and impulses are images of past experiences which call up the feelings which were formerly attached to them, and thus there are aroused indirectly additional impulses and desires. Out of this complicated mass of impulses, desires, and feelings, both original and reproduced, comes the “dominant effort” which constitutes complete will. But what governs the production of this prevailing or dominant effort, which we may interpret as the act of choice? The answer is simple: the result of the conflict of these various factors, the striking of the balance, is the choice. Some desire emerges from the confused complex, and that desire is the final determination of the will. This desire may not in all cases be the strongest in itself,—that is, the one whose satisfaction will allay the greatest “uneasiness,” for the others, taken together, may outweigh it; it may, so to speak, have a plurality, but not a majority, of volitional forces on its side,—and in this case a fusion of opposing factors may defeat it. But in any event the result will be the algebraic sum of the various desires and impulses.
It is not at all necessary, however, that the net outcome shall make itself apparent as a mechanical equivalent of the forces at work. The soul, Leibniz says, may use its skill in the formation of parties, so as to make this or that side the victor. How is this to be done, and still disallow the possibility of arbitrary choice? This problem is solved through action becoming deliberate. Deliberate action is impossible unless the soul has formed the habit of looking ahead and of arranging for modes of action which do not present themselves as immediate necessities. Only in this way can one look at the matter impartially and coolly; “at the moment of combat there is no time for discussion. Everything which then occurs throws its full force on the balance, and contributes to an outcome made up in the same way as in mechanics.” The formation of certain habits beforehand, therefore, is the secret of translating impulsive action into the deliberate sphere.
Of these habits the simplest consists in thinking only occasionally and incidentally of certain things. Imagination is the mother of desire. If we do not allow the imagination to dwell upon certain lines of thought, the probability of such thoughts acquiring sufficient force to become motives of weight is small. A still more effective method of regulating action is “to accustom ourselves to forming a train of thoughts of which reason, and not chance (that is, association), is the basis. We must get out of the tumult of present impressions, beyond our immediate surroundings, and ask: Dic cur hic? respice finem!” In other words, we must cross-question our impulses and desires, we must ask whence they come, that we may see how valid are the credentials which they offer. We must ask whither they tend, that we may measure them, not by their immediate interest, but by their relation to an end. The desires are not to be taken at their face-value, but are to be weighed and compared.
Such a process will evidently result in arresting instantaneous action. There will be a pause between the presentation of the desires and the overt act. During this pause it may well occur that the examination to which the desires have been subject has awakened contrary desires. The thought of the ignoble origin of a desire or of its repulsive, though remote, result will bring into action desires of an opposed kind. Thus the soul regulates action, not as if, however, it had any direct influence over desires, but by its ability of bringing other desires into the field. The will, in short, is not opposed to desire, though rational desire may be opposed to sensuous desire. “By various artifices, then,” Leibniz concludes, “we become masters of ourselves, and can make ourselves think and do that which we ought to will, and which reason ordains.” Such is the summary of Leibniz’s analysis of the elements and mechanism of volition. There was not much psychology existing at the time which could aid him in such an acute and subtle account; only in Aristotle could he have found much help. On the other hand, it has been so generally incorporated into current psychology that we may seem to have wasted space in repeating truisms.
Of moral action, however, we have as yet heard nothing. We have an account of a psychological mechanism; but for what ethical end does this work, and by what method? This question may best be answered by turning in more detail to the question of the “freedom of the will.” Freedom in the sense of arbitrary choice Leibniz wholly rejects, as we have seen. It is inconsistent with at least two of his fundamental principles; those, namely, of sufficient reason, and of continuity. “Everything that occurs must have a sufficient reason for its occurrence.” This oft-repeated dictum of Leibniz, the logical way of stating the complete rationality of experience, would be shattered into fragments by collision with groundless choice. It conflicts equally (indeed for the same reason) with the principle of continuity. “The present is pregnant with the future.” “Nature never makes leaps.” “An absolute equilibrium is a chimera.” “The soul is never wholly at rest.” These are only various ways of saying that the notion of arbitrary or unmotivated choice rests upon the assumption that there is a complete break in the life of the soul, so that it is possible for something to happen which bears no organic relation to anything that precedes. The notion of a state of the soul without motives, followed by the irruption of a certain line of conduct, the notion of an equilibrium broken by arbitrary choice, is simply the counterpart of the idea of a vacuum. All that makes Leibniz reject the latter conception makes it impossible for him to accept the former.
This should not be interpreted to mean that Leibniz denied the “freedom of the will.” What he denied is a notion of freedom which seemed to him at once unverifiable, useless, and irrational. There is a conception of freedom which Leibniz not only accepts, but insists upon. Such a notion of freedom is indeed his ethical ideal. Its three traits are contingency, spontaneity, and rationality of action. How action can be at the same time contingent and determined is perhaps difficult to understand; but Leibniz takes the position that it is. His first step is to distinguish between physical, mathematical, metaphysical, and moral necessity. There are truths which are eternal, truths which are absolutely necessary, because their opposites involve contradiction. They cannot be violated without involving us in absurdity. There are other truths which are “positive,” that is, ordained for good reason. These truths may be a priori, or rational, and not merely empirical; for they have been chosen for reasons of advantage. God always chooses and ordains the best of a number of possibilities; but he does it, not because the opposite is impossible, but because it is inferior. Truths whose opposites are impossible have metaphysical and mathematical necessity. Positive truths have moral necessity. The principle of causation must be true; the three interior angles of a triangle must be equal to two right angles. But that God shall choose the better of two courses is a moral necessity only. It invokes no absolute logical contradiction to conceive him choosing some other way. Upon moral necessity depends the physical. The particular laws of nature are necessary, not because their opposites are logically absurd, but because these laws are most in accordance with the general principles of good and order, in agreement with which God chooses. Physical and moral action is therefore in all cases contingent. (Contingency does not of itself, of course, constitute freedom, but conjoined with the characteristics of rationality and spontaneity, does so.)
Necessity, in short, is based upon the principle of logical contradiction; contingency upon that of sufficient reason. Since our actions are in no case necessitated in such a way that their opposite is self-contradictory, or, put positively, since our actions are always determined by the choice of that which seems best, our actions are contingent. Occasionally Leibniz puts the matter in a much simpler way, and one which brings out the essential element more clearly than the foregoing distinction. Some facts are determined by the principle of physical causation; others by that of final causation. Some, in other words, are necessary as the mechanical outcome of their antecedents; others are necessary as involved in the reaching of a given end. It is simply the Aristotelian distinction between efficient and teleological causation. Human action is determined, since it always has a motive or reason; it is contingent, because it springs from this reason and not from its temporal antecedents. It is, in short, determined, but it is also free.
It does not require much analysis, however, to see that this distinction, in whatever way it be put, really has no significance, except as it points to the other marks of freedom,—spontaneity and rationality. As we shall see, Leibniz makes and can make no absolute distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. The contingent and the necessary are one at bottom.
