The philosophical works of Leibnitz ..

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Introduction

This translation of the more important philosophical works of Leibnitz furnishes much needed assistance to all teachers of philosophy and its history, in this country or in England. Until recently no collection, at once complete and trustworthy, of the writings of this great and versatile thinker has ever been made. The magnificent edition of Gerhardt has now rendered it possible for the translator to select, from all the recorded philosophical utterancesof Leibnitz, (in eluding his voluminous and elaborate letters), those portions which will give the most satisfactory survey of his system of thinking. The selections of the present volume appear judicious ; they are sufficient to afford a tolerably comprehensive and circumstantial account of this system.

It is not, however, to teachers of philosophy alone that I cqmmend this volume. The interests and scholarship of Leibnitz were unexampled as respects range and variety. He was eminent in mathematics, physical science, languages, history, theology, philosophy, and belles-lettres. Even his more definitely philosophical writings are framed in accordance with this varied eminence. They therefore contain much which appeals to any person who is inclined at all to approach the problems of philosophy, from whatever point of view. Their style is free from certain characteristics w^hich lovers of .good literature often find repulsive in works of more definitely pedagogical, or systematic and technical, character. Indeed, the principal tenets of Leibnitz are all to be discovered, at least in their inchoate form, in his interesting and instructive letters to various notable persons of his day.

It has not been possible for me to compare any considerable portion of this translation with the original. But my confidence in Mr. Duncan's competence and accuracy of scholarship is so great that I have no doubt of its excellence.

It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to welcome, and to aid in introducing this book. It certainly fills— and, I believe, it well fills — an important gap in our philosophical literature.

Geokge Trumbull Ladd.

Yale University, December, 1890.

Preface

This translation has been made with the hope of rendering the speculations of one of the greatest of modern thinkers more acftessible to ordinary students. Whatever estimate may be taken of the intrinsic merits of these speculations, their influence has been too marked to allow the student of philosophy to ignore them. He will here find all that is necessary to enable him to gain a comprehensive insight into Leibnitz's own system and to understand the objections found by hiin to the philosophy of his great predecessors, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke. AU the important philosophical opuscules are given entire ; also the abridgment of the Theodicee and extracts from the Nouveaux Essais. A few notes and references have been added to help the student. The translations have been made du'ectly from the original Latin and French by my w^ife and myself, the only exception being the Letters to Clarke, which are republished from Clarke's own translation. In making the translations Erdmann's Leibnitii Opera Fhilosophiea (Berlin, 1840), Janet's Oeuvres Philosophiques de Leibniz (Paris, 1866), Gerhardt's Die philosophisohen Schriften von O. W. Leibniz (Berlin, 1875-1890), and Fouoher de Careil's Refutation Inedite de Spinoza par Leibniz (Paris, 1854), have been used.

G. M. D.

Yale University, Nov. 30, 1890.

TABLE OF OOJNTETS^TS.

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Page I— On the Philosophy of Descartes, 1679-1680, . . . . 1 .

II — Notes on Spinoza's Ethics, c. 1679, ..... 11

,/ III— Thoughts on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, 1684, . . . 37 ■

•• IV — On a General Principle useful in the Explanation of the Laws of y' V— Statement of personal views on Metaphysics and Physics, 1690, . 37 "^VI— Does the Essence of Body consist in extension? 1691, . . 41

VII — Animadversions on Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, books 1

VIII — Reply of Leibnitz to the Extract of the Letter of Foucher, canon

of Dijon, published in the Journal des Savans of March 16, 1693, 64 JX— On the Philosophy of Descartes, 1698, .... 66

i/ X — On the reform of Metaphysics and of the Notion of Substance,

,^ 1694, .68

XI — A New System of Nature, and of the Interaction of Substances, " as well as of the Union which exists between the Soul and the

XII — The Reply of Foucher to Leibnitz concerning his New System, '

1695, . . .81

-v^ XIII— Explanation of the New System, 1695, . . . . 85

i/" XEV- Second Explanation of the New System, 1696, ... 90

t/^^XV— Third Explanation of the New System, 1696, ... 92

^XVI — Observations on Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, 1696, 94

v>C±VII— On the XJltimate Origin of Things, 1697, . . . / . 100

/icvlll — On Certain Consequences of the Philosophy of Descartes, 1797, 107

XX— Ethical Definitions, 1697-1698, 127

XXI — On the Cartesian Demonstration of the Existence of God, 1700- y 1701, . . . -. ■ . . . . . 133

,/^XXlI — Considerations on the Doctrine of a Universal Spirit, 1703, . 189 XXIII — On the Supersensible in Knowledge and on the Immaterial in

^ XXIV— Explanation of Points in his Philosophy, 1704, . . .159

•^XXV— On the Principle of Life, 1705, . . . . . 163

XXVI— Necessity and Contingency, 1707, . . . . .170

XXVII— Refutation of Spinoza, c. 1708, . . . . 175

XXVIII— Remarks on the Doctrine of Malebranche, 1708,' . . 185

'"'tSXIX — On the Active Force of the Body, the Soul, and the Souls of

*-'A^XX— Abridgment of the Theodicy, 1710, 194 ;\

^XXXI— On Wisdom— the Art of Reasoning, etc., 1711, . . 205

— .WS:!XXII— The Principles of Nature and of Grace, 1714, . . .209

XXXTV-On the Doctrine of Malebranche, 1715, . . . .333'

XXXV— Five Letters to Samuel Clarke, 1716, . . . 338

XXXVI— Extracts from the Nouveaux Essais, 1704, . . .387

" One day I happened to say that the Cartesian philosophy in so far as it was true was but the ante-chamber of the true philosophy. A gentleman of the company who frequented the Court, who was a man of some reading and who even took part in discussion on the sciences, pushed the figure to an allegory and perhaps a little too far ; for he asked me thereupon, if I did not believe that it might be said that the ancients had shown us the stairs, that the modem school had come as far as into the ante-chamber, and that he should wish me the honor of introducing us into the cabinet of nature ? This tirade of parallels made us all laugh, and I said to him ' You see, sir, that your comparison has pleased the company ; but you have forgotten that there is the audience chamber between the ante-chamber and the cabinet, and that it will be enough if we obtain audience without pretending to penetrate into the interior.' "

Leibnitz, Letter to a friend on Cartesianism, 1695.

LEIBNITZ.

On the Philosophy of Descaetes. 1679-1680. [From the French.]

As to the Philosophy of Descartes, of which you ask my opinion, I do not hesitate to say ahsolutely that it leads to atheism. It is true that there are some things very suspicious to me who have considered it attentively : for example, these two passages, that final cause ought not to be considered in physics, and that matter takes successively all the forms of which it is capable. There is an admirable passage in the Phaedo of Plato which justly blames Anaxagoras for the very thing which displeases me in Descartes. For myself, I believe that the laws of mechanics which serve as a basis for the whole system depend on final causes ; that is to say, on the will of God determined to make what is most perfect, and that matter does not take all possible forms but only the most perfect; otherwise it would be necessary to say that there will be a time when all will be evil in turn, which is far removed from the perfection of the author of things. As for the rest, if Descartes had been less given to imaginary hypotheses and if he had been more attached to experiments, I think that his physics would have been worthy of being followed. For it must be admitted that he had great penetration. As for his geometry and analysis they are far from being as perfect as those pretend who are given but to the investigation of minor problems. There are several errors in his metaphysics, and he has not known the true source of truths nor that general analysis of notions which Jung, in my opinion, has better understood than he. Nevertheless, I confess that the reading of Descartes is very useful and very instructive, and that I like incomparably more to have to do with a Cartesian than with a man from some other school. Finally, I consider this philosophy as the ante-chamber of the true philosophy. — Exiyraetfrom a letter to Philipp, 1679.

I esteem Descartes almost as highly as it is possible to esteem a man, and although there are among his opinions some which appear to me false and even dangerous, I do not hesitate to say that we owe almost as much to Galileo and to him in matters of philosophy as to all antiquity. I remember at present but one of the two dangerous propositions of which you wish me to indicate the place, viz : PrincvpioruTn Philosophicoruin Part. 3, ArlAculo Ji.7, his verbis : " Atque omnino parum refert, quid hoe pacto supponatur, quia postea justa leges naturae est mutandum. Et vix aiiquid supponi potest ex quo non idem efEectus, quanquam fortasse operosius, deduci possit. Cum enim illarum ope materia formas om/nes quarum est ca/pax successime assumat, si formas istas ordine consideremus, tandem ad illam quae est hujus mundi poterimus devenire, adeo ut hie nihil erroris ex falsa hypothesi sit timendum." 1 do not think that it is possible to form a more dangerous proposition than this. For if matter receive successively all possible forms it woulji follow that nothing so absurd, so strange and contrary to what we call justice, could be imagined, which has not occurred or would not some day occur. These are exactly the opinions which Spinoza has more clearly explained, namely, that justice, beauty, order belong only to things in relation to us, but that the perfection of God consists in a fullness of action such that nothing can be possible or conceivable which he does not actually produce. This is also the opinion of Hobbes who maintains that all that is possible is past, or present, or future, and that there will be no room for relying on providence if God produces all and makes no choice among possible beings. -Descartes took care not to speak so plainly, but he could not help revealing his opinions in passing, with such address that he would not be understood save by those who examine profoundly these kinds of subjects.

This in my opinion, is the Trpwrov ipsudo^, the foundation of atheistic philosophy, which does not cease to say things beautiful in appearance of God. But the true philosophy ought to give us an entirely different notion of the perfection of God which could serve ue both in physics and in morals ; and I, for my part, hold that far from excluding final causes from the consideration of physics, as Descartes pretends, Part 1, Article 28, it is rather by them that all should be determined, since the efficient cause of things is intelligent, having a will and consequently tending toward the Good, that which is still far from the opinion of Descartes who holds that goodness, truth and justice are so simply because God by a free act of his will has established them, which is very strange. For if things are not good or bad, save by an effect of the will of God, the good will not be a motive of his will since it is subsequent to the will. And his will would be a certain absolute decree, without reason ; here are his own words, Resjp. ad object, sext. n. 8 : "Attendenti ad Dei immensitatem manifestum est, nihil omnino esse posse quod ad ipso non pendeat, non modo nihil subsistens, sed etiam nullum ordinem, nullam legam, nuUamve rationem veri et boni, alioqui enim, ut paulo ante dicebatur, non fuisset plane indifferens ad ea creanda quae creavit [he was then indifferent as regards the things wliich we call just and unjust, and if it had pleased him to create a world in which the good had been forever unhappy and the wicked (that is to say, those who seek only to destroy the others) happy, that would be just.

Thus we cannot determine anything as to the justice of God, and it may be that he has made things in a way which we call unjust, since there is no notion of justice as respects him, and if it turns out that we are unhappy in spite of our piety, or that the soul perishes with the body, this will also be just. — He continues] : Nam si quae ratio boni ejus per ordinationem antecessisset, ilia ipsum determinasset ad it quod optimum est faciendum [without doubt, and this is the basis of providence and of all our hopes ; namely, that there is something good and just in itself, and that God, being Wisdom itself, does not fail to choose the best]. Sed contra quod se determinavit ad ea jam sunt facienda, idcirco, ut habetur in Genesi, sunt valde bona [this is cross-reasoning. If things are not good by any idea or notion of goodness in themselves, but because God wills them, God, in Genesis, had but to consider them when they' were made and to be satisfied with his work, saying that all was good ; it would have sufficed for him to say, I will it, or to have remembered that he willed them, if there is no formal difference between the two things, to be willed by God, and to be good. But it is apparent that the author of GeneKis was of another opiniorj, introducing a God who would not be content with having inade them unless he found further that he had made them well.] hoc est ratio eorum bonitatis ex eo pendet, quod voluerit ipsa sic facere." This is as distinct an expression as one could desire.

But after this it is useless to speak of the goodnesK and justice of God, and providence will be but a cliimera. It is evident that even the will of God will be but a fiction employed to dazzle those ^vIjo do not suflSciently strive to fathom these things. For what kind of a will (good God !) is that wbicli has not the Good as object or motive '. What is more this God will not even have understanding. For if truth itself depends only on the will of God and not on the nature of things, and the understanding being necessarily iiKhonE tlie will (I speak (le j/rioritate ruiinwae, 'rura terroporig), the understanding of God will be before the truth of things and consofjuently will not have truth for its object. Sucli an understanding is undoubtedly nothing but a chimera, and consequently it will be necessary to conceive God, after the manner of Spinoza, as a being w};o ha*-, neither understanding nor will, but who produces quite indifferently good or bad, and who is indifferent respecting things and conse<^^uently inclined by no reason toward one rather than the other. Thus, he will either do nothing or he will do all. But to say that such a God has made things, or to say that they have been produced by a blind necessity, the one, it seems to ine, is as good as the other. I have been sorry myself to find these things in Descartes, but I have seen no means of excusing them. I wish he could clear himself from these, as well as from some other imputations with which MoruB and Parker liave charged him. For to wish to explain everything mechanically in physics is not a crime nor impiety, since God has made all things according to the laws of mathematics; tliat is, according to the eternal truths which are the object of wisdom.

There are still many other thinfr- in the works of Descartes which I consider erroneous and 1-jy which I judge that he has not penetrated so far in advance as is imagined. For example, in geometry, I do not really believe that he has made any paralogism (as yon inform me that some one has said to you) ; he was a sufficiently skillful man to avoid that, and you see by this that I judge him equitably; but he lias erred through too much presumption holding all t'oi' imposwiblo at which he saw no means of arriving ; for example, he believed it was impossible to find a proportion between a curved line and a straight line. Here are his own words : Av7*. ■:3, Ot'oin., artumlo 9 Jiii. (■ditlo'iHH Svhotenianae de iniiio, 1659, }). :19 : etiw. ratio ijiiae intfr rectos et <Mi,rmis exixtit, lion co(jnita xit iirc rtiaiii <i/> hoiiiinihv-s itt arfntror oognoscl qxisat. In wliic'li, estinintin^' tlic powers of all posterity by his own, he WHS very nmch inistiikon. For a little while after his death a method was found of giving' an infinity of curved lines to which con Id be geometrically assigned equal straight lines. He would have perceived it liimself if he had considered sufficiently the dexterity of Archiuiodcs. lie is ])ersuiuled that all problems may be reduced to equations {quo iiuhIo /n-r nit'tlioihiiii- quit. utor, inquit, p. IH!, lib. ;•], Geom., id onnir qvod xvh O mm ftr Irani contcniplatioiirni cadif, ik/ irnirni i<t('niqi/<' (jmiix proh'IcniKtiini rcdiiratiir, quod rut at qaaeratiir ralor ntdiriini aliciijiin acq nation is). This is wholly false, as Ihiy^ens, Ihuide and others who thoroughly understand Descartes' geoniotry, have frankly avowed to me. This is why there is need of much hofoi-e aljjebra can do all that is promised for her. I do not sj)eak lii>,'litl_v and there are few people who have examined the matter with as much care as I.

The physics of Descartes has a great defect; this is that his rules of motion or laws of nature, which should ser\e as its foundation, ai>e for the most part false. There is demonstration of this. His great principle also that the same ipiantitv of nuition is preserved in the world is an error. 'What I say here is acknowledged by the ablest men of France and England.

-ludge from this, sir, whether there is reason for taking the opinions of Descartes for oracles. But this does not hinder me from considei'iiig him an admirable man, and for saying between om-selves that if he still lived [lerhaps he alone would advance farther in physics than a great number of otlieis, although very able men. That befalls me here whicli ordinarily befalls moderate men. The Peripatetics regard mo as a ("'artesian, aud the Cartesians are surprised that I do not yield to all their pretended lights. For when 1 speak to prepossessed men of the school who treat Descai'tes with scorn, I extol tlie brilliancy of his qualities ; but when I have to do with a too zealous Cartesian I find myself obliged to change my note in (.irder to modify a little the tint high opinion which they have of their master. The greatest men of the time in these matters are not Ca.rtesians, or if they have been in their youth they have gotten over it, and I notice among the people who make a profession of philosophy and of mathematics, that those who are properly Cartesians ordinarily remain among the mediocre and invent nothing oi importance, being but commentators of their master, although for the rest they may be more able than the man of the school. — Letter to Philipp, Jan., 1680.

[The following is an extract from a letter of about the same date as the preceding and on the same subject, written to an unknown correspondent.]

Sir, since you desire very much that I express freely my thoughts on Cartesianism, I shall not conceal aught of what I think of it, and which I can say in few words ; and I shall advance nothing without giving or being able to give a reason for it. In the first place, all those who give themselves over absolutely to the opinions of any author ai-e in a slavery and render themselves suspected of error, for to say that Descartes is the only author who is exempt from considerable error, is a proposition which could be true but is not likely to be so. In fact, such attachment belongs only to small minds who have not the force or the leisure to meditate themselves, or will not give themselves the trouble to do so. This is why the three illustrious academies of our times, the Eoyal Society of England, which was established first, and then the Academic Eoyale des Sciences, at Paris, and the Academia del Cimento, at Florence, have loudly protested that they wish to be known neither as Aristotelians, nor Cartesians, nor Epicureans, nor followers of any author whatever.

I have also recognized by experience that those who are wholly Cartesians are not adepts in inventing, they are but interpreters or commentators of their master, as the philosophers of the school were of Aristotle; and of the many beautiful discoveries which have been made since Descartes, I know of not one which comes from a trae Cartesian. I know these gentlemen a little and I defy them to name one coming from them. This is an evidence that Descartes did not know the true method or that -he has not transmitted it to them.,

Descartes himself had a sufficiently limited mind Of all men he excelled in speculations, but in them he found nothing useful for life which is evident to the senses and which serves in the practice of the arts. All his meditations were either too abstract, like his metaphysics and his geometry, or too imaginary, like his principles of natural philosophy. The only thing of use which he believed he had given was his telescope, made according to the hyperbolic line, with which he promised to make us see animals, or parts as small as animals, in the moon. Unfortunately he was never able to find workmen capable of executing his design, and since then it has even been demonstrated that the advantage of the hyperbolic line is not so great as- he believed. It is true that Descartes was a great genius and that the sciences are under great obligations to him, but not in the way the Cartesians believe. I must therefore enter a httle into details and give examples of what he has taken from others, of what he has himself done, and of what he has left to be done. From this it will be seen whether I speak without knowledge of the subject. In the first place, his Ethics is a com- . pound of the opinions of the Stoics and of the Epicureans, something not very difficult, for Seneca had already reconciled them very well. He wishes us to follow reason, or the nature of things as the Stoics said, with which everybody will agree. He adds that we ought not to be disturbed by the things which are not in our power.

This is exactly the dogma of the Portico which established the greatness and liberty of their sage, so praised for the strength of mind which he had in resolving to do without the things which do not depend upon us and to endure them when they come in spite of us. It is for this reason that I am wont to call this ethics the art of patience. The Sovereign Good, according to the Stoics and according to Aristotle himself, was to act in accordance with virtue or prudence; and the pleasure resulting therefrom together with the resolution mentioned above is properly that tranquility of the soul, or indolence, which the Stoics and Epicureans sought and equally recommended under different names. One has only to examine the incomparable Manual of Epictetus and the Epicv/rus of Laertius to acknowledge that Descartes has not advanced the practice of morals. But it seems to me that this art of patience in which he makes the art of living consist, is yet not the whole. A patience without hope does not endure and does not console, and it is here that Plato, in my opinion, surpasses the others, for by good arguments he makes us hope for a better life and approaches nearest to Christianity. It is sufficient to read the excellent dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul or the Death of Socrates, which Theophile has translated into French, to conceive a high idea of it. I think that Pythagoras did the same, and that his metempsychosis was merely to accommodate himself to the range of common people, but that among his disciples he reasoned quite difEerently.

Also Ocellus Lucanus, who was one of them, and from whom we have a small but excellent fragment on the universe, says not a word of it. It will be said that Descartes establishes very well the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. But I fear that we are deceived by fine words, for the God, or Perfect Being, of Descartes is not a God such as we imagine him and such as we desire ; that is to say, just and wise, doing everything for the good of creatures as far as is possible, but rather he is similar to the God of Spinoza, namely, the principle of things, and a certain sovereign power or primitive nature which sets everything in action and does everything which is feasible. The God of Descartes .has neither will nor understanding, since according to Descartes he has not the Oood as the object of the will nor the Triie as object of the understanding. Also he does not wish that his God should act according to some end, and for this reason he rejects from philosophy the search after final causes, under the adroit pretext that we are not capable of knowing the ends of God. Plato, on the contrary, has very well shown that God being the author of things and provided he acts according to wisdom, true physics is to know the ends and the uses of things, for science is the knowledge of reasons, and the reasons of what has been made by an understanding are the final causes or the designs of him who made them, and these appear from the use and the function which they have. This is why the consideration of the use of parts is so useful in anatomy.

This is why a God such as that of Descartes leaves us no other consolation than that of ^sAience par force. He says in some passages that matter passes successively through all possible forms ; that is to say, that his God does everything which is feasible and passes, following a necessary and fated order, through all possible combinations ; but for this the mere necessity of matter sufficed, or rather his God is nothing but this necessity, or this principle of necessity, acting in matter as it can. It must not, therefore, be believed that this God has any more care of intelligent creatures than of the others. Each one will be happy or unhappy, according as it will find itself involved in great torrents or whirlpools ; and he is right in recommending to us patience without hope (in place of felicity). But some one of the better class of Cartesians, deluded by the fine discourses of his master, will say to me that he nevertheless establishes very well the IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL and Consequently a better life. When I hear these things I am astonished at the ease with which the world is deceived, if one can merely play adroitly with agreeable words, although their meaning is corrupted ; for just as hypocrites abuse piety, heretics the scriptures, and the seditious the word lib- ^ erty, so the Cartesians have abused those grand words, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. It is necessary, therefore, to unravel this mystery and to show them that the immortahty of the soul, following Descartes, is worth no more than his God.

I well believe that I shall not please some, for people do not enjoy being awakened when their minds are occupied with an agreeable dream. But what is to be done ? Descartes teaches that false thoughts should be uprooted before true ones are introduced ; his example, ought to be followed, and I shall think that I am rendering a service to the public if I can disabuse them of such dangerous doctrines. I say then that the iimnortality of the soul, as it is established by Descartes, is of no use and can in no way console us. For grant that the soul is a substance and that no substance perishes ; this being so the soul will not perish, but in reality also nothing perishes in nature. But like matter the soul too will change in form, and as the matter composing a man has at other times formed plants and other animals, so this soul may be immortal in reality but it will pass through a thousand changes and not remember at all what it has been. But this immortahty without memory is altogether useless, viewed ethically, for it destroys all reward, aU recompense, and aU punishment. Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become king of China on condition of forgetting what you have been. "Would it not be the same thing as if God at the same time that he destroyed you created a king in China? This is why, in order to satisfy the hope of the human race, it must be proved that the God who governs all is wise and just, and that he will leave nothing without recompense and without punishment. These are the great foundations of ethics ; but the doctrine of a God who does not act for the Good, and of a soul which is immortal without memory, serves only to deceive the simple and to pervert the spiritually minded.