in just the degree that our ideas are confused;” that is, not really representative of things as they are. “Intelligence is the soul of liberty.”
This psychological explanation rests, of course, upon the foundation principle of the Leibnizian philosophy. Spirit is the sole reality, and spirit is activity. But there are various degrees of activity, and each grade lower than the purus actus may be rightfully regarded as in so far passive. This relative passivity or unreality constitutes the material and hence the sensuous world. One who has not insight into truth, lives and acts in this world of comparative unreality; he is in bondage to it. From this condition of slavery only reason, the understanding of things as they are, can lift one. The rational man is free because he acts, in the noble words of Spinoza, sub specie æternitatis. He acts in view of the eternal truth of things,—as God himself would act.
God alone, it further follows, is wholly free. In him alone are understanding and will wholly one. In him the true and the good are one; while every created intelligence is subject in some degree to sensuous affection, to passion. “In us, besides the judgment of the understanding, there is always mixed some unreal idea of the sensation which gives birth to passions and impulses, and these traverse the judgment of the practical understanding.” Freedom, in fine, is not a ready made garment with which all men are clothed to do with as they will. It is the ethical ideal; it is something to be attained; it is action in conformity with reason, or insight into the spiritual nature of reality and into its laws; it is not the starting-point, it is the goal. Only with a great price do men purchase such freedom. It will be noticed at once that Leibniz comes very close to Plato in his fundamental ethical ideas. The unity of virtue and reason, of virtue and freedom,—these are thoroughly Platonic conceptions. To both Plato and Leibniz reason is the ethical ideal because it is the expression of, nay, rather, is the reality of the universe; while all else is, as Leibniz says, imperfect or unreal, since it is not an activity, or, as Plato says, a mixture of Being and Non-Being. Again, to both man bears a similar relation to this spiritual reality. In Plato’s words, he participates in the Ideas; in those of Leibniz he reflects, as a mirror, the universe. To both, in a word, the reality, the true-self of the individual, is the spiritual universe of which it is an organic member. To both, therefore, man obtains freedom or self-realization only as he realizes his larger and more comprehensive identity with the Reason of the universe. With both, knowledge is the good, ignorance is the evil. No man is voluntarily bad, but only through lack of knowledge of the true Good. Leibniz, however, with a more developed psychology, supplements Plato in the point where the latter had the most difficulty,—the possibility of the feelings or of a love of pleasure overcoming knowledge of the good. This possibility Plato was compelled to deny, while Leibniz, by his subtle identifying of the passions with lack of knowledge, or with confused knowledge, can admit it. “It is an imperfection of our freedom,” says Leibniz, “which causes us to choose evil rather than good,—a greater evil rather than the less, the less good rather than the greater. This comes from the appearances of good and evil which deceive us; but God, who is perfect knowledge, is always led to the true and to the best good, that is, to the true and absolute good.”
It only remains briefly to apply these conceptions to some specific questions of moral actions. Locke asks whether there are practical innate ideas, and denies them, as he denies theoretical. Leibniz, in replying, recognizes two kinds of “innate” practical principles, one of which is to be referred to the class of instincts, the other to that of maxims. Primarily, and probably wholly in almost all men, moral truths take the rank of instincts alone. All men aim at the Good; it is impossible to think of man wilfully seeking his own evil. The methods, the means of reaching this Good, are implanted in men as instincts. These instincts, when brought to the light of reason and examined, become maxims of action; they lose their particular and impulsive character, and become universal and deliberate principles. Thus Leibniz is enabled to answer the various objections which are always brought against any “intuitive” theory of moral actions,—the variability of men’s moral beliefs and conduct in different countries and at different times. Common instincts, but at first instincts only, are present in all men whenever and wherever they live. These instincts may readily be “resisted by men’s passions, obscured by prejudice, and changed by custom.” The moral instincts are always the basis of moral action, but “custom, tradition, education” become mixed with them. Even when so confounded, however, the instinct will generally prevail, and custom is, upon the whole, on the side of right rather than wrong, so that Leibniz thinks there is a sense in which all men have one common morality.
But these moral instincts, even when pure, are not ethical science. This is innate, Leibniz says, only in the sense in which arithmetic is innate,—it depends upon demonstrations which reason furnishes. Leibniz does not, then, oppose intuitive and demonstrative, as sometimes happens. Morality is practically intuitive in the sense that all men tend to aim at the Good, and have an instinctive feeling of what makes towards the Good. It is theoretically demonstrative, since it does not become a science until Reason has an insight into the nature of the Good, and ascertains the fixed laws which are tributary to it. Moral principles are not intuitive in the sense that they are immediately discovered as separate principles by some one power of the soul called “conscience.” Moral laws are intuitive, he says, “as the consequences of our own development and our true well-being.” Here we may well leave the matter. What is to be said in detail of Leibniz’s ethics will find its congenial home in what we have to say of his theology.
Chapter VII.
Matter and its Relation to Spirit.
Locke’s account of innate ideas and of sensation is only preparatory to a discussion of the ideas got by sensation. His explanation of the mode of knowledge leads up to an explanation of the things known. He remains true to his fundamental idea that before we come to conclusions about any matters we must “examine our own ability.” He deals first with ideas got by the senses, whether by some one or by their conjoint action. Of these the ideas of solidity, of extension, and of duration are of most concern to us. They form as near an approach to a general philosophy of nature as may be found anywhere in Locke. They are, too, the germ from which grew the ideas of matter, of space, and of time, which, however more comprehensive in scope and more amply worked out in detail, characterize succeeding British thought, and which are reproduced to-day by Mr. Spencer.
“The idea of solidity we receive by our touch.” “The ideas we get by more than one sense are of space or extension, figure, rest, and motion.” These sentences contain the brief statement of the chief contention of the sensational school. Locke certainly was not conscious when he wrote them that they were the expression of ideas which should resolve the world of matter and of space into a dissolving series of accidentally associated sensations; but such was none the less the case. When he writes, “If any one asks me what solidity is, I send him to his senses to inform him,” he is preparing the way for Berkeley, and for a denial of all reality beyond the feelings of the individual mind. When he says that “we get the idea of space both by sight and touch,” this statement, although appearing truistic, is none the less the source of the contention of Hume that even geometry contains no necessary or universal elements, but is an account of sensible appearances, relative, as are all matters of sensation.
Locke’s ideas may be synopsized as follows: It is a sufficient account of solidity to say that it is got by touch and that it arises from the resistance found in bodies to the entrance of any other body. “It is that which hinders the approach of two bodies when they are moved towards one another.” If not identical with matter, it is at all events its most essential property. “This of all others seems the idea most intimately connected with and essential to body, so as nowhere else to be found or imagined, but only in matter.” It is, moreover, the source of the other properties of matter. “Upon the solidity of bodies depend their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion.” Solidity, again,
