CRITICISM AND CONCLUSION.
In the exposition now completed we have in general taken for granted
the truth and coherency of Leibniz's fundamental ideas, and have
contented ourselves with an account of the principles and notions that
flow from these ideas. The time has come for retracing our steps, and
for inquiring whether the assumed premises can be thus unquestioningly
adopted. This final chapter, therefore, we shall devote to criticism
of the basis of Leibniz's philosophy, not attempting to test it by
a comparison with other systems, but by inquiring into its internal
coherency, and by a brief account of the ways in which his successors,
or at least one of them, endeavored to make right the points in which
he appeared to fail.
The fundamental contradiction in Leibniz is to be found, I believe,
between the method which he adopted--without inquiry into its validity
and scope--and the subject-matter, or perhaps better the attitude,
to which he attempted to apply this method; between, that is to
say, the scholastic formal logic on the one hand and the idea of
inter-relation derived from the development of scientific thought,
on the other. Leibniz never thought of investigating the formal logic
bequeathed by scholasticism, with a view to determining its adequacy
as philosophic method. He adopted, as we have seen, the principles
of identity and contradiction as sole principles of the only perfect
knowledge. The type of knowledge is that which can be reduced to
a series of identical propositions, whose opposite is seen to be
impossible, because self-contradictory. Only knowledge in this form
can be said to be demonstrative and necessary. As against Locke he
justified the syllogistic method of the schoolmen as the typical method
of all rational truth.
On the other hand, Leibniz, as we saw in the earlier chapters,
had learned positively from the growth of science, negatively from
the failures of Descartes and Spinoza, to look upon the universe as
a unity of inter-related members,--as an organic unity, not a mere
self-identical oneness. Failing to see the cause of the failures of
Descartes and Spinoza in precisely their adoption of the logic of
identity and contradiction as ultimate, he attempted to reconcile this
method with the conception of organic activity. The result is constant
conflict between the method and content of his philosophy, between
its letter and its spirit. The contradiction is a twofold one. The
unity of the content of his philosophy, the conception of organism or
harmony, is a unity which essentially involves difference. The unity
of his method is a formal identity which excludes it. The unity,
whose discovery constitutes Leibniz's great glory as a philosopher,
is a unity of activity, a dynamic process. The unity of formal logic
is exclusive of any mediation or process, and is essentially rigid
and lifeless. The result is that Leibniz is constantly wavering
(in logical result, not of course in spirit) between two opposed
errors, one of which is, in reality, not different from Spinozism,
in that it regards all distinction as only phenomenal and unreal,
while the other is akin to atomism, in that attempting to avoid the
doctrine of the all-inclusive one, it does so only by supposing a
multitude of unrelated units, termed monads. And thus the harmony,
which in Leibniz's intention is the very content of reality, comes
to be, in effect, an external arrangement between the one and
the many, the unity and the distinction, in themselves incapable
of real relations. Such were the results of Leibniz's failure, in
Kantian language, to criticise his categories, in Hegelian language,
to develop a logic,--the results of his assuming, without examination,
the validity of formal logic as a method of truth.
So thoroughly is Leibniz imbued with the belief in its validity, that
the very conception, that of sufficient reason, which should have been
the means of saving him from his contradictions, is used in such a way
as to plunge him deeper into them. The principle of sufficient reason
may indeed be used as purely formal and external,--as equivalent to the
notion that everything, no matter what, has _some_ explanation. Thus
employed, it simply declares that everything has _a_ reason, without in
the least determining the _what_ of that reason,--its content. This is
what we mean by calling it formal. But this is not the way in which
Leibniz conceives of it. According to him, it is not a principle
of the external connection of one finite, or phenomenal, fact with
another. It is a principle in the light of which the whole phenomenal
world is to be viewed, declaring that its ground and meaning are to be
found in reason, in self-conscious intelligence. As we have seen, it is
equivalent, in Leibniz's case, to the notion that we have no complete
nor necessary knowledge of the world of scientific fact until we have
referred it to a conditioning "Supreme Spirit."
Looked at in this way, we see that the unity which Leibniz is
positively employing is an organic unity, a unity of intelligence
involving organic reference to the known world. But such a conception
of sufficient reason leaves no place for the final validity of
identity and non-contradiction; and therefore Leibniz, when dealing
with his method, and not, as in the passages referred to, with
his subject-matter, cannot leave the matter thus. To do so indeed
would have involved a complete reconstruction of his philosophy,
necessitating a derivation of all the categories employed from
intelligence itself (that is, from the sufficient or conditioning
reason). But the bondage to scholastic method is so great that Leibniz
can see no way but to measure intelligence by the ready-made principle
of identity, and thus virtually (though not in purpose) to explain
away the very principle of sufficient reason. In Leibniz's words:
"Contingent truths require an infinite analysis which only God
can carry out. Whence by him alone are they known _a priori_ and
demonstratively. For although the reason can always be found for some
occurring state in a prior state, this reason again requires a reason,
and we never arrive in the series to the ultimate reason. But this
_progressus ad infinitum_ takes (in us) the place of a sufficient
reason, which can be found only outside the series in God, on whom
all its members, prior and posterior depend, rather than upon one
another. _Whatever truth, therefore, is incapable of analysis, and
cannot be demonstrated from its own reasons, but has its ultimate
reason and certainty only from the divine mind, is not necessary._
Everything that we call truths of fact come under this head, and this
is the root of their contingency."
The sentences before the one italicized repeat what we have learned
before, and seem to convey the idea that the phenomenal world
is that which does not account for itself, because not itself a
self-determining reason, and which gets its ultimate explanation and
ground in a self-sufficient reason,--God. But notice the turn given to
the thought with the word "therefore." Therefore all truth incapable
of analysis,--that is, of reduction to identical propositions,
whose opposite is impossible because self-contradictory,--all truth
whose meaning depends upon not its bare identity, but upon its
relation to the very content of all intelligence, is not necessary,
but contingent. Leibniz here distinctly opposes identical truths as
necessary, to truth connected with reason as contingent. Synthetic
reference to the very structure of intelligence is thus made,
not the ground of truth, but a blot upon its completeness
and necessity. Perfect truth, it is implied in the argument,
is self-identical, known by mere analysis of itself, and needs
no reference to an organism of reason. The reference, therefore,
to a principle of sufficient reason is simply a concession to the
fragmentary and imperfect condition of all knowledge. Truth in itself
is self-identical; but appearing to us only confusedly, we employ
the idea of sufficient reason as a makeshift, by which we refer, in a
mass, all that we cannot thus reduce to identical propositions, to an
intelligence, or to a _Deus ex machina_ which can so reduce it. This is
the lame and impotent conclusion.
Leibniz's fundamental meaning is, no doubt, a correct one. He means
that contingency of fact is not real, but apparent; that it exists
only because of our inability to penetrate the reason which would
enable us completely to account for the facts under consideration. He
_means_ that if we could understand, _sub specie aeternitatis_,
from the standpoint of universal intelligence, we should see every
fact as necessary, as resulting from an intrinsic reason. But so
thoroughly is he fettered by the scholastic method--that is, the
method of formal logic--that he can conceive of this immanent and
intrinsic reason which makes every fact a truth--that is, self-evident
in its necessity--only as an analytic, self-contained identity. And
herein lies his contradiction: his method obliges him to conceive of
ultimate intelligence as purely formal, simply as that which does not
contradict itself, while the attitude of his thought and its concrete
subject-matter compel him to think of intelligence as possessing a
content, as the organic unity of a system of relations.
From this contradiction flow the other contradictions of Leibniz, which
we are now prepared to examine in more detail. For his ideas are so
much greater than his method that in almost every point there seems to
be contradiction. His ideas _per se_ mean one thing, and his ideas as
interpreted by his method another. Take his doctrine of individuality,
for instance. To some it has appeared that the great defect of the
Leibnizian philosophy is its individualism. Such conceive him simply
to have carried out in his monadism the doctrine of the individual
isolated from the universe to its logical conclusions, and thereby to
have rendered it absurd. In a certain sense, the charge is true. The
monad, according to the oft-repeated statement, has no intercourse
with the rest of the universe. It really excludes all else. It acts
as if nothing but itself and God were in existence. That is to say,
the monad, being the self-identical, must shut out all intrinsic or
real relations with other substances. Such relations would involve a
differentiating principle for which Leibniz's logic has no place. Each
monad is, therefore, an isolated universe. But such a result has no
value for Leibniz. He endeavors to correct it by the thought that each
monad _ideally_ includes the whole universe by mirroring it. And then
to reconcile the real exclusion and the ideal inclusion, he falls back
on a _Deus ex machina_ who arranges a harmony between them, foreign to
the intrinsic nature of each. Leibniz's individualism, it is claimed,
thus makes of his philosophy a synthesis, or rather a juxtaposition,
of mutually contradictory positions, each of which appears true only as
long as we do not attempt to think it together with the other.
There is, no doubt, truth in this representation. But a more
significant way of stating the matter is, I think, that Leibniz's
defect is not in his individualism, but in the defect of his conception
of the individual. His individualism is more apparent than real. It is
a negative principle, and negative in the sense of _privative_. The
individuality of the monad is due to its incompleteness, to its
imperfections. It is really matter which makes monads mutually
impenetrable or exclusive; it is matter which distinguishes them
from God, and thus from one another. Without the material element
they would be lost in an undistinguished identity with God, the
supreme substance. But matter, it must be remembered, is passivity;
and since activity is reality, or substance, matter is unsubstantial
and unreal. The same results from a consideration of knowledge. Matter
is always correlative to confused ideas. With the clearing up of
knowledge, with making it rational, matter must disappear, so that
to God, who is wholly reason, it must entirely vanish. But this
view varies only in words from that of Spinoza, to whom it is the
imagination, as distinguished from the intellect, that is the source of
particular and finite objects.
It is perhaps in his _Theodicée_, in the treatment of the problem of
evil, that his implicit Spinozism, or denial of individuality, comes
out most clearly. That evil is negative, or privative, and consists in
the finitude of the creature, is the result of the discussion. What is
this except to assert the unreality, the merely privative character,
of the finite, and to resolve all into God? To take one instance out
of many: he compares inertia to the original limitation of creatures,
and says that as inertia is the obstacle to the complete mobility
of bodies, so privation, or lack, constitutes the essence of the
imperfection, or evil, of creatures. His metaphor is of boats in
the current of a river, where the heavier one goes more slowly,
owing to inertia. The force of the current, which is the same to all,
and which is positive, suffering no diminution, is comparable to the
activity of God, which also is perfect and positive. As the current
is the positive source of all the movements of the bodies, and is in
no way responsible for the retardation of some boats, so God is the
source only of activities,--the perfections of his creatures. "As the
inertia of the boat is the cause of its slowness, so the limitations
of its receptivity are the cause of the defects found in the action
of creatures." Individuality is thus reduced to mere limitation; and
the unlimited, the real which includes all reality, is God. We are
thus placed in a double difficulty. This notion of an all-inclusive
one contradicts the reality of mutually exclusive monads; and we have
besides the characteristic difficulty of Spinoza,--how, on the basis
of this unlimited, self-identical substance, to account for even the
appearance of finitude, plurality and individuality.
Leibniz's fundamental defect may thus be said to be that, while
he realized, as no one before him had done, the importance of
the conception of the _negative_, he was yet unable to grasp the
significance of the negative, was led to interpret it as merely
privative or defective, and thus, finally, to surrender the very
idea. Had not his method, his presupposition regarding analytic
identity, bound him so completely in its toils, his clear perception
that it was the negative element that differentiated God from the
universe, intelligence from matter, might have brought him to a
general anticipation not only of Kant, but of Hegel. But instead of
transforming his method by this conception of negation, he allowed
his assumed (_i. e._, dogmatic) method to evacuate his conception
of its significance. It was Hegel who was really sufficiently in
earnest with the idea to read it into the very notion of intelligence
as a constituent organic element, not as a mere outward and formal
limitation.
We have already referred to the saying of Leibniz that the monad acts
as if nothing existed but God and itself. The same idea is sometimes
expressed by saying that God alone is the immediate or direct object
of the monad. Both expressions mean that, while the monad excludes
all other monads, such is not the case in its relation to God, but
that it has an organic relation with him. We cannot keep from asking
whether there is not another aspect of the contradiction here. How is
it possible for the monad so to escape from its isolation that it can
have communication with God more than with other substances? Or if
it can have communication with God, why cannot it equally bear real
relations of community with other monads? And the answer is found in
Leibniz's contradictory conceptions of God. Of these conceptions there
are at least three. When Leibniz is emphasizing his monadic theory,
with its aspects of individuality and exclusion, God is conceived as
the highest monad, as one in the series of monads, differing from the
others only in the degree of its activity. He is the "monad of monads";
the most complete, active, and individualized of all. But it is evident
that in this sense there can be no more intercourse between God and a
monad than there is between one monad and another. Indeed, since God
is _purus actus_ without any passivity, it may be said that there is,
if possible, less communication in this case than in the others. He is,
as Leibniz says, what a monad without matter would be, "a deserter from
the general order." He is the acme of isolation. This, of course, is
the extreme development of the "individual" side of Leibniz's doctrine,
resulting in a most pronounced atomism. Leibniz seems dimly conscious
of this difficulty, and thus by the side of this notion of God he
puts another. According to it, God is the source of all monads. The
monads are not created by a choice of the best of all possible worlds,
as his official theology teaches, but are the radiations of his
divinity. Writing to Bayle, Leibniz expresses himself as follows: "The
nature of substance consists in an active force of definite character,
from which phenomena proceed in orderly succession. This force was
originally received by, and is indeed preserved to, every substance by
the creator of all things, from whom all _actual forces or perfections
emanate by a sort of continual creation_." And in his Monadology
he says: All "the created or derived monads are the productions of
God, and are born, as it were, _by the continual fulgurations of the
divinity from instant to instant_, bounded by the receptivity of the
creature to which it is essential to be limited." What has become of
the doctrine of monads (although the word is retained) it would be
difficult to say. There is certainly no individual distinction now
between the created monads and God, and it is impossible to see why
there should be individual distinctions between the various created
monads. They appear to be all alike, as modes of the one comprehensive
substance. Here we have the universal, or "identity," side of Leibniz's
philosophy pushed to its logical outcome,--the doctrine of pantheism.
His third doctrine of God is really a unity of the two previous. It is
the doctrine that God is the harmony of the monads,--neither one among
them nor one made up of them, but their organic unity. This doctrine
is nowhere expressly stated in words (unless it be when he says that
"God alone constitutes the relation and community of substances"),
but it runs through his whole system. According to this, God _is_
the pre-established harmony. This conception, like that of harmony,
may have either a mechanical interpretation (according to which God is
the artificial, external point of contact of intelligence and reality,
in themselves opposed) or an organic meaning, according to which God
_is_ the unity of intelligence and reality. On this interpretation
alone does the saying that God is the only immediate object of the
monads have sense. It simply states that the apparent dualism between
intelligence and its object which is found in the world is overcome
in God; that the distinction between them is not the ultimate fact,
but exists in and for the sake of a unity which transcends the
difference. According to this view, the opposition between ideal
inclusion and real exclusion vanishes. God _is_ the harmony of the real
and ideal, not a mere arrangement for bringing them to an understanding
with one another. Individuality and universality are no longer opposed
conceptions, needing a _tertium quid_ to relate them, but are organic
factors of reality, and this, at the same time, is intelligence.
But admitting this conception as stating the implicit intention of
Leibniz, the relation of monads to one another is wholly different from
that which Leibniz gives. And to this point we now come. If in God,
the absolute, the real and the ideal are one, it is impossible that in
substances, which have their being and significance only in relation
to God, or this unity, the real and the ideal should be so wholly
separated as Leibniz conceives.
Leibniz's conception relative to this is, as we have seen, that
there is no physical _influxus_, or _commercium_, of monads, but
ideal consensus. _Really_ each shuts out every other; _ideally_,
or representatively, it includes every other. His positive thought
in the matter is that a complete knowledge of any portion of the
universe would involve a perfect knowledge of the whole, so organic
is the structure of the universe. Each monad sums up the past history
of the world, and is big with its future. This is the conception of
inter-relation; the conception of all in one, and one as a member,
not a part of a whole. It is the conception which Leibniz brought
to birth, the conception of the thorough unity of the world. In this
notion there is no denial of community of relation; it is rather the
culmination of relation. There is no isolation. But according to his
presupposed logic, individuality can mean only identity excluding
distinction,--identity without intrinsic relation, and, as Leibniz
is bound at all hazards to save the notion of individuality, he is
obliged to think of this inter-relation as only ideal, as the result of
a predetermined tendency given at its creation to the self-identical
monad by God. But of course Leibniz does not escape the contradiction
between identity and distinction, between individuality and
universality, by this means. He only transfers it to another realm. In
the relation of the monad to God the diversity of its content, the real
or universal element, is harmonized with the identity of its law, its
ideal or individual factor. But if these elements do not conflict here,
why should they in the relation of the monads to one another? Either
there is already an immanent harmony between the individual and
universal, and no external arrangement is needed to bring it about, or
there is no such harmony, and therefore no relation possible between
God and the individual monad. One side of the Leibnizian philosophy
renders the other side impossible.
Another consequence of Leibniz's treatment of the negative as
merely limitative is that he can find no distinction, excepting of
degree, between nature and spirit. Such a conception is undoubtedly
in advance of the Cartesian dualism, which regards them as opposed
realms _without_ any relation; but it may be questioned whether it is
as adequate a view as that which regards them as distinct realms _on
account_ of relation. At all events, it leads to confusion in Leibniz's
treatment of both material objects and self-conscious personalities. In
the former case his method of escape is a metaphor,--that objects
apparently material are full of souls, or spirits. This may mean that
the material is _merely_ material only when considered in implicit
abstraction from the intelligence which conditions it, that the
material, in truth, is constituted by some of the relations which
in their completeness make up intelligence. This at least bears a
consistent meaning. But it is not monadism; it is not the doctrine
that matter differs from spirit only in degree: it is the doctrine
that they differ in kind, as the conditioned from the conditioning. At
times, however, Leibniz attempts to carry out his monadism literally,
and the result is that he conceives matter as being itself endowed,
in some unexplained way, with souls, or since this implies a dualism
between matter and soul, of being made up, composed, of souls. But
as he is obliged to explain that this composition is not spatial, or
physical, but only ideal, this doctrine tends to resolve itself into
the former. And thus we end where we began,--with a metaphor.
On the other hand there is a wavering treatment of the nature
of spirit. At times it is treated as precisely on a level in kind
with the monads that "compose" matter, differing only in the greater
degree of its activity. But at other times it is certainly represented
as standing on another plane. "The difference between those monads
which express the world with consciousness and those which express it
unintelligently is as great as the difference between a mirror and one
who sees." If Leibniz means what he seems to imply by these words,
it is plainly asserted that only the spiritual being is worthy of
being called a monad, or individual, at all, and that material being
is simply a dependent manifestation of spirit. Again he says: "Not all
entelechies are, like our soul, _images of God_,--being made as members
of a society or state of which he is chief,--but all are _images of
the universe_." In this distinction between self-conscious beings as
images of God and unconscious monads as images of the universe there
is again implied a difference of kind. That something is the image
of the universe need mean only that it cannot be explained without
its relations to the universe. To say that something is the image of
God, must mean that it is itself spiritual and self-conscious. God
alone is reason and activity. He alone has his reality in
himself. Self-conscious beings, since members of a community with him,
must participate in this reality in a way different in kind from those
things which, at most, are only substances or objects, not subjects.
Nor do the difficulties cease here. If matter be conceived, not as
implied in the relations by which reason is realized in constituting
the universe, but as itself differing from reason only in degree,
it is impossible to account for its existence. Why should a less
degree of perfection exist than is necessary? Why should not the
perfect activity, God, complete the universe in himself? Leibniz's
answer that an infinity of monads multiplies his existence so far as
possible, may hold indeed of other spirits, who mirror him and live
in one divine society, but is utterly inapplicable to those which fail
to image him. Their existence, as material, is merely privative; it is
merely the absence of the activity found in conscious spirit. How can
this deprivation, this limitation, increase in any way the harmony and
perfection of the universe? Leibniz's theory of the negative, in fine,
compels him to put nature and spirit on the same level, as differing
only in degree. This, so far from giving nature a reality, results in
its being swallowed up in spirit, not as necessarily distinct from
it and yet one with it, but as absorbed in it, since the apparent
difference is only privative. Nor does the theory insure the reality
of spirit. This, since one in kind with matter, is swallowed up along
with it in the one substance, which is positive and self-identical,--in
effect, the _Deus sive Natura_ of Spinoza.
We have to see that this contradiction on the side of existence has
its correlate on the side of knowledge, and our examination of this
fundamental deficiency in Leibniz is ended. Sensation is on the side
of intelligence what matter is on the side of reality. It is confused
knowledge, as matter is imperfect activity or reality. Knowledge is
perfect only when it is seen to be necessary, and by "necessary" is
meant that whose opposite is impossible, or involves contradiction. In
spite, therefore, of Leibniz's thorough conviction that "matters of
fact"--the subject-matter of physical science--are not arbitrary, he
is yet obliged finally to agree with Locke that there is no certainty
to be found in such knowledge, either as a whole or in any of its
details. The element of sensation, of confused knowledge, cannot be
eliminated. Hence it must always be open to any one to object that
it is only on account of this imperfect factor of our knowledge that
there appears to be a physical world at all, that the external world
is an illusion produced by our sensations. And Leibniz himself,
while claiming that the world of fact, as opposed to the realm of
relations, possesses _practical_ reality, is obliged to admit that
_metaphysically_ it may be only an orderly dream. The fact is that
Leibniz unconsciously moves in the same circle, with relation to
sensation and the material world, that confines Spinoza with regard
to imagination and particular multiple existences. Spinoza explains
the latter from that imperfection of our intelligence which leads us
to imagine rather than to think. But he accounts for the existence
of imagination, when he comes to treat that, as due to the plurality
of particular things. So Leibniz, when an account of the existence of
matter is demanded of him, refers to confused knowledge as its source,
while in turn he explains the latter, or sensation, from the material
element which sets bounds to the activity of spirit. Leibniz seems
indeed, to advance upon Spinoza in admitting the reality of the
negative factor in differentiating the purely self-identical, but
he gives up what he has thus gained by interpreting the negation as
passivity, or mere deprivation.
To sum up, it may be doubted whether we have more to learn from
Leibniz's successes or from his failures. Leibniz's positive
significance for us is in his clear recognition of the problems of
modern philosophy, and in his perception of the isolated elements
of their solution. His negative significance is in his clinging to
a method which allowed him only to juxtapose these elements without
forming of them a true synthesis. There are a number of sides from
which we may state Leibniz's realization of the problem. Perhaps that
which distinguishes Leibniz most clearly from Locke is their respective
treatments of the relation of the physical to the spiritual, or, as
the question presented itself mainly to them, of the "natural" to the
"supernatural." To Locke the supernatural was strictly miraculous;
it was, from our standpoint, mere power, or will. It might indeed
be rational, but this reason was incapable of being apprehended by
us. Its distinction from the finite was so great that it could be
conceived only as something preceding and succeeding the finite in
time, and meanwhile as intercalating itself arbitrarily here and
there into the finite; as, for example, in the relation of soul and
body, in the production of sensation, etc. In a word, Locke thought
that the ends of philosophy, and with it of religion and morals,
could be attained only by a complete separation of the "natural"
and the "supernatural." Leibniz, on the other hand, conceived the
aim of philosophy to be the demonstration of their harmony. This is
evidenced by his treatment of the relations of the infinite and finite,
of matter and spirit, of mechanical and final causation. And he found
the sought-for harmony in the fact that the spiritual is the reason,
purpose, and function of the natural. The oft-quoted words of Lotze
express the thought of Leibniz: "The mechanical is unbounded in range,
but is subordinate in value." We cannot find some things that occur
physically, and others that occur supernaturally; everything that
occurs has its sufficient mechanical antecedents, but all that occurs
has its significance, its purpose, in something that does not occur,
but that eternally is--Reason. The mechanical and the spiritual are not
realms which here and there come into outward contact. They are related
as the conditioned and the conditioning. That, and not the idea of an
artificial _modus vivendi_, is the true meaning of the pre-established
harmony.
In other words, Leibniz's great significance for us is the fact that,
although he accepted in good faith, and indeed as himself a master
in its methods, the results and principles of physical science, he
remained a teleological idealist of the type of Aristotle. But I have
not used the right words. It was not in spite of his acceptance of the
scientific view of the world that he retained his faith in the primacy
of purpose and reason. On the contrary, he was an idealist because of
his science, because only by the idea of an all-conditioning spiritual
activity could he account for and make valid scientific conceptions;
he was a teleologist, because natural processes, with their summing up
in the notion of causality, were meaningless except as manifesting an
immanent purpose.
There are other more technical ways of stating the bearing of Leibniz's
work. We may say that he realized that the problem of philosophy
consisted in giving due value to the notions of individuality and
universality, of identity and difference, or of the real and the
ideal. In developing these ideas, however, we should only be repeating
what has already been said, and so we may leave the matter here. On
the negative side we need only recall what was said a few pages back
regarding the incompatibility of Leibniz's method--the scholastic
formal logic--with the content of his philosophy. The attempt to
find a formal criterion of truth was hopeless; it was worse than
fruitless, for it led to such an interpretation of concrete truths
as to deprive them of their significance and as to land Leibniz in
involved contradictions.
To write a complete account of the influence of Leibniz's philosophy
would be too large a task for these pages. If we were to include under
this head all the ramifications of thought to which Leibniz stimulated,
directly and indirectly, either by stating truths which some one worked
out or by stating errors which incited some one to new points of view,
we should have to sketch German philosophy since his time,--and not
only the professional philosophy, but those wide aspects of thought
which were reflected in Herder, Lessing, and Goethe. It is enough to
consider him as the forerunner of Kant. It has become so customary to
represent Kant as working wholly on the problem which Hume presented,
that his great indebtedness to Leibniz is overlooked. Because Hume
aroused Kant from his dogmatic slumbers, it is supposed that Kant
threw off the entire influence of the Leibnizian thought as vain
dreams of his sleep. Such a representation is one-sided. It is truer
to state that Hume challenged Kant to discover the method by which he
could justify the results of Leibniz. In this process, the results,
no doubt, took on a new form: results are always relative to method;
but Kant never lost sight of the results. In the main, he accepted the
larger features of the Leibnizian conclusions, and, taught by Hume of
the insufficiency of the method that Leibniz followed, searched for a
method which should guarantee them.
This aspect of Kant appears more fully in his lesser and somewhat
controversial writings than in his classic works: and this, no doubt,
is one reason that his indebtedness is so often overlooked. His close
relation to Leibniz appears most definitely in his _brochure_ entitled
"Concerning a Discovery which renders Unnecessary all Critique of Pure
Reason." A Wolffian, Eberhard by name, had "made the discovery" (to use
Kant's words) "that the Leibnizian philosophy contained a critique of
reason just as well as the modern, and accordingly contained everything
that is true in the latter, and much else in addition." In his reply
to this writing, Kant takes the position that those who claimed to be
Leibnizians simply repeated the words of Leibniz without penetrating
into his spirit, and that consequently they misrepresented him on
every important point. He, Kant, on the other hand, making no claim to
use the terminology of Leibniz, was his true continuator, since he had
only changed the doctrine of the latter so as to make it conform to the
true intent of Leibniz, by removing its self-contradictions. He closes:
"'The Critique of Pure Reason' may be regarded as the real apology for
Leibniz, even against his own professed followers."
Kant, in particular, names three points in which he is the true
follower of Leibniz. The professed disciples of the latter insisted
that the law of sufficient reason was an objective law, a law of
nature. But, says Kant, it is so notorious, so self-evident, that
no one can make a new discovery through this principle, that Leibniz
can have meant it only as subjective. "For what does it mean to say
that over and above the principle of contradiction another principle
must be employed? It means this: that, according to the principle
of contradiction, only that can be known which is already contained
in the notion of the object; if anything more is to be known, it
must be sought through the use of a special principle, distinct from
that of contradiction. Since this last kind of knowledge is that of
synthetic principles, Leibniz means just this: besides the principle of
contradiction, or that of analytic judgments, there must be another,
that of sufficient reason, for synthetic judgments. He thus pointed
out, in a new and remarkable manner, that certain investigations
in metaphysics were still to be made." In other words, Kant, by his
distinction of analytic and synthetic judgments, with their respective
principles and spheres, carried out the idea of Leibniz regarding the
principles of contradiction and sufficient reason.
The second point concerns the relation of monads to material
bodies. Eberhard, like the other professed Leibnizians, interpreted
Leibniz as saying that corporeal bodies, as composite, are
actually made up out of monads, as simple. Kant, on the other
hand, saw clearly that Leibniz was not thinking of a relation of
composition, but of condition. "He did not mean the material world,
but the substrate, the intellectual world which lies in the idea
of reason, and in which everything must be thought as consisting
of simple substances." Eberhard's process, he says, is to begin
with sense-phenomena, to find a simple element as a part of the
sense-perceptions, and then to present this simple element as if it
were spiritual and equivalent to the monad of Leibniz. Kant claims to
follow the thought of Leibniz in regarding the simple not as an element
_in_ the sensuous, but as something super-sensuous, the _ground_ of
the sensuous. Leibniz's mistake was that, not having worked out clearly
the respective limits of the principles of identity and of sufficient
reason, he supposed that we had a direct intellectual intuition of this
super-sensuous, when in reality it is unknowable.
The third group of statements concerns the principle of pre-established
harmony. "Is it possible," asks Kant, "that Leibniz meant by this
doctrine to assert the mere coincidence of two substances wholly
independent of each other by nature, and incapable through their own
force of being brought into community?" And his answer is that what
Leibniz really implied was not a harmony between independent things,
but a harmony between modes of knowing, between sense on the one
hand and understanding on the other. The "Critique of Pure Reason"
carried the discussion farther by pointing out its grounds; namely,
that, without the unity of sense and understanding, no experience
would be possible. _Why_ there should be this harmony, _why_ we
should have experience, this question it is impossible to answer,
says Kant,--adding that Leibniz confessed as much when he called it a
"pre-established" harmony, thus not explaining it, but only referring
it to a highest cause. That Leibniz really means a harmony within
intelligence, not a harmony of things by themselves, is made more
clear, according to Kant, from the fact that it is applied also to
the relation between the kingdom of nature and of grace, of final
and of efficient causes. Here the harmony is clearly not between
two independently existing _external things_, but between what
flows from our notions of nature (_Naturbegriffe_) and of freedom
(_Freiheitsbegriffe_); that is, between two distinct powers and
principles _within us_,--an agreement which can be explained only
through the idea of an intelligent cause of the world.
If we review these points in succession, the influence of Leibniz upon
Kant becomes more marked. As to the first one, it is well known that
Kant's philosophy is based upon, and revolves within, the distinction
of analytic and synthetic judgments; and this distinction Kant
clearly refers to the Leibnizian distinction between the principles
of contradiction and of sufficient reason, or of identity and
differentiation. It is not meant that Kant came to this thought through
the definitions of Leibniz; on the contrary, Kant himself refers it to
Hume's distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas. But
when Kant had once generalized the thought of Hume, it fell at once,
as into ready prepared moulds, into the categories of Leibniz. He
never escapes from the Leibnizian distinction. In his working of it
out consists his greatness as the founder of modern thought; from his
acceptance of it as ultimate result his contradictions. That is to say,
Kant did not merely receive the vague idea of sufficient reason: he
so connected it with what he learned from Hume that he transformed it
into the idea of synthesis, and proceeded to work out the conception of
synthesis in the various notions of the understanding, or categories,
as applicable to the material of sense. What Leibniz bequeathed him was
the undefined idea that knowledge of matters of fact rests upon the
principle of sufficient reason. What Kant did with this inheritance
was to identify the wholly vague idea of sufficient reason with the
notion that every fact of experience rests upon necessary synthetic
connection,--that is, connection according to notions of understanding
with other facts,--and to determine, so far as he could, the various
forms of synthesis, or of sufficient reason. With Leibniz the principle
remained essentially infertile, because it was the mere notion of the
ultimate reference of experience to understanding. In the hands of
Kant, it became the instrument of revolutionizing philosophy, because
Kant showed the articulate members of understanding by which experience
is constituted, and described them in the act of constituting.
So much for his working out of the thought. But on the other hand,
Kant never transcended the absoluteness of the distinction between
the principles of synthesis and analysis, of sufficient reason and
contradiction. The result was that he regarded the synthetic principle
as the principle only of our knowledge, while perfect knowledge he
still considered to follow the law of identity, of mere analysis. He
worked out the factor of negation, of differentiation, contained in
the notion of synthesis, but limited it to synthesis upon material
of sense, presupposing that there is another kind of knowledge,
not limited to sense, not depending upon the synthetic principle, but
resting upon the principle of contradiction, or analysis, and that this
kind is the type, the norm, of the only perfect knowledge. In other
words, while admitting the synthetic principle of differentiation
as a necessary element within _our_ knowledge, he held that on
account of this element our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal
realm. Leibniz's error was in supposing that the pure principles of
the logical understanding, resting on contradiction, could give _us_
knowledge of the noumenal world; his truth was in supposing that
only by such principles _could_ they be known. Thus, in substance,
Kant. Like Leibniz, in short, he failed to transcend the absoluteness
of the value of the scholastic method; but he so worked out another
and synthetic method,--the _development_ of the idea of sufficient
reason,--that he made it necessary for his successors to transcend it.
The second point concerns the relations of the sensuous and
the super-sensuous. Here, besides setting right the ordinary
misconception of Leibniz, Kant did nothing but render him consistent
with himself. Leibniz attempted to prove the existence of God,
as we have seen, by the principles both of sufficient reason and
contradiction. Kant denies the validity of the proof by either
method. God is the sufficient cause, or reason, of the contingent
sense world. But since Leibniz admits that this contingent world may,
after all, be but a dream, how shall we rise from it to the notion
of God? It is not our dreams that demonstrate to us the existence of
reality. Or, again, sense-knowledge is confused knowledge. How shall
this knowledge, by hypothesis imperfect, guarantee to us the existence
of a perfect being? On the other hand, since the synthetic principle,
or that of sufficient reason, _is_ necessary to give us knowledge of
matters of fact, the principle of contradiction, while it may give
us a consistent and even necessary notion of a supreme being, cannot
give this notion reality. Leibniz, while admitting, with regard to all
other matters of fact, that the principles of formal logic can give
no unconditional knowledge, yet supposes that, with regard to the one
unconditional reality, they are amply sufficient. Kant but renders him
self-consistent on this point.
It is, however, with regard to the doctrine of pre-established harmony
that Kant's large measure of indebtedness to Leibniz is most apt to
be overlooked. Kant's claim that Leibniz himself meant the doctrine
in a subjective sense (that is, of a harmony between powers in our
own intelligence) rather than objective (or between things out of
relation to intelligence) seems, at first sight, to go far beyond the
mark. However, when we recall that to Leibniz the sense world is only
the confused side of rational thought, there is more truth in Kant's
saying than appears at this first sight. The harmony is between sense
and reason. But it may at least be said without qualification that
Kant only translated into subjective terms, terms of intelligence,
what appears in Leibniz as objective. This is not the place to go into
the details of Kant's conception of the relation of the material to
the psychical, of the body and the soul. We may state, however, in his
own words, that "the question is no longer as to the possibility of the
association of the soul with other known and foreign substances outside
it, but as to the connection of the presentations of inner sense with
the modifications of our external sensibility." It is a question, in
short, of the harmony of two modes of our own presentation, not of the
harmony of two independent things. And Kant not only thus deals with
the fact of harmony, but he admits, as its _possible_ source, just what
Leibniz claims to be its _actual_ source; namely, some one underlying
reality, which Leibniz calls the monad, but to which Kant gives no
name. "I can well suppose," says Kant, "that the substance to which
through external sense extension is attributed, is also the subject
of the presentations given to us by its inner sense: _thus that which
in one respect is called material being would be in another respect
thinking being_."
Kant treats similarly the problem of the relations of physical and
final causes, of necessity and freedom. Here, as in the case just
mentioned, his main problem is to discover their _harmony_. His
solution, again, is in the union, in our intelligence, of the
understanding--as the source of the notions which "make nature"--with
the ideas of that reason which gives a "categorical imperative." The
cause of the possibility of this harmony between nature and freedom,
between the sense world and the rational, he finds in a being, God,
whose sole function in the Kantian philosophy may be said to be to
"pre-establish" it. I cannot believe that Kant, in postulating the
problems of philosophy as the harmony of sense and understanding,
of nature and freedom, and in finding this harmony where he did,
was not profoundly influenced, consciously as well as unconsciously,
by Leibniz. In fact, I do not think that we can understand the
nature either of Kant's immense contributions to modern thought or
of his inconsistencies, until we have traced them to their source
in the Leibnizian philosophy,--admitting, on the other hand, that we
cannot understand why Kant should have found necessary a new way of
approach to the results of Leibniz, until we recognize to the full
his indebtedness to Hume. It was, indeed, Hume that awoke him to his
endeavors, but it was Leibniz who set before him the goal of these
endeavors. That the goal should appear somewhat transformed, when
approached from a new point of view, was to be expected. But alas! the
challenge from Hume did not wholly awaken Kant. He still accepted
without question the validity of the scholastic method,--the analytic
principle of identity as the type of perfect knowledge,--although
denying its sufficiency for human intelligence. Leibniz suggested, and
suggested richly, the synthetic, the negative aspect of thought; Kant
worked it out as a necessary law of _our_ knowledge; it was left to his
successors to work it out as a factor in the law of _all_ knowledge.
It would be a grievous blunder to suppose that this final chapter
annihilates the earlier ones; that the failure of Leibniz as to
method, though a failure in a fundamental point, cancelled his
splendid achievements. Such thoughts as that substance is activity;
that its process is measured by its end, its idea; that the universe
is an inter-related unit; the thoughts of organism, of continuity,
of uniformity of law,--introduced and treated as Leibniz treated
them,--are imperishable. They are members of the growing consciousness,
on the part of intelligence, of its own nature. There are but three or
four names in the history of thought which can be placed by the side of
Leibniz's in respect to the open largeness, the unexhausted fertility,
of such thoughts. But it is not enough for intelligence to have great
thoughts nor even true thoughts. It is testimony to the sincerity and
earnestness of intelligence that it cannot take even such thoughts as
those of Leibniz on trust. It must _know_ them; it must have a method
adequate to their demonstration. And in a broad sense, the work of
Kant and of his successors was the discovery of a method which should
justify the objective idealism of Leibniz, and which in its history has
more than fulfilled this task.
[ Transcriber's Note:
The following is a list of corrections made to the original.
The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
By S. C Griggs and Company.
By S. C. Griggs and Company.
passivity of any kind is a myth, as scholastic fiction. Sensation is
passivity of any kind is a myth, a scholastic fiction. Sensation is
the vacuum is to serve as the background of the atoms. The atoms, are
the vacuum is to serve as the background of the atoms. The atoms are
]