Essays in Philosophy

Essay I. Life and Philosophy of Leibnitz

ESSAY I.

LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ.

The lately republished philosophical writings of Leibnitz are the productions of a species of intellectual labour that is very rare in this country, but of which, in Germany, France, and America, the press is giving forth some original and many republished specimens. The amount of republished metaphysical literature of the higher kind which has appeared in foreign countries within the last thirty years, is worthy of remark. Some idea of it may be formed from any common catalogue of books recently issued from the press of Leipsic, Berlin, Paris, or Boston. The labours of the illustrious Cousin in this department are well known. The works, in whole or in part, of Plato, Proclus, Abelard, Des Cartes, André, and Pascal have reappeared under the superintendence of this eloquent founder of the modern eclectic school of France.

Containing as they do the results, and in many re splendid results, of purely abstract thinking, the works of Leibnitz are singularly fitted for contributing to imbue the mind of an ardent student with comprehensive and lofty speculation. While his writings abound in daring hypotheses, they have, nevertheless, greatly advanced metaphysical science, by rendering current a multitude of new ideas; and the fact of the continued circulation of an amount of abstract thought so great, so peculiar in its kind, and so fitted to set other minds to work, as these books contain, can never be unworthy of the consideration of those who would observe and study literature in its higher relations. Besides their intrinsic value, they are connected with an important epoch in the history of modern speculation. This philosopher looms vast even in the distance, at the entrance of the labyrinth of recent German Philosophy.

Though a curious combination of circumstances has hitherto preserved the surface of the British mind, in a great measure, unruffled by an influence powerful enough to create so much commotion on the continent of Europe, there are signs in the literary horizon which betoken a change, for which society in this country would do well to be prepared. By the well-regulated study of these unwonted topics, we may not merely disarm the enemies of religion, of what in other times has been, and will continue to be, a favourite weapon of assault, but we may even convert that weapon into an instrument of use in the service of an enlightened Christianity. The interest lately revived elsewhere in the life and labours of Leibnitz, and indicated among other means by various recent publications, suggests some meditation upon the leading events in his biography, accompanied with a few historical and speculative notices, as an introduction to that great department of knowledge of which he was so distinguished a cultivator, viz., Metaphysical Philosophy.

Perhaps these two last words are fitted to excite feelings of repugnance in the minds of some readers, as relating to something that is conceived to be at best vague and unproductive. The tendencies of public opinion in Great Britain, in the former half of this century, have evidently been greatly averse from these speculations. The section of society given to abstract meditation has never in any age been a large one; and the recent wide extension of a certain measure of intelligence has perhaps helped to diminish it, by putting the current lite more under the control of a public for the most part necessarily busy with the affairs of practical life. If we except the rising symptoms of a coming change—indicated partly in the poetical contemplations of Coleridge and the logical philosophy and learning of Sir William Hamilton—no literary efforts are even contemplated which involve purely speculative research; and hardly any concern is manifested for the philosophical pursuits of other nations. Metaphysical Science cannot, from its peculiar nature, be made generally popular till the exercise of reflection has become more common; unless, indeed, as sometimes happens, the science itself is degraded, so that (while the name Metaphysic is retained) those who profess to be its votaries are conversant exclusively, not with the most subtle and evanescent, but with the simplest and most generally seductive class of the objects of thought.

The present is a remarkable, and, indeed, anomalous historical epoch. In these islands it is, and has been since the commencement of this century, a period of rapid physical and social progress. Men have gained an increased knowledge of the laws and processes of matter, and thus the world is becoming a more convenient place of habitation. The principle of commerce has been developed to an extent unknown in the ancient world. The present revolution in the means of social intercourse and communication seems to be preparing the way for other changes, about which it is hardly safe to speculate. All the increased "subjection of matter to mind" which the world, and especially this country, has witnessed since the principles of the Baconian philo have become popular, must be indeed gratifying to every lover of his race. And in the more sublime departments of Physical Science the same progress is visible. Geology is contributing the details of the past history of the-planet on which we live. The telescope is making magnificent disclosures of the distant regions of the material creation. Nor is public interest confined to what is merely physical. Society itself is undergoing fundamental changes; and the "science of society," under its twofold form of civil and ecclesiastical, is the theme of discussion and controversy.

An age in which controversy turns on first principles needs, and will soon demand, a Metaphysical Literature. That state of knowledge and of general opinion is not a hopeful one, in which the thoughts and energies of men are directed exclusively towards physical or economical science. And when the intellect is in a state of fermentation, bare facts, separated from principles, excite only a feeble interest. Men then feel that beneath the stir occasioned by incessant activity among the outward events of this passing world, there lie hid the invisible elements and springs of those external changes of which this strange and dangerous life is the scene. Within and immediately around that inner circle, is the domain peculiar to Philosophy. The more deeply thought is exerted on any subject, the further is it compelled to go within the dominions of this "science of sciences." The soul there casts about for its anchorage in the ocean of thought.

The need for a First Philosophy, of the kind we have indicated in the foregoing paragraph, is not indistinctly referred to by Lord Bacon:—"Because," says he, "the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself in arms and boughs; therefore, it is good to erect and constitute one universal science by the name of 'philosophia prima,' primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way, before we come where the ways part and divide themselves; which science, whether I should report deficient or no, I stand doubtful."

The Metaphysical spirit makes itself manifest in various forms; and this passage from Bacon in several respects illustrates the difference between the two great classes into which philosophers may conveniently be divided, according as they employ one or other of two modes of research that differ in their principles, methods, and results. One class includes those who would merely generalize from experience; and whose highest laws are in consequence only their most extensive generalizations. The other class assume their first principles as given in the very act of exercising observation, and by demonstration endeavour to reach the extreme results of philosophy. It is not easy to find a nomenclature sufficiently comprehensive, and yet distinctively characteristic, to admit of suitable application to these schools. Probably, that suggested by Sir James Mac is sufficiently exact for our purpose; and we may term the former of the two classes we have referred to Observational, and the latter Speculative Metaphysicians.

Leibnitz is the type, in modern times, of an abstract thinker of the purely speculative school. It is curious to trace the connexion between the secluded and seemingly ineffective study of what Bacon calls the philosophia prima, in the form in which it appears in this school, and the great external and social changes in the world. The "Advancement of the Sciences" is obviously connected with the astronomy of Newton and Herschel. The "Wealth of Nations" is an acknowledged cause of many recent alterations in modern society. The "Essay on Human Understanding" has plainly influenced the subsequent current of British thought. Not less surely, though less obviously, has the more purely speculative philosophy of that school, in which Leibnitz is one of the most illustrious names, been connected, for good and evil, with important modifications of those minds by which public opinion must be formed. The intimate relation between the labours of men of this class, and that meditative style of Christianity which is displayed in the writings of some of the great names in the Christian Church, is also manifest. The influence of Idealism and the higher Metaphysics as operative forces in society, becomes more apparent when we observe how efficacious their spirit has been to neutralize a vulgar sensationalism.

The study of the systems of Philosophy in all their variety, and of the lives and labours of various philosophers, is to be encouraged for many reasons. It sup curious and useful thoughts, which might never otherwise have been suggested, and it also stimulates reflection in the student. The history of the erratic course which the human spirit has taken in the experience even of profound thinkers, is besides fitted to moderate dogmatism. The men of mightiest genius are found often to have fallen into the most signal errors. It is morally useful to train the mind in the habit of calmly apprehending and appreciating new doctrines, however opposed to what one has previously been accustomed to entertain. "Man," says Pascal, "is made for thinking. To think as we ought is the sum of human duty." Habits of abstract meditation have, moreover, a use additional to their absolute value to the individual speculator; they accustom men to a kind of exercise which must always be closely connected with the great progress epochs of history; and by the lucid and comprehensive views which they foster, as well as by the invigorating effect of the act of self-inspection, they become a potent force among those at work in society.

Some knowledge of the personal history of Leibnitz is likely, besides its intrinsic use and interest, to be a valuable help to the reader who desires to understand and appreciate his writings. It is satisfactory to find that most of the materials collected by former biographers, eulogists, and commentators, along with some new information, have lately been condensed into a useful biography by Dr. Guhrauer, who has already laboriously edited several of the works of Leibnitz, and contributed to the revival of an interest in the philosopher. His monograph is well fitted to bring the reader into intercourse with the great German, and with those numerous contemporaries with whom he maintained a "literary commerce" during the grand period in which he lived.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in Leipsic on the 21st of June 1646. He was descended of an ancient family, that had gained distinction in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. His grand-uncle, Paul Leibnitz, attracted notice in the wars in Hungary, and was highly honoured by the Emperor Rodolph II.

We must not omit a special allusion to the eventful epoch of the philosopher's birth. Just a hundred years before, Luther had rested from his earthly labours, during the excitement of the most memorable religious and social change which the world has witnessed since the introduction of Christianity. But soon after the Reformer's death, Christian doctrine, owing in a great measure to the want of Christian organization in the Church, became, especially in Germany, gradually separated more and more from the hearts of nominally Christian men. The coldness of mathematical demonstration represented Christianity in the pulpits and halls of the country of the Reformation, where, in the seventeenth century, the icy orthodoxy of Calixtus took the place of the fervid sermons of Luther.

The period of the Protestant Reformation was a time of much general excitement and progress in society, as well as the era of a great revolution in the Church. The modern reformation of Philosophy was, however, formally inaugurated at a later period. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the recovery and revived use of the remains of antiquity supplied, for the most part, sufficient materials for literary activity. The controversy between the Aristotelians and the Ramists in the sixteenth century had, moreover, diverted men's minds from the production of a Philosophy altogether modern and reformed. The birth of Leibnitz was just subsequent to the time when, the strength of the evangelical movement having unhappily abated in most countries, a movement towards a reform of Philosophy had succeeded. The mind is not likely at any time to be strongly stirred in a science like Theology, without being directed to "the science of sciences." A New Philosophy was making its appearance in England and France. Bacon's "Advancement of the Sciences" appeared in 1605, and the "Method" of Des Cartes in 1637. In each country thought and research had assumed a fundamentally different form. In England, the practical character of the people well agreed with the lessons of comprehensive sagacity that were given forth in the works of Bacon; and these naturally led to the solid and cautious, yet withal little imaginative form, which metaphysical science assumed afterwards in the works of Locke; and through Locke, generally, in British philosophy. In France, on the other hand, the philosophical writings of Des Cartes had awakened that style of speculation which cannot be wholly dormant while the spirit of Plato and St. Augustin attracts sympathy in the world, and which in France, subsequently to Des Cartes, was adorned and elevated by some of the noblest and worthiest spirits of modern times. Besides the lives of Malebranche and Fénelon, those of Pascal, and Arnauld, and Nicole, and the other recluses of Port-Royal, give to the Cartesian a more sacred interest than can be attached to any other modern school of Philosophy. Although this peculiar feature of its history is marred by that mystic quietism which the monastic genius of the Catholic Church tends to foster, it is encouraging to find even this imperfect illustration of the manner in which Christianity may be allied to general speculation.

But Germany was thenceforward to be the European focus of Idealism, and of abstract thinking of every kind. In that country, previously to the rise of the Leibnitzian philosophy, there had been no manifestation of the new spirit of reform. The labours of Leibnitz virtually mark the commencement of the extraordinary course which metaphysic has since run in the native country of that celebrated thinker. Since then, the principle which at first separated the schools of Locke and Leibnitz has modified the currents of thought in Britain and Germany, and is thus connected with many of those characteristics by which the British is signally distinguished from the Continental mind. Since then, too, Germany has been the centre of European speculation, and has exhibited some of the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of human thought. There, amid the successive revolutions of more than a hundred years, every abstract question has been debated that the mind of man can entertain; and there has been added to preceding ones, perhaps the most remarkable and instructive of all the records of the clouded wanderings of human reason. The discussions raised by Leibnitz have given birth to the philosophical systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and so to the now enormously accumulated materials of the Teutonic metaphysics.

The father of Leibnitz was Professor of Morals in the ancient University of Leipsic. He died during the childhood of his son. By his pious mother, the thoughts of the young Gottfried Wilhelm were much directed to religion; and this guidance no doubt gave to his subsequent speculations much of that theological cast by which they are distinguished. Both his parents were Lutherans. The first twenty years of his life were spent chiefly in Leipsic. In the Nicolai School of that city, and also in the University, which he entered in 1661, he gave early evidence of his peculiar type of genius. His powers of mind were directed, in turn, to almost every object of knowledge. He eagerly studied history and the classics, in which his reading extended far out of the beaten track in which the ill-judged exertions of his narrow-minded teachers would fain have restrained him. It was, however, when he was introduced to Logic and Philosophy, that the strength of his genius, and the special direction of his mind, were fully shown. He read Aris , Plato, and Plotinus, and revelled in the subtleties of the scholastic metaphysics—that stimulant of the human intellect for so many hundred years. In his father's richly-stored library, he read, almost during the years of childhood, Scotus, and Fonseca, and Rubius, and Suarez, and Zabarella, and other schoolmen, with special delight. To the literature of theology he was no stranger, even at this early period. His thoughts were directed to the/ deep controversies about election and grace, by the works of St. Augustin and Luther, the reformed theology, and the writings of Antony Arnauld. The amount of learning accumulated by this precocious student before he entered the University appears to have been prodigious. Soon after his entrance on academical life, Des Cartes fell into his hands. His tendency towards eclecticism, afterwards more fully displayed, was even then shown in endeavours to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, Des Cartes and the schoolmen. The scholastic logic and philosophy was then dominant in Leipsic, as it was in most of the other universities of Germany. The formal spirit, as well as the mechanical style of instruction then generally prevalent in Germany, harmonized ill with the fire of speculation that was already kindled in the bosom of the youthful Leibnitz. A thousand chimeras of speculation floated through his brain. He started a thousand difficulties with his teachers and associates. Even Bacon, and Des Cartes, and the later Philosophy, served to awaken rather than to convince him. His mind was too independent to be moulded by others. His intellect revolted from the authority of his masters. In solitude, he cherished the most ardent views of the advancement of knowledge and the progress of man.

The whole history of the early years of Leibnitz forms a precious record of what we might call speculative experience. It reveals the self-educating genius of the really original mind, and shows a singular development of abstract thought at an age when the attention is usually engrossed with the objects of sense. In his recorded experience, at the age of sixteen, are to be found the dim forms of those problems which agitated his thoughts during the most active years of his life. For days together, as he tells us, he was wont to pursue his walks alone in the woods of Rosenthal, near Leipsic, revolving in his soul the first principles of that mysterious life, to a consciousness of which he had become awake. Before he had studied mathematics, physics, or morals, he was led to the conception of the higher Philosophy. He felt, what can be felt only by the true metaphysician,—the need for a scheme of eternal first principles on which all knowledge must depend. This was the theme of his earliest writings. His speculations on a universal language, grounded on what he calls the alphabet of thought, and his treatise De principio individui, published when under twenty, display the metaphysician capable of going back to first principles, and of following consequences intrepidly to their issues. In these labours of this early period, we have a fair specimen of the whole intellectual life of Leibnitz. They are, moreover, eminently characteristic of the National Philosophy which he originated.

Owing to a difference with the University authorities, Leibnitz left Leipsic, and his native country of Saxony, and in 1666 went to the University of Altdorf. There he received his degree in law the same year. He thus belongs to that class of distinguished philosophers who have been bred to the legal profession. The philosophy of law naturally attracted his thoughts. At the age of twenty-one, he published a tract on jurisprudence, which forms an epoch in that science. "There was only one man in the world," says Hallam, "who could have left so noble a science as philosophical jurisprudence for pursuits of a still more exalted nature, and for which he was still more gifted; and that man was Leibnitz. He passed onwards to reap the golden harvests of other fields."

After leaving the University, he led a somewhat desultory life for several years. During the interval between 1666 and 1676, he visited several of the German universities, which must have served to confirm his academical tendencies. A professorial chair was soon within his reach, but was declined by one whose projects of Reform in Philosophy were too comprehensive to be confined within the narrow limits of a University. In 1667 he removed to Frankfort, where he became Secre to the Baron von Boineburg, and was patronized and employed by the Elector of Mentz. During his residence in the Electorate, he was much engaged in public, legal, and diplomatic labours, as well as in literary pursuits. Yet his mind was all the time pervaded by the great idea of his life. He found time to edit the Antibarbarus of the Italian Nizolius, and, besides, was active in theological controversy. The Baron, who was born in the Lutheran Church, had joined the communion of Rome, and was much interested in a scheme for the union of the Romish and Lutheran Churches. This eclectic movement was not forgotten by Leibnitz at a later period in his life.

His speculations about this time are marked by the vagueness naturally characteristic of one who had cast off the authority of others, and had not resolved a system for himself. It was the transition-period in his life, during which his recorded thoughts teem with the germs of those ideas that are found in a matured form, and in profuse variety, in the Nouveaux Essais and the Théodicée.

These years are still more marked as the period of the commencement of that literary intercourse which afterwards accumulated so enormously, and in which Leibnitz always appears in the centre of the thinking spirits of his age. It commenced, and was maintained, among others, with kindred minds in the Cartesian school—with Malebranche, the recluse author of the Recherche de la Vérité, of whom we have the interesting records that his genius lay dormant, till it was kindled by contact with the speculations of Des Cartes, and that his controversy about Idealism with Berkeley, on the only occasion they ever met, so roused the ardour of the then aged philosopher, that his death is recorded a few days afterwards—and with Arnauld, the pious, contemplative Jansenist of Port-Royal, the theological and philosophical antagonist of Malebranche. Leibnitz visited Arnauld at Paris in 1672, and remained in that brilliant metropolis during the greater part of the few following years. In 1673, he went for a short time to London, and came in contact with many of the English savans—among others, with Collins and Sir Isaac Newton. Shortly before his death, for the first and last time, Spinoza,—that type of the demonstrative metaphysician, received a visit at the Hague from the now rising Saxon philosopher. From the wonderful logical concatenation of the system of Spinoza, his mind must have received a powerful impression. From about 1674, his intercourse with Hobbes may be dated. The sceptical Bayle seems to have been the useful instrument of the more full development of his ideas—an indirect benefit which the cause of truth has often received from the labours of scepticism.

The year 1676 is an era in the life of Leibnitz. Death had taken away his patrons the Elector of Mentz and Von Boineburg. He was himself in Paris. But his reputation in Germany was now of the highest. He accepted an offer, tendered for the third time, to reside at the brilliant literary court of Hanover. Thus commenced a connexion which lasted during the remaining forty years of his life, and in which he held a succession of legal and literary offices, under the Duke John Frederic and his successors, the Electors Ernest Augustus, and George Louis,—the latter of whom became George I. of England two years before the death of Leibnitz. The additional means enjoyed by him at Hanover for gratifying the peculiarities of his genius, were used with his characteristic ardour. The variety of his aims during these forty years is marvellous. The development of his speculative genius continued to advance, and his thoughts, stirred from their lowest depths by the cycle of the sciences during that whole period, would present an exceedingly curious spectacle, if we could have these changes in the current of the soul represented to the senses. History, languages, geology, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, politics, and theology, in turn secured his attention, and his busy spirit collected the various learning of each department. His almost superhuman versatility of mind secured for Leibnitz the highest distinction in most of the sciences which come within the range of human thought. In history he laboured for years on the antiquities of the house of Brunswick, and the early annals of Germany. An experience of the extreme difficulty of historical researches suggested to him what may be styled the comparative anatomy of languages as an instrument for facilitating his efforts to travel backwards into the past. To the study of languages he accordingly applied himself with incredible zeal. He laid ambassadors and Jesuit missionaries under contribution for philological facts. In prosecuting this one department of investigation, he maintained a vast correspondence. Facts gathered from China and the Eastern tongues served to animate his exertions, and added new materials for speculation. Not content with the records and memorials of the past, contained in the words and works of man, he interrogated the globe itself. In his speculations on the physical vestiges of its early history, we find curious anticipations of recent geological hypotheses. These may be seen in a small tract entitled Protogea.

Leibnitz was able, in an unusual degree, to combine the external and the contemplative life. A great part of his time was busied with the conduct of civil and ecclesiastical negotiations. His correspondence regarding the unity of the Church, with the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels, with Arnauld, with Spinola, and with Bossuet, which occupied more or less of his time during twenty years, deserves some distinct notice. The reunion of the Protestants with the Church of Home was then placed by Leibnitz in the first rank of those questions on a settlement of which his heart was set. By his philosophic mind this adjustment was felt to be nearly related to his previously ascertained speculative doctrine of the theocracy, and a universal hier . His veneration for the Romish theory of a living infallible authority, supplementary to, and expository of, the written word of Scripture, was indeed coupled with a protest against the existing corruptions of the Church, and an expression of his fear that a formal adherence to Rome on his own part might, from (the practical intolerance of the Romish theologians, cramp the freedom of his philosophical speculations. Though he thus firmly resisted all solicitations to join the outward communion of Rome, yet his heart, and perhaps his conviction, was accorded to the system of the hierarchy. His love for scholastic learning may have biassed his inclinations in this direction, and his comprehensive genius, like that of many other kindred spirits, found gratification in the vast unity and completeness of the ideal Catholic Church, with its ritual, and its organization, apparently so suited for all the various characters and circumstances of those whom it desires to embrace within its ample fold, and all bearing so much the semblance of a fitting picture of that still vaster organization wherein he loved to contemplate the whole universe reclaimed into the harmony of the government of the All-holy and the All-wise. Yet this part of the life of Leibnitz is not one that can be studied with unmixed satisfaction. The source of those oscillations of opinion which are sometimes the consequence, in honest and devout minds, of a many-sided view of an extremely comprehensive subject, seems hardly sufficient to account for the inconsistencies of Leibnitz in his negotiations with the representatives of the Church of Rome.

During the later years of his life he was much engaged with another project of ecclesiastical union. A scheme was promoted by him about the year 1697, (under the auspices of the Courts of Hanover and Berlin,) for a general union of the Protestants against Rome, and especially of the two great sections of Protestantism,—the Lutheran and the Reformed. It was quite suited to the eclectic genius of the philosopher, and was long pressed by him on the attention of Europe. He laboured to destroy what he called the "idle phantoms" by which the Protestant Churches were separated. But the defects which marked his other scheme of universal Christian communion, marred this project of Protestant union. Both were essentially political and philosophical. They fail to recognise Religion and the Church as independent powers, whose liberties are essential for the accomplishment of the ends of the Christian society. Even this philosopher seems not to have felt, that when religion becomes the slave of merely human authority, it ceases to be either the great instrument of civilisation, or the means of preparing men for full union in the City of God. The pious Spener, who had personally experienced its supernatural force, predicted the ill issue of the Conference for Union held in Hanover in 1698, at which Leibnitz, Jablonski, and Molanus were present. The result justified his sagacity. A scheme for ecclesiastical union or co-operation, in order to be successful, should be able to assume the spirit of hearty and supreme devotion to religion on the part of those who are to be united. The progress of the great spiritual commonwealth, and not the political arrangements of nations, must be its ruling principle.