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 investiture 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 passively 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 passive,
_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 God as the best
among many other conceivable worlds. Through the will of God the monads of
which the world consists attained their reality; as possibilities or
ideas they were present in the mind of God (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
competition goes on before God, 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 God'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_); God's will must
realize that which his understanding recognizes as most perfect. It is at
once evident that in the competition of the possible worlds the victory of
the best was assured by the _lex melioris_, apart from the divine decision.
[Footnote 1: In regard to the dependence of the world on God, 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 assertions
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 asserts, 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 identity,
everything and every representative content is identical with itself.[2]
Upon this antithesis 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 God to its (equally
conceivable) opposite. To the latter class 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 analysis 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 assure
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 analogy, the law of the universal dissimilarity of things or of the
identity 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 repetition 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, passivity 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,
analogy. 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 analogy follows as a consequence from
the law of continuity, on the other, we have the _principium (identitatis)
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, constitutes 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 God 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, instituted by God. 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 God 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 God--upon its body. Its activity is the
reason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a passion takes place,
since the action was attainable only in this way,
"compossible" with this
alone.[1] The monads which constitute 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 assumption 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 assign the
rôle of this _vinculum substantiate_ to the soul or central monad itself.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Gustav Class, _Die metaphysischen Voraussetzungen des
Leibnizischen Determinismus_, Tübingen, 1874.]
Everything in nature is organized; there are no soulless bodies, no dead
matter. The smallest particle of dust is peopled with a multitude 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 mass 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 space
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.
If there are no soulless bodies, there are also no bodiless souls; the soul
is always joined with an aggregate of subordinate monads, though not always
with the same ones. Single monads are constantly passing into its body,
or into its service, while others are passing out; it is involved in a
continuous process of bodily transformation. Usually the change goes on
slowly and with a constant replacement of the parts thrown off. If it takes
place quickly men call it birth or death. Actual death there is as little
as there is an actual genesis; not the soul only, but every living thing
is imperishable. Death is decrease and involution, birth increase and
evolution. The dying creature loses only a portion of its bodily machine
and so returns to the slumberous or germinal condition of "involution",
in which it existed before birth, and from which it was aroused through
conception to development. Pre-existence as well as post-existence must
be conceded both to animals and to men. Leuwenhoek's discovery of the
spermatozoa furnished a welcome confirmation for this doctrine, that all
individuals have existed since the beginning of the world, at least as
preformed germs. The immortality of man, conformably to his superior
dignity, differs from the continued existence of all monads, in that after
his death he retains memory and the consciousness of his moral personality.
%3. Man: Cognition and Volition.%
In reason man possesses reflection or self-consciousness as well as the
knowledge of God, of the universal, and of the eternal truths or _a priori_
knowledge, while the animal is limited in its perception to experience,
and in its reasoning to the connection of perceptions in accordance with
memory. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of his
ideas are confused. Under confused ideas Leibnitz includes both
sense-perceptions--anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God, has no
sense-perceptions--and the feelings which mediate between the former and
the perfectly distinct ideas of rational thought. The delight of music
depends, in his opinion, on an unconscious numbering and measuring of
the harmonic and rhythmic relations of tones, aesthetic enjoyment of
the beautiful in general, and even sensuous pleasure, on the confused
perception of a perfection, order, or harmony.
The application of the _lex continui_ to the inner life has a very wide
range. The principal results are: (1) the mind always thinks; (2) every
present idea postulates a previous one from which it has arisen; (3)
sensation and thought differ only in degree; (4) in the order of time, the
ideas of sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas,
only we are often not conscious of them. If thought ceased in deep sleep,
we could have no ideas on awakening, since every representation proceeds
from a preceding one, even though it be unconscious.
In the thoughtful _New Essays concerning the Human Understanding_ Leibnitz
develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary
to Locke's chief work.[1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pure
concepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all.
Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come from
without, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz none.
Leibnitz agrees with Descartes against Locke in the position that the mind
originally possesses ideas; he agrees with Locke against Descartes, that
thought is later than sensation and the knowledge of universals later
than that of particulars. The originality which Leibnitz attributes to
intellectual ideas is different from that which Descartes had ascribed and
Locke denied to them. They are original in that they do not come into the
soul and are not impressed upon it from without; they are not original in
that they can develop only from previously given sense-ideas; again, they
are original in that they can be developed from confused ideas only because
they are contained in them _implicite_ or as predispositions.
Thus Leibnitz is able to agree with both his predecessors up to a certain
point: with the one, that the pure concepts have their origin within the
mind; with the other, that they are not the earliest knowledge, but are
conditioned by sensations. This synthesis, however, was possible only
because Leibnitz looked on sensation differently from both the others. If
sensation is to be the mother of thought, and the latter at the same time
to preserve its character as original, _i.e._, as something not obtained
from without, sensation must, first, include an unconscious thinking in
itself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality and
spontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of the
mother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin of
rational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. The
monad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is to
experience, and nothing is impressed on it from without.
The intellect
should not be compared to a blank tablet, but to a block of marble in whose
veins the outlines of the statue are prefigured. Ideas can only arise from
ideas, never from external impressions or movements of corporeal parts.
Thus _all_ ideas are innate in the sense that they grow from inner germs;
we possess them from the beginning, not developed (_explicite_), but
potentially, that is, we have the capacity to produce them. The old
Scholastic principle that "there is nothing in the understanding which was
not previously in sense" is entirely correct, only one must add, except the
understanding itself, that is, the faculty of developing our knowledge
out of ourselves. Thought lies already dormant in perception. With the
mechanical position (sensuous representation precedes and conditions
rational thought) is joined the teleological position (sensuous
representations exist, in order to render the origin of thoughts possible),
and with this purposive determination, sensation attains a higher dignity:
it is more than has been seen in it before, for it includes in itself the
future concept of the understanding in an unconscious form, nay, it is
itself an imperfect thought, a thought in process of becoming. Sensation
and thought are not different in kind, and if the former is called a
passive state, still passivity is nothing other than diminished activity.
Both are spontaneous; thought is merely spontaneous in a higher degree.
[Footnote 1: A careful comparison of Locke's theory of knowledge with
that of Leibnitz is given by G. Hartenstein, _Abhandlungen der k. sächs.
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_, Leipsic, 1865, included in Hartenstein's
_Historisch-philosophische Abhandlungen_, 1870.]
By making sensation and feeling the preliminary step to thought, Leibnitz
became the founder of that intellectualism which, in the system of Hegel,
extended itself far beyond the psychological into the cosmical field, and
endeavored to conceive not only all psychical phenomena but all reality
whatsoever as a development of the Idea toward itself.
This conception,
which may be cha