergy. In these later writings Rousseau's naturalistic hatred of reason appears essentially softened.
Social order is a sacred right, which forms the basis of all others. It does not proceed, however, from nature-no man has natural power over his fellows, and might confers no right-consequently it rests on a contract. Not, however, on a contract between ruler and people. The act by which the people chooses a king is preceded by the act in virtue of which it is a people. In the social contract each devotes himself with his powers and his goods to the community, in order to gain the protection of the latter. With this act the spiritual body politic comes into being, and attains its unity, its ego, its will. The sum of the members is called the people; each member, as a partic.i.p.ant in the sovereignty, citizen, and, as bound to obedience to the law, subject. The individual loses his natural freedom, receiving in exchange the liberty of a citizen, which is limited by the general will, and, in addition, property rights in all that he possesses, equality before the law, and moral freedom, which first really makes him master of himself. The impulse of mere desire is slavery, obedience to self-imposed law, freedom. The sovereign is the people, law the general popular will directed to the common good, the supreme goods, "freedom and equality," the chief objects of legislation. The lawgiving power is the moral will of the body politic, the government (magistracy, prince) its executive physical power; the former is its heart, the latter its brain. Rousseau calls the government the middle term between the head of the state and the individual, or between the citizen as lawgiver and as subject-the sovereign (the people) commands, the government executes, the subject obeys. The act by which the people submits itself to its head is not a contract, but merely a mandate; whenever it chooses it can limit, alter, or entirely recall the delegated power. In order to security against illegal encroachments on the part of the government, Rousseau recommends regular a.s.semblies of the people, in which, under suspension of governmental authority, the confirmation, abrogation, or alteration of the const.i.tution shall be determined upon. Even the establishment of the articles of social belief falls to the sovereign people. The essential difference between Rousseau's theory of the state and that of Locke and Montesquieu consists in his rejection of the division of powers and of representation by delegates, hence in its unlimited democratic character. A generation after it was given to the world, the French Revolution made the attempt to translate it into practice. "The ma.s.ses carried out what Rousseau himself had thought, it is true, but never willed" (Windelband).
Rousseau's theory of education is closely allied to Locke's (cf. above), whose leading idea-the development of individuality-was entirely in harmony with the subjectivism of the philosopher of feeling. Posterity has not found it a difficult task to free the sound kernel therein from the husks of exaggeration and idiosyncrasy which surrounded it. Among the latter belong the preference of bodily over intellectual development, and the unlimited faith in the goodness of human nature. Exercise the body, the organs, the senses of the pupil, and keep his soul unemployed as long as possible; for the first, take care only that his mind be kept free from error and his heart from vice. In order to secure complete freedom from disturbance in this development, it is advisable to isolate the child from society, nay, even from the family, and to bring him up in retirement under the guidance of a private tutor.
As the Swiss republican spoke in Rousseau's politics, so his religious theories[1] betray the Genevan Calvinist. "The Savoyard Vicar's Profession of Faith" (in Emile) proclaims deism as a religion of feeling. The rational proofs brought forward for the existence of G.o.d-from the motion of matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world-are only designed, as he declares by letter, to confute the materialists, and derive their impregnability entirely from the inner evidence of feeling, which amid the vacillation of the reason pro and con gives the final decision.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Ch. Borgeaud, Rousseaus Religionsphilosophie, Geneva and Leipsic, 1883.]
If we limit our inquiry to that which is alone of importance for us, and rely on the evidence of feeling, it cannot be doubted that I myself exist and feel; that there exists an external world which affects me; that thought, comparison or judgment concerning relations is different from sensation or the perception of objects-for the latter is a pa.s.sive, but the former an active process; that I myself produce the activity of attention or consideration; that, consequently, I am not merely a sensitive or pa.s.sive, but also an active or intelligent being. The freedom of my thought and action guarantees to me the immateriality of my soul, and is that which distinguishes me from the brute. The life of the soul after the decay of the body is a.s.sured to me by the fact that in this world the wicked triumphs, while the good are oppressed. The favored position which man occupies in the scale of beings-he is able to look over the universe and to reverence its author, to recognize order and beauty, to love the good and to do it; and shall he, then, compare himself to the brute?-fills me with emotion and grat.i.tude to the benevolent Creator, who existed before all things, and who will exist when they all shall have vanished away, to whom all truths are one single idea, all places a point, all times a moment. The how of freedom, of eternity, of creation, of the action of my will upon matter, etc., is, indeed, incomprehensible to me, but that these are so, my feeling makes me certain. The worthiest employment of my reason is to annihilate itself before G.o.d. "The more I strive to contemplate his infinite essence the less do I conceive it. But it is, and that suffices me. The less I conceive it, the more I adore."
In the depths of my heart I find the rules for my conduct engraved by nature in ineffaceable characters. Everything is good that I feel to be so. The conscience is the most enlightened of all philosophers, and as safe a guide for the soul as instinct for the body. The infallibility of its judgment is evidenced by the agreement of different peoples; amid the surprising differences of manners you will everywhere find the same ideas of justice, the same notions of good and evil. Show me a land where it is a crime to keep one's word, to be merciful, benevolent, magnanimous, where the upright man is despised and the faithless honored! Conscience enjoins the limitation of our desires to the degree to which we are capable of satisfying them, but not their complete suppression-all pa.s.sions are good when we control them, all evil when they control us.
In the second part of the "Profession du Foi du Vicaire Savoyard" Rousseau turns from his attacks on sensationalism, materialism, atheism, and the morality of interest, to the criticism of revelation. Why, in addition to natural religion, with its three fundamental doctrines, G.o.d, freedom, and immortality, should other special doctrines be necessary, which rather confuse than clear up our ideas of the Great Being, which exact from us the acceptance of absurdities, and make men proud, intolerant, and cruel-whereas G.o.d requires from us no other service than that of the heart? Every religion is good in which men serve G.o.d in a befitting manner. If G.o.d had prescribed one single religion for us, he would have provided it with infallible marks of its unique authenticity. The authority of the fathers and the priesthood is not decisive, for every religion claims to be revealed and alone true; the Mohammedan has the same right as the Christian to adhere to the religion of his fathers. Since all revelation comes down to us by human tradition, reason alone can be the judge of its divinity. The careful examination of the doc.u.ments, which are written in ancient languages, would require an amount of learning which could not possibly be a condition of salvation and acceptance with G.o.d. Miracles and prophecy are not conclusive, for how are we to distinguish the true among them from the false? If we turn from the external to the internal criteria of the doctrines themselves, even here no decision can be reached between the reasons pro and con (the author puts the former into the mouth of a believer, and the latter into that of a rationalist); even if the former outweighed the latter, the difficulty would still remain of reconciling it with G.o.d's goodness and justice that the gospel has not reached so many of mankind, and of explaining how those to whom the divinity of Christ is now proclaimed can convince themselves of it, while his contemporaries misjudged and crucified him. In my opinion, I am incapable of fathoming the truth of the Christian religion and its value to those who confess it. The investigation of the reason ends in "reverential doubt": I neither accept revelation nor reject it, but I reject the obligation to accept it. My heart, however, judges otherwise than the reflection of my intellect; for this the sacred majesty and exalted simplicity of the Scriptures are a most cogent proof that they are more than human, and that He whose history they contain is more than man. The touching grace and profound wisdom of his words, the gentleness of his conduct, the loftiness of his maxims, his mastery over his pa.s.sions, abundantly prove that he was neither an enthusiast nor an ambitious sectary. Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus like a G.o.d. The virtues of justice, patriotism, and moderation taught by Socrates, had been exercised by the great men of Greece before he inculcated them. But whence could Jesus derive in his time and country that lofty morality which he alone taught and exemplified? Things of this sort are not invented. The inventor of such deeds would be more wonderful than the doer of them. Thus again, in the question of revealed religion, the voice of the heart triumphs over the doubts of the reason, as, in the question of natural religion, it had done over the objections of opponents. It is true, however, that this enthusiasm is paid not to the current Christianity of the priests, but to I the real Christianity of the gospel.
Rousseau was the conscience of France, which rebelled against the negations and the bald emptiness of the materialistic and atheistic doctrines. By vindicating with fervid eloquence the partic.i.p.ation of the whole man in the highest questions, in opposition to the one-sided illumination of the understanding, he became a pre-Kantian defender of the faith of practical reason. His emphatic summons aroused a loud and lasting echo, especially in Germany, in the hearts of Goethe, Kant, and Fichte.
CHAPTER VII.
LEIBNITZ.
In the contemporaries Spinoza and Locke, the two schools of modern philosophy, the Continental, starting from Descartes, and the English, which followed Bacon, had reached the extreme of divergence and opposition, Spinoza was a rationalistic pantheist, Locke, an empirical individualist. With Leibnitz a twofold approximation begins. As a rationalist he sides with Spinoza against Locke, as an individualist with Locke against Spinoza. But he not only separated rationalism from pantheism, but also qualified it by the recognition (which his historical tendencies had of themselves suggested to him) of a relative justification for empiricism, since he distinguished the factual truths of experience from the necessary truths of reason, gave to the former a noetical principle of their own, the principle of sufficient reason, and made sensation an indispensable step to thought.
To the tendencies thus manifested toward a just estimation and peaceful reconciliation of opposing standpoints, Leibnitz remained true in all the fields to which he devoted his activity. Thus, in the sphere of religion, he took an active part in the negotiations looking toward the reunion of the Protestant and Catholic Churches, as well as in those concerning the union of the Lutheran and the Reformed. Himself a stimulating man, he yet needed stimulation from without. He was an astonishingly wide reader, and declared that he had never found a book that did not contain something of value. With a ready adaptability to the ideas of others he combined a remarkable power of transformative appropriation; he read into books more than stood written in them. The versatility of his genius was unlimited: jurist, historian, diplomat, mathematician, physical scientist, and philosopher, and in addition almost a theologian and a philologist-he is not only at home in all these departments, because versed in them, but everywhere contributes to their advancement by original ideas and plans. In such a combination of productive genius and wealth of knowledge Aristotle and Leibnitz are unapproached.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646 at Leipsic, where his father (Friederich Leibnitz, died 1652) was professor of moral philosophy; in his fifteenth year he entered the university of his native city, with law as his princ.i.p.al subject. Besides law, he devoted himself with quite as much of ardor to philosophy under Jacob Thomasius (died 1684, the father of Christian Thomasius), and to mathematics under E. Weigel in Jena. In 1663 (with a dissertation ent.i.tled De Principio Individui) he became Bachelor, in 1664 Master of Philosophy, and in 1666, at Altdorf, Doctor of Laws, and then declined the professorship extraordinary offered him in the latter place. Having made the acquaintance of the former minister of the Elector of Mayence, Freiherr von Boineburg, in Nuremberg, he went, after a short stay at Frankfort-on-the-Main, to the court of the Elector at Mayence, at whose request he devoted himself to the reform of legal procedure, besides writing, while there, on the most diverse subjects. In 1672 he went to Paris, where he remained during four years with the exception of a short stay in London. The special purpose of the journey to Paris-to persuade Louis XIV to undertake a campaign in Egypt, in order to divert him from his designs upon Germany-was not successful; but Leibnitz was captivated by the society of the Parisian scholars, among them the mathematician, Huygens. From the end of 1676 until his death in 1716 Leibnitz lived in Hanover, whither he had been called by Johann Friedrich, as court councillor and librarian. The successor of this prince, Ernst August, who, with his wife Sophie, and his daughter Sophie Charlotte, showed great kindness to the philosopher, wished him to write a history of the princely house of Brunswick; and a journey which he made in order to study for this purpose was extended as far as Vienna and Rome. Upon his return he took charge of the Wolfenb.u.t.tel library in addition to his other engagements.
The marriage of the Princess Sophie Charlotte with Frederick of Brandenburg, the first king of Prussia, brought Leibnitz into close relations with Berlin. At his suggestion the Academy (Society) of Sciences was founded there in 1700, and he himself became its first president. In Charlottenburg he worked on his princ.i.p.al work, the New Essays concerning the Human Understanding, which was aimed at Locke, but the publication of which was deferred on account of the death of the latter in the interim (1704), and did not take place until 1765, in Raspe's collective edition. The death of the Prussian queen in 1705 interrupted for several years the Theodicy, which had been undertaken at her request, and which did not appear until 1710. In Vienna, where he resided in 1713-14, Leibnitz composed a short statement of his system for Prince Eugen; this, according to Gerhardt, was not the sketch in ninety paragraphs, familiar under the t.i.tle Monadology, which was first published in the original by J.E. Erdmann in his excellent Complete Edition of the Philosophical Works of Leibnitz, 1840, but the Principles of Nature and of Grace, which appeared two years after the author's death in L'Europe Savante. While Ernst August, as well as the German emperor and Peter the Great, distinguished the philosopher, who was not indifferent to such honors, by the bestowal of t.i.tles and preferments, his relations with the Hanoverian court, which until then had been so cordial, grew cold after the Elector Georg Ludwig ascended the English throne as George I. The letters which Leibnitz interchanged with his daughter-in-law, gave rise to the correspondence, continued to his death, with Clarke, who defended the theology of Newton against him. The contest for priority between Leibnitz and Newton concerning the invention of the differential calculus was later settled by the decision that Newton invented his method of fluxions first, but that Leibnitz published his differential calculus earlier and in a more perfect form. The variety of pursuits in which Leibnitz was engaged was unfavorable to the development and influence of his philosophy, in that it hindered him from working out his original ideas in systematic form, and left him leisure only for the composition of shorter essays. Besides the two larger works mentioned above, the New Essays and the Theodicy, we have of philosophical works by Leibnitz only a series of private letters, and articles for the scientific journals (the Journal des Savants in Paris, and the Acta Eruditorum in Leipsic, etc.), among which may be mentioned as specially important the New System of Nature, and of the Interaction of Substances as well as of the Union which exists between the Soul and the Body, 1695, which was followed during the next year by three explanations of it, and the paper De Ipsa Natura, 1698. Previous to Erdmann (1840) the following had deserved credit for their editions of Leibnitz: Feller, Kortholt, Gruber, Raspe, Dutens, Feder, Guhrauer (the German works), and since Erdmann, Pertz, Foucher de Careil, Onno Klopp, and especially J.C. Gerhardt. The last named published the mathematical works in seven volumes in 1849-63, and recently, Berlin, 1875-90, the philosophical treatises, also in seven volumes.[1] In our account of the philosophy of Leibnitz we begin with the fundamental metaphysical concepts, pa.s.s next to his theory of living beings and of man (theory of knowledge and ethics), and close with his inquiries into the philosophy of religion.
[Footnote 1: We have a life of Leibnitz by G.E. Guhrauer, jubilee edition, Breslau, 1846 [Mackie's Life, Boston, 1845 is based on Guhrauer]. Among recent works on Leibnitz, we note the little work by Merz, Blackwood's Philosophical Cla.s.sics, 1884, and Ludwig Stein's Leibniz und Spinoza, Berlin, 1890, in which with the aid of previously unedited material the relations of Leibnitz to Spinoza (whom he visited at The Hague on his return journey from Paris) are discussed, and the attempt is made to trace the development of the theory of monads, down to 1697. The new exposition of the Leibnitzian monadology by Ed. Dillman, which has just appeared, we have not yet been able to examine [The English reader may be referred further to Dewey's Leibniz in Griggs's Philosophical Cla.s.sics, 1888, and Duncan's Philosophical Works of Leibnitz (selections translated, with notes), New Haven, 1890, as well as to the work of Merz already mentioned.-TR.]]
1. Metaphysics: the Monads, Representation, the Pre-established Harmony; the Laws of Thought and of the World.
Leibnitz develops his new concept of substance, the monad,[1] in conjunction with, yet in opposition to, the Cartesian and the atomistic conceptions. The Cartesians are right when they make the concept of substance the cardinal point in metaphysics and explain it by the concept of independence. But they are wrong in their further definition of this second concept. If we take independence in the sense of unlimitedness and aseity, we can speak, as the example of Spinoza shows, of only one, the divine substance. If the Spinozistic result is to be avoided, we must subst.i.tute independent action for independent existence, self-activity for self-existence. Substance is not that which exists through itself (otherwise there would be no finite substances), but that which acts through itself, or that which contains in itself the ground of its changing states. Substance is to be defined by active force,[2] by which we mean something different from and better than the bare possibility or capacity of the Scholastics. The potentia sive facultas, in order to issue into action, requires positive stimulation from without, while the vis activa (like an elastic body) sets itself in motion whenever no external hindrance opposes. Substance is a being capable of action (la substance est un etre capable d'action). With the equation of activity and existence (quod non agit, non exist.i.t) the substantiality which Spinoza had taken away from individual things is restored to them: they are active, consequently, in spite of their limitedness, substantial beings (quod agit, est substantia singularis). Because of its inner activity every existing thing is a determinate individual, and different from every other being. Substance is an individual being endowed with force.
[Footnote 1: According to L. Stein's conjecture, Leibnitz took the expression Monad, which he employs after 1696, from the younger (Franc. Mercurius) van Helmont.]
[Footnote 2: Francis Glisson (1596-1677, professor of medicine in Cambridge and London) had as early as 1671, conceived substances as forces in his treatise De Natura Substantiae Energetica. That Glisson influenced Leibnitz, as maintained by H. Marion (Paris, 1880), has not been proven; cf. L. Stein, p. 184.]
The atomists are right when they postulate for the explanation of phenomenal bodies simple, indivisible, eternal units, for every composite consists of simple parts. But they are wrong when they regard these invisible, minute corpuscles, which are intended to subserve this purpose as indivisible: everything that is material, however small it be, is divisible to infinity, nay, is in fact endlessly divided. If we are to find indivisible units, we must pa.s.s over into the realm of the immaterial and come to the conclusion that bodies are composed of immaterial const.i.tuents. Physical points, the atoms, are physical, but not points; mathematical points are indivisible, but not real; metaphysical or substantial points, the incorporeal, soul-like units, alone combine in themselves indivisibility and reality-the monads are the true atoms. Together with indivisibility they possess immortality; as it is impossible for them to arise and perish through the combination and separation of parts, they cannot come into being or pa.s.s out of it in any natural way whatever, but only by creation or annihilation. Their non-spatial or punctual character implies the impossibility of all external influence, the monad develops its states from its own inner nature, has need of no other thing, is sufficient unto itself, and therefore deserves the Aristotelian name, entelechy.
Thus two lines of thought combine in the concept of the monad. Gratefully recognizing the suggestions from both sides, Leibnitz called Cartesianism the antechamber of the true philosophy, and atomism the preparation for the theory of monads. From the first it followed that the substances were self-acting forces; from the second, that they were immaterial units. Through the combination of both determinations we gain information concerning the kind of force or activity which const.i.tutes the being of the monad: the monads are representative forces. There is nothing truly real in the world save the monads and their representations [ideas, perceptions].
In discussing the representation in which the being and activity of the monads consist, we must not think directly of the conscious activity of the human soul. Representation has in Leibnitz a wider meaning than that usually a.s.sociated with the word. The distinction, which has become of the first importance for psychology, between mere representation and conscious representation, or between perception and apperception, may be best explained by the example of the sound of the waves. The roar which we perceive in the vicinity of the sea-beach is composed of the numerous sounds of the single waves. Each single sound is of itself too small to be heard; nevertheless it must make an impression on us, if only a small one, since otherwise their total-as a sum of mere nothings-could not be heard. The sensation which the motion of the single wave causes is a weak, confused, unconscious, infinitesimal perception (pet.i.te, insensible perception), which must be combined with many similar minute sensations in order to become strong and distinct, or to rise above the threshold of consciousness. The sound of the single wave is felt, but not distinguished, is perceived, but not apperceived. These obscure states of unconscious representation, which are present in the mind of man along with states of clear consciousness, make up, in the lowest grade of existence, the whole life of the monad. There are beings which never rise above the condition of deep sleep or stupor.
In conformity with this more inclusive meaning, perception is defined as the representation of the external in the internal, of multiplicity in unity (representatio mult.i.tudinis in unitate). The representing being, without prejudice to its simplicity, bears in itself a mult.i.tude of relations to external things. What now is the manifold, which is expressed, perceived, or represented, in the unit, the monad? It is the whole world. Every monad represents all others in itself, is a concentrated all, the universe in miniature. Each individual contains an infinity in itself (substantia infinitas actiones simul exercet) and a supreme intelligence, for which every obscure idea would at once become distinct, would be able to read in a single monad the whole universe and its history-all that is, has been, or will be; for the past has left its traces behind it, and the future will bring nothing not founded in the present: the monad is freighted with the past and bears the future in its bosom. Every monad is thus a mirror of the universe,[1] but a living mirror (miror vivant de l'univers), which generates the images of things by its own activity or develops them from inner germs, without experiencing influences from without. The monad has no windows through which anything could pa.s.s in or out, but in its action is dependent only on G.o.d and on itself.
[Footnote 1: The objection has been made against Leibnitz, and not without reason, that strictly speaking there is no content for the representation of the monads, although he appears to offer them the richest of all contents, the whole world. The "All" which he makes them represent is itself nothing but a sum of beings, also representative. The objects of representation are merely representing subjects; the monad A represents the monads from B to Z, while these in turn do nothing more than represent one another. The monad mirrors mirrors-where is the thing that is mirrored? The essence of substance consists in being related to others, which themselves are only points of relation; amid mere relativities we never reach a real. That which prevented Leibnitz himself from recognizing this empty formalism was, no doubt, the fact that for him the mere form of representation was at once filled with a manifold experiential content, with the whole wealth of spiritual life, and that the quant.i.tative differences in representation, which for him meant also degrees of feeling, desire, action, and progress, imperceptibly took on the qualitative vividness of individual characteristics. Moreover, it must not be overlooked that the spiritual beings represent not merely the universe but the Deity as well, hence a very rich object.]
All monads represent the same universe, but each one represents it differently, that is, from its particular point of view-represents that which is near at hand distinctly, and that which is distant confusedly. Since they all reflect the same content or object, their difference consists only in the energy or degree of clearness in their representations. So far then, as their action consists in representation, distinct representation evidently coincides with complete, unhindered activity, confused representation with arrested activity, or pa.s.sivity. The clearer the representations of a monad the more active it is. To have clear and distinct perceptions only is the prerogative of G.o.d; to the Omnipresent everything is alike near. He alone is pure activity; all finite beings are pa.s.sive as well, that is, so far as their perceptions are not clear and distinct. Retaining the Aristotelian-Scholastic terminology, Leibnitz calls the active principle form, the pa.s.sive matter, and makes the monad, since it is not, like G.o.d, purus actus and pure form, consist of form (entelechy, soul) and matter. This matter, as a const.i.tuent of the monad, does not mean corporeality, but only the ground for the arrest of its activity. The materia prima (the principle of pa.s.sivity in the monad) is the ground, the materia secunda (the phenomenon of corporeal ma.s.s) the result of the indistinctness of the representations. For a group of monads appears as a body when it is indistinctly perceived. Whoever deprives the monad of activity falls into the error of Spinoza; whoever takes away its pa.s.sivity or matter falls into the opposite error, for he deifies individual beings.
No monad represents the common universe and its individual parts just as well as the others, but either better or worse. There are as many different degrees of clearness and distinctness as there are monads.
Nevertheless certain cla.s.ses may be distinguished. By distinguishing between clear and obscure perceptions, and in the former cla.s.s between distinct and confused ones-a perception is clear when it is sufficiently distinguished from others, distinct when its component parts are thus distinguished-Leibnitz reaches three princ.i.p.al grades. Lowest stand the simple or naked monads, which never rise above obscure and unconscious perception and, so to speak, pa.s.s their lives in a swoon or sleep. If perception rises into conscious feeling, accompanied by memory, then the monad deserves the name of soul. And if the soul rises to self-consciousness and to reason or the knowledge of universal truth, it is called spirit. Each higher stage comprehends the lower, since even in spirits many perceptions remain obscure and confused. Hence it was an error when the Cartesians made thought or conscious activity-by which, it is true, the spirit is differentiated from the lower beings-to such a degree the essence of spirit that they believed it necessary to deny to it all unconscious perceptions.
From perception arises appet.i.tion, not as independent activity, but as a modification of perception; it is nothing but the tendency to pa.s.s from one perception to another (l'appet.i.t est la tendance d'une perception a une autre); impulse is perception in process of becoming. Where the perceptions are conscious and rational appet.i.tion rises into will. All monads are self-active or act spontaneously, but only the thinking ones are free. Freedom is the spontaneity of spirits. Freedom does not consist in undetermined choice, but in action without external compulsion according to the laws of one's own being. The monad develops its representations out of itself, from the germs which form its nature. The correspondence of the different pictures of the world, however, is grounded in a divine arrangement, through which the natures of the monads have from the beginning been so adapted to one another that the changes in their states, although they take place in each according to immanent laws and without external influence, follow an exactly parallel course, and the result is the same as though there were a constant mutual interaction. This general idea of a pre-established harmony finds special application in the problem of the interaction between body and soul. Body and soul are like two clocks so excellently constructed that, without needing to be regulated by each other, they show exactly the same time. Over the numberless lesser miracles with which occasionalism burdened the Deity, the one great miracle of the pre-established harmony has an undeniable advantage. As one great miracle it is more worthy of the divine wisdom than the many lesser ones, nay, it is really no miracle at all, since the harmony does not interfere with natural laws, but yields them. This idea may even be freed from its theological invest.i.ture and reduced to the purely metaphysical expression, that the natures of the monads, by which the succession of their representations is determined in conformity with law, consist in nothing else than the sum of relations in which this individual thing stands to all other parts of the world, wherein each member takes account of all others and at the same time is considered by them, and thus exerts influence as well as suffers it. In this way the external idea of an artificial adaptation is avoided. The essence of each thing is simply the position which it occupies in the organic whole of the universe; each member is related to every other and shares actively and pa.s.sively in the life of all the rest. The history of the universe is a single great process in numberless reflections.
The metaphysics of Leibnitz begins with the concept of representation and ends with the harmony of the universe. The representations were multiplicity (the endless plurality of the represented) in unity (the unity of the representing monad); the harmony is unity (order, congruity of the world-image) in multiplicity (the infinitely manifold degrees of clearness in the representations). All monads represent the same universe; each one mirrors it differently. The unity, as well as the difference, could not be greater than it is; every possible degree of distinctness of representation is present in each single monad, and yet there is a single harmonic accord in which the unnumbered tones unite. Now order amid diversity, unity in variety make up the concept of beauty and perfection. If, then, this world shows, as it does, the greatest unity in the greatest multiplicity, so that there is nothing wanting and nothing superfluous, it is the most perfect, the best of all possible worlds. Even the lowest grades contribute to the perfection of the whole; their disappearance would mean a hiatus; and if the unclear and confused representations appear imperfect when considered in themselves, yet they are not so in reference to the whole; for just on this fact, that the monad is arrested in its representation or is pa.s.sive, i.e., conforms itself to the others and subordinates itself to them, rest the order and connection of the world. Thus the idea of harmony forms the bridge between the Monadology and optimism.
As in regard to the harmony of the universe we found it possible to distinguish between a half-mythical, narrative form of presentation and a purely abstract conception, so we may make a similar distinction in the doctrine of creation. This actual world has been chosen by G.o.d as the best among many other conceivable worlds. Through the will of G.o.d the monads of which the world consists attained their reality; as possibilities or ideas they were present in the mind of G.o.d (as it were, prior to their actualization), present, too, with all the distinctive properties and perfections that they now exhibit in a state of realization, so that their merely possible or conceivable being had the same content as their actual being, and their essence is not altered or increased by their existence. Now, since the impulse toward actualization dwells in every possible essence, and is the more justifiable the more perfect the essence, a compet.i.tion goes on before G.o.d, in which, first, those monod-possibilities unite which are mutually compatible or compossible, and, then, among the different conceivable combinations of monads or worlds that one is ordained for entrance into existence which shows the greatest possible sum of perfection. It was, therefore, not the perfection of the single monad, but the perfection of the system of which it forms a necessary part, that was decisive as to its admission into existence. The best world was known through G.o.d's wisdom, chosen through his goodness, and realized through his power.[1] The choice was by no means arbitrary, but wholly determined by the law of fitness or of the best (principe du meilleur); G.o.d's will must realize that which his understanding recognizes as most perfect. It is at once evident that in the compet.i.tion of the possible worlds the victory of the best was a.s.sured by the lex melioris, apart from the divine decision.
[Footnote 1: In regard to the dependence of the world on G.o.d, there is a certain conflict noticeable in Leibnitz between the metaphysical interests involved in the substantiality of individual beings, together with the moral interests involved in guarding against fatalism, and the opposing interests of religion. On the one side, creation is for him only an actualization of finished, unchangeable possibilities, on the other, he teaches with the mediaeval philosophers that this was not accomplished by a single act of realization, that the world has need of conservation, i.e., of continuous creation.]
This law is the special expression of a more general one, the principle of sufficient reason, which Leibnitz added, as of equal authority, to the Aristotelian laws of thought. Things or events are real (and a.s.sertions true) when there is a sufficient reason for their existence, and for their determinate existence. The principium rationis sufficientis governs our empirical knowledge of contingent truths or truths of fact, while, on the other hand, the pure rational knowledge of necessary or eternal (mathematical and metaphysical) truths rests on the principium contradictionis. The principle of contradiction a.s.serts, that is, whatever contains a contradiction is false or impossible; whatever contains no contradiction is possible; that whose opposite contains a contradiction is necessary. Or positively formulated as the principle of ident.i.ty, everything and every representative content is identical with itself.[2] Upon this ant.i.thesis between the rational laws of contradiction and sufficient reason-which, however, is such only for us men, while the divine spirit, which cognizes all things a priori, is able to reduce even the truths of fact to the eternal truths-Leibnitz bases his distinction between two kinds of necessity. That is metaphysically necessary whose opposite involves a contradiction; that is morally necessary or contingent which, on account of its fitness, is preferred by G.o.d to its (equally conceivable) opposite. To the latter cla.s.s belongs, further, the physically necessary: the necessity of the laws of nature is only a conditional necessity (conditioned by the choice of the best); they are contingent truths or truths of fact. The principle of sufficient reason holds for efficient as well as for final causes, and between the two realms there is, according to Leibnitz, the most complete correspondence. In the material world every particular must be explained in a purely mechanical way, but the totality of the laws of nature, the universal mechanism itself, cannot in turn be mechanically explained, but only on the basis of finality, so that the mechanical point of view is comprehended in, and subordinated to, the teleological. Thus it becomes clear how Leibnitz in the ratio sufficiens has final causes chiefly in mind.
[Footnote 2: Within the knowledge of reason, as well as in experiential knowledge, a further distinction is made between primary truths (which need no proof) and derived truths. The highest truths of reason are the identical principles, which are self-evident; from these intuitive truths all others are to be derived by demonstration-proof is a.n.a.lysis and, as free from contradictions, demonstration. The primitive truths of experience are the immediate facts of consciousness; whatever is inferred from them is less certain than demonstrative knowledge. Nevertheless experience is not to be estimated at a low value; it is through it alone that we can a.s.sure ourselves of the reality of the objects of thought, while necessary truths guarantee only that a predicate must be ascribed to a subject (e.g., a circle), but make no deliverance as to whether this subject exists or not.]
To the broad and comprehensive tendency which is characteristic of Leibnitz's thinking, philosophy owes a further series of general laws, which all stand in the closest relation to one another and to his monadological and harmonistic principles, viz., the law of continuity, the law of a.n.a.logy, the law of the universal dissimilarity of things or of the ident.i.ty of indiscernibles, and, finally, the law of the conservation of force.
The most fundamental of these laws is the lex continui. On the one hand, it forbids every leap, on the other, all repet.i.tion in the series of beings and the series of events. Member must follow member without a break and without superfluous duplication; in the scale of creatures, as in the course of events, absolute continuity is the rule. Just as in the monad one state continually develops from another, the present one giving birth to the future, as it has itself grown out of the past, just as nothing persists, as nothing makes its entrance suddenly or without the way being prepared for it, and as all extremes are bound together by connecting links and gradual transitions,-so the monad itself stands in a continuous gradation of beings, each of which is related to and different from each. Since the beings and events form a single uninterrupted series, there are no distinctions of kind in the world, but only distinctions in degree. Rest and motion are not opposites, for rest may be considered as infinitely minute motion; the ellipse and the parabola are not qualitatively different, for the laws which hold for the one may be applied to the other. Likeness is vanishing unlikeness, pa.s.sivity arrested activity, evil a lesser good, confused ideas simply less distinct ones, animals men with infinitely little reason, plants animals with vanishing consciousness, fluidity a lower degree of solidity, etc. In the whole world similarity and correspondence rule, and it is everywhere the same as here-between apparent opposites there is a distinction in degree merely, and hence, a.n.a.logy. In the macrocosm of the universe things go on as in the microcosm of the monad; every later state of the world is prefigured in the earlier, etc. If, on the one side, the law of a.n.a.logy follows as a consequence from the law of continuity, on the other, we have the principium (ident.i.tatis) indiscernibilium. As nature abhors gaps, so also it avoids the superfluous. Every grade in the series must be represented, but none more than once. There are no two things, no two events which are entirely alike. If they were exactly alike they would not be two, but one. The distinction between them is never merely numerical, nor merely local and temporal, but always an intrinsic difference: each thing is distinguished from every other by its peculiar nature. This law holds both for the truly real (the monads) and for the phenomenal world-you will never find two leaves exactly alike. By the law of the conservation of force, Leibnitz corrects the Cartesian doctrine of the conservation of motion, and approaches the point of view of the present day. According to Descartes it is the sum of actual motions, which remains constant; according to Leibnitz, the sum of the active forces; while, according to the modern theory, it is the sum of the active and the latent or potential forces-a distinction, moreover, of which Leibnitz himself made use.
We now turn from the formal framework of general laws, to the actual, to that which, obeying these laws, const.i.tutes the living content of the world.
2. The Organic World.
A living being is a machine composed of an infinite number of organs. The natural machines formed by G.o.d differ from the artificial machines made by the hand of man, in that, down to their smallest parts, they consist of machines. Organisms are complexes of monads, of which one, the soul, is supreme, while the rest, which serve it, form its body. The dominant monad is distinguished from those which surround it as its body by the greater distinctness of its ideas. The supremacy of the soul-monad consists in this one superior quality, that it is more active and more perfect, and clearly reflects that which the body-monads represent but obscurely. A direct interaction between soul and body does not take place; there is only a complete correspondence, inst.i.tuted by G.o.d. He foresaw that the soul at such and such a moment would have the sensation of warmth, or would wish an arm-motion executed, and has so ordered the development of the body-monads that, at the same instant, they appear to cause this sensation and to obey this impulse to move. Now, since G.o.d in this foreknowledge and accommodation naturally paid more regard to the perfect beings, to the more active and more distinctly perceiving monads than to the less perfect ones, and subordinated the latter, as means and conditions, to the former as ends, the soul, prior to creation, actually exercised an ideal influence-through the mind of G.o.d-upon its body. Its activity is the reason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a pa.s.sion takes place, since the action was attainable only in this way, "compossible" with this alone.[1] The monads which const.i.tute the body are the first and direct object of the soul; it perceives them more distinctly than it perceives, through them, the rest of the external world. In view of the close connection of the elements of the organism thus postulated, Leibnitz, in the discussions with Father Des Bosses concerning the compatibility of the Monadology with the doctrine of the Church, especially with the real presence of the body of Christ in the Supper, consented, in favor of the dogma, to depart from the a.s.sumption that the simple alone could be substantial and to admit the possibility of composite substances, and of a "substantial bond" connecting the parts of living beings. It appears least in contradiction with the other principles of the philosopher to a.s.sign the role of this vinculum substantiate to the soul or central monad itself.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Gustav Cla.s.s, Die metaphysischen Voraussetzungen des Leibnizischen Determinismus, Tubingen, 1874.]
Everything in nature is organized; there are no soulless bodies, no dead matter. The smallest particle of dust is peopled with a mult.i.tude of living beings and the tiniest drop of water swarms with organisms: every portion of matter may be compared to a pond filled with fish or a garden full of plants. This denial of the inorganic does not release our philosopher from the duty of explaining its apparent existence. If we thoughtfully consider bodies, we perceive that there is nothing lifeless and non-representative. But the phenomenon of extended ma.s.s arises for our confused sensuous perception, which perceives the monads composing a body together and regards them as a continuous unity. Body exists only as a confused idea in the feeling subject; since, nevertheless, a reality without the mind, namely, an immaterial monad-aggregate, corresponds to it, the phenomenon of body is a well-founded one (phenomenon bene fundatum). As matter is merely something present in sensation or confused representation, so s.p.a.ce and time are also nothing real, neither substances nor properties, but only ideal things-the former the order of coexistences, the latter the order of successions.