Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not.
A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils
the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for the curve
constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of simple
substances.
Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In the
second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius', he
added the following note:
'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small
difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they [38]
have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to
me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be
admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest,
which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that
of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_
of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a
_way of assistance_ or occasional causality. But here is a new acquisition,
a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr. Lami styles it, a _way of
pre-established harmony_. We are beholden for it to M. Leibniz, and it is
impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power
and wisdom of the Author of all things. This, together with the advantage
of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to
prefer this new system to that of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any
possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_.
'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this way
removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract what I
have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in
God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in _Histoire des
Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698.) I am as much persuaded as ever I was
that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless God produces it as
an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is
immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle
properly so called. But being willing to cut off from this dispute as many
things as I possibly can, I consent it should be said that the surest way
of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all
created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of
nature. I will therefore lay aside what I might reply to that part of M.
Leibniz's answer.
'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion
than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore propose the
difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can
receive from God the power of moving itself. They are strong and almost
unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than
that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether the Cartesians would
presume to say that God cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting.
If they say so, how can they own that Adam sinned? And if they dare not[39]
say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that
matter is not capable of any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more
difficult for M. Leibniz than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to
free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human
liberty. Wherefore, waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to
the system of the _pre-established harmony_.
'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of
the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to yourself a
ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being
directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself
so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and
rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a
harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship sails in that
manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as
it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the
different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that God,
notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a
ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of
receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes about the machine
of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. Let us
apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the
person of Julius Caesar.
'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius Caesar
did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went
through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual
changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no
impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that faculty
of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone
to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have
spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate
his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving
power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of
the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a
certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar passed
from a certain thought to another. Can a blind power modify itself so
exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years [40]
before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing
what it is to do? Is not this much more incomprehensible than the
navigation I spoke of in the foregoing paragraph?
'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the
human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is
continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[1] and
which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts
of modifications. How is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established
harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest
life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal
action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all
sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes
dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a
thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of
external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.
[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be
reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed
of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action
really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the
action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects
_ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every
one of them.'
'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit
it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that
God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see
other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and
knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit
that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily
confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be [41]
necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according
to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of
the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of
the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's
hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties
than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It
puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon
another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey
their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real
action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and
make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants.
'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find the
thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being
exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God was
the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those
actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them
were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not
contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple,
indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not
acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most
philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (Mr.
Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and
disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would
appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and I could refute
it several other ways; which I need not mention since he acknowledges the
immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.
'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial
automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of
Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which
will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this
atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it
without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything:
and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which has received
the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [42]
of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted nor thwarted by
anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions and the ideas of
order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in
motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present
moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always
move in the same manner. This is the consequence of an axiom approved by M.
Leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it
happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ...
we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always
be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or
change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless
something happens to hinder it_. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)
'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power,
as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the
Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform
manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed at, when
he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which
he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he
could give no reason for this new part of his system. It was inconsistent
with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom
which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away
at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a
mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which
begins to play at that very moment. The first of these reasons cannot be
admitted in a vacuum. The second is impossible, since an atom has not the
faculty of thinking. And the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle
that is a perfect unity. I must make some use of all this.
'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. The
faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so M. Leibniz),
which it has received from God, both as to possession and exercise. If the
first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why
the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total
cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this
soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty
of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and
it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43]
moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the
second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be
objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be
in such a state, in the case that I have supposed; I answer that its change
will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in
the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the
preceding situation. A soul may therefore continue in its state of change,
if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding.
'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be
granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some
reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul of
Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it does
immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has
only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images
arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of
thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one
another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot apprehend how
God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle of what I am
going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when
he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's hypothesis which I
am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain
immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk,
which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. By what springs
was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a
sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing
itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? If you
run over the life of that Roman emperor, every page will afford you matter
for a stronger objection than this is.
'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the
soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of
which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made
in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it should be said
that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of
matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine,
awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those
spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[44]
but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just
like all material beings. We are here in quest of a single being, which
produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many
beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.
'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M.
Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
reflexions upon his answers.
'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in
the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the
very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the
law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is
done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner,
and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words
are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it
were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very
things at which the objections of those who take this system to be
impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of
God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes.
Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to
which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as
we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those
laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it,
that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the
soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however
infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a
machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a
piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by
him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the
instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it
I shall make use of a comparison.
'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing
continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs
him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes
or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that
according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after
another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. Without this one cannot
apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [45]
appointed him by God. Let us apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have
it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts
continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of
thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of
the body. This set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the
singing animal above mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or
modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without
knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But
experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least
necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul
a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause
of such and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to
operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence
_pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the
soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible
substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular
instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the
tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a human soul
should execute that law.
'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future
perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are
in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it:
but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from
distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a natural
consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so simple, has
always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which
answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a
machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those that
follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in
motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the
same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable
sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite
variety of what is to result from it in time. This is only a consequence of
the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens
and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of
all the parts of the world_. I have but little to say in answer to this: I
shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the
right way of solving all the difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the [46]
penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and
strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main
inconveniency. I do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of
his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits.
Nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual
world. I hope that his curious explanations will remove all the
impossibilities which I have hitherto found in his system, and that he will
solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these
hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that
learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important
conquest.
'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to
the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the
union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular
law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive
constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do
not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in
angelic nature?'
Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as
though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in
fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard
collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch
for the _Theodicy_.
The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which,
according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity
is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like
the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to
compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole
universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to
play in the total harmony.
As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul
plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony,
this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment
present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to
happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an omniscient
observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[47]
Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from
subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once
we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to be doing is to generalize
this observation. All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of
the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the
least conscious.
Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article
'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the
question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their
fuller treatment in the _Theodicy_.
In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle himself,
offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded it with a
paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the
historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and
revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:
'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking
reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your
boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able to
excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to
descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were
it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I have
worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon these
countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging
to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer
facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should prefer natural history
to political, and the customs and laws God has established in nature, to
what is observed among mankind.'
Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in
Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to
them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work
nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in _Theodicy_.
[49]
* * * * *