it was useless rubbish to be cleared away, that we might get a tabula rasa upon which to make a fresh start. And shall Locke and the empirical English school, or Reid and the Scotch school, or even Kant, be the first to throw a stone at Bacon and Descartes? It was reserved to Leibniz, with a genius almost two centuries in advance of his times, to penetrate the meaning of the previous development of reflective thought. It would be going beyond our brief to claim that Leibniz was interested in this as a historical movement, or that he specially concerned himself with the genetic lines which connected the various schools of thought. But we should come short of our duty to Leibniz if we did not recognize his conscious and largely successful attempt to apprehend the core of truth in all systems, however alien to his own, and to incorporate it into his own thinking.
Nothing could be more characteristic of Leibniz than his saying, “I find that most systems are right in a good share of that which they advance, but not so much in what they deny;” or than this other statement of his, “We must not hastily believe that which the mass of men, or even of authorities, advance, but each must demand for himself the proofs of the thesis sustained. Yet long research generally convinces that the old and received opinions are good, provided they be interpreted justly.” It is in the profound union in Leibniz of the principles which these quotations image that his abiding worth lies. Leibniz was interested in affirmations, not in denials. He was interested in securing the union of the modern method, the spirit of original research and independent judgment, with the conserved results of previous thought. Leibniz was a man of his times; that is to say, he was a scientific man,—the contemporary, for example, of men as different as Bernouilli, Swammerdam, Huygens, and Newton, and was himself actively engaged in the prosecution of mathematics, mechanics, geology, comparative philology, and jurisprudence. But he was also a man of Aristotle’s times,—that is to say, a philosopher, not satisfied until the facts, principles, and methods of science had received an interpretation which should explain and unify them.
Leibniz’s acquaintance with the higher forms of mathematics was due, as we have seen, to his acquaintance with Huygens. As he made the acquaintance of the latter at the same time that he made the acquaintance of the followers of Descartes, it is likely that he received his introduction to the higher developments of the scientific interpretation of nature and of the philosophic interpretation of science at about the same time. For a while, then, Leibniz was a Cartesian; and he never ceased to call the doctrine of Descartes the antechamber of truth. What were the ideas which he received from Descartes? Fundamentally they were two,—one about the method of truth, the other about the substance of truth. He received the idea that the method of philosophy consists in the analysis of any complex group of ideas down to simple ideas which shall be perfectly clear and distinct; that all such clear and distinct ideas are true, and may then be used for the synthetic reconstruction of any body of truth. Concerning the substance of philosophic truth, he learned that nature is to be interpreted mechanically, and that the instrument of this mechanical interpretation is mathematics. I have used the term “received” in speaking of the relation of Leibniz to these ideas. Yet long before this time we might see him giving himself up to dreams about a vast art of combination which should reduce all the ideas concerned in any science to their simplest elements, and then combine them to any degree of complexity. We have already seen him giving us a picture of a boy of fifteen gravely disputing with himself whether he shall accept the doctrine of forms and final causes, or of physical causes, and as gravely deciding that he shall side with the “moderns;” and that boy was himself. In these facts we have renewed confirmation of the truth that one mind never receives from another anything excepting the stimulus, the reflex, the development of ideas which have already possessed it. But when Leibniz, with his isolated and somewhat ill-digested thoughts, came in contact with that systematized and connected body of doctrines which the Cartesians presented to him in Paris, his ideas were quickened, and he felt the necessity—that final mark of the philosophic mind—of putting them in order.
About the method of Descartes, which Leibniz adopted from him, or rather formulated for himself under the influence of Descartes, not much need be said. It was the method of Continental thought till the time of Kant. It was the mother of the philosophic systems of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. It was equally the mother of the German Aufklärung and the French éclaircissement. Its fundamental idea is the thought upon which Rationalism everywhere bases itself. It says: Reduce everything to simple notions. Get clearness; get distinctness. Analyze the complex. Shun the obscure. Discover axioms; employ these axioms in connection with the simple notions, and build up from them. Whatever can be treated in this way is capable of proof, and only this. Leibniz, I repeat, possessed this method in common with Descartes and Spinoza. The certainty and demonstrativeness of mathematics stood out in the clearest contrast to the uncertainty, the obscurity, of all other knowledge. And to them, as to all before the days of Kant, it seemed beyond doubt that the method of mathematics consists in the analysis of notions, and in their synthesis through the medium of axioms, which are true because identical statements; while the notions are true because clear and distinct.
And yet the method led Leibniz in a very different direction. One of the fundamental doctrines, for example, of Leibniz is the existence everywhere of minute and obscure perceptions,—which are of the greatest importance, but of which we, at least, can never have distinct consciousness. How is this factor of his thought, which almost approaches mysticism, to be reconciled with the statements just made? It is found in the different application which is made of the method. The object of Descartes is the erection of a new structure of truth upon a tabula rasa of all former doctrines. The object of Leibniz is the interpretation of an old body of truth by a method which shall reveal it in its clearest light. Descartes and Spinoza are “rationalists” both in their method and results. Leibniz is a “rationalist” in his method; but his application of the method is everywhere controlled by historic considerations. It is, I think, impossible to over-emphasize this fact. Descartes was profoundly convinced that past thought had gone wrong, and that its results were worthless. Leibniz was as profoundly convinced that its instincts had been right, and that the general idea of the world which it gave was correct. Leibniz would have given the heartiest assent to Goethe’s saying, “Das Wahre war schon längst gefunden.” It was out of the question, then, that he should use the new method in any other than an interpreting way to bring out in a connected system and unity the true meaning of the subject-matter.
So much of generality for the method of Leibniz. The positive substance of doctrine which he developed under scientific influence affords matter for more discussion. Of the three influences which meet us here, two are still Cartesian; the third is from the new science of biology, although not yet answering to that name. These three influences are, in order: the idea that nature is to be explained mechanically; that this is to be brought about through the application of mathematics; and, from biology, the idea that all change is of the nature of continuous growth or unfolding. Let us consider each in this order.
What is meant by the mechanical explanation of nature? To answer a question thus baldly put, we must recall the kind of explanations which had satisfied the scholastic men of science. They had been explanations which, however true, Leibniz says, as general principles, do not touch the details of the matter. The explanations of natural facts had been found in general principles, in substantial forces, in occult essences, in native faculties. Now, the first contention of the founders of the modern scientific movement was that such general considerations are not verifiable, and that if they are, they are entirely aside from the point,—they fail to explain any given fact. Explanation must always consist in discovering an immediate connection between some fact and some co-existing or preceding fact. Explanation does not consist in referring a fact to a general power, it consists in referring it to an antecedent whose existence is its necessary condition. It was not left till the times of Mr. Huxley to poke fun at those who would explain some concrete phenomenon by reference to an abstract principle ending in —ity. Leibniz has his word to say about those who would account for the movements of a watch by reference to a principle of horologity, and of mill-stones by a fractive principle.
Mechanical explanation consists, accordingly, in making out an actual connection between two existing facts.
