to the human organism, as I find them quoted by Lewes: “In the organism everything seems to be calculated with one determined result in view; and the harmony of the parts does not result from the influence which they exert upon one another, but from their co-ordination under the rule of a common force, a preconceived plan, a pre-existent force.” That is to say, the universe is teleological, both as a whole and in its parts; for there is a common idea animating it and expressed by it; it is mechanical, for this idea is realized and manifested by the outworking of forces.
It ought to be evident even from this imperfect sketch that the Leibnizian theory of pre-established harmony is not that utterly artificial and grotesque doctrine which it is sometimes represented to be. The phrase “pre-established harmony” is, strictly speaking, tautologous. The term “pre-established” is superfluous. It means “existent.” There is no real harmony which is not existent or pre-established. An accidental harmony is a contradiction in terms. It means a chaotic cosmos, an unordered order, a lawless law, or whatever else is nonsensical.
Harmony, in short, means relation, means connection, means subordination and co-ordination, means adjustment, means a variety, which yet is one. The Leibnizian doctrine is not a factitious product of his imagination, nor is it a mechanical scheme for reconciling a problem which has no existence outside of the bewildered brains of philosophers. It is an expression of the fact that the universe is one of order, of continuity, of unity; it is the accentuating of this doctrine so that the very essence of reality is found in this ordered combination; it is the special application of this principle to the solution of many of the problems which “the mind of man is apt to run into,”—the questions of the relation of the individual and the universal, of freedom and necessity, of the physical and material, of the teleological and mechanical. We may not be contented with the doctrine as he presents it, we may think it to be rather a summary and highly concentrated statement of the problem than its solution, or we may object to details in the carrying out of the doctrine. But we cannot deny that it is a genuine attempt to meet a genuine problem, and that it contains some, if not all, of the factors required for its adequate solution. To Leibniz must remain the glory of being the thinker to seize upon the perfect unity and order of the universe as its essential characteristic, and of arranging his thoughts with a view to discovering and expressing it.
We have but to notice one point more, and our task is done so far as it serves to make plain the standpoint from which Leibniz criticised Locke. There is, we have seen, the greatest possible continuity and complexity in the realm of monads. There is no break, quantitative nor qualitative. It follows that the human soul has no gulf set between it and what we call nature. It is only the highest, that is to say the most active and the most representative, of all monads. It stands, indeed, at the head of the scale, but not outside it. From the monad which reveals its presence in that stone which with blinded eyes we call dead, through that which acts in the plant, in the animal, up to that of man, there is no chasm, no interruption. Nay, man himself is but one link in the chain of spiritual beings which ends only in God. All monads are souls; the soul of man is a monad which represents the universe more distinctly and adequately. The law which is enfolded in the lower monads is developed in it and forms a part of its conscious activity. The universe, which is confusedly mirrored by the perception of the lower monad, is clearly brought out in the conscious apperception of man. The stone is representative of the whole world. An all-knowing intelligence might read in it relations to every other fact the world, might see exemplified the past history of the world, and prefigured the events to come. For the stone is not an isolated existence, it is an inter-organic member of a system. Change the slightest fact in the world, and in some way it is affected. The law of the universe is one of completed reciprocity, and this law must be mirrored in every existence of the universe. Increase the activity, the representative power, until it becomes turned back, as it were, upon itself, until the monad not only is a mirror, but knows itself as one, and you have man. The soul of man is the world come to consciousness of itself. The realm of monads in what we call the inorganic world and the lower organic realm shows us the monad let and hindered in its development. These realms attempt to speak forth the law of their being, and reveal the immanent presence of the universe; but they do not hear their own voice, their utterance is only for others. In man the universe is manifested, and is manifested to man himself.
Chapter IV.
Locke and Leibniz.—Innate Ideas.
The reader, impatient of what may have seemed an over-long introduction, has perhaps been asking when he was to be brought to the subject under consideration,—the relations of Leibniz to Locke. But it has been impossible to come to this question until we had formed for ourselves an outline of the philosophical position of Leibniz. Nowhere in the “Nouveaux Essais” does Leibniz give a connected and detailed exposition of his philosophy, either as to his standpoint, his fundamental principles, or his method.
Some preliminary view of his position is therefore a necessity. The demand for this preliminary exposition becomes more urgent as we recognize that Leibniz’s remarks upon Locke are not a critique of Locke from the standpoint of the latter, but are the application of his own philosophical conclusions. Criticism from within, an examination of a system of thought with relation to the consistency and coherency of its results, the connection between these results and the method professedly employed, investigation which depends not at all upon the position of the critic, but occupies itself with the internal relations of the system under discussion,—such criticism is a product of the present century. What we find in the “Nouveaux Essais” is a comparison of the ideas of Locke with those of Leibniz himself, a testing of the former by the latter as a standard, their acceptance when they conform, their rejection when they are opposed, their completion when they are in partial harmony.
The value of this sort of criticism is likely to be small and evanescent. If the system used as a standard is meagre and narrow, if it is without comprehensiveness and flexibility, it does not repay after-examination. The fact that the “Nouveaux Essais” of Leibniz have escaped the oblivion of the philosophical criticism of his day is proof, if proof still be needed, of the reasoned basis, the width of grasp, the fertility of suggestion which characterize the thought of Leibniz. But the fact that the criticism is, after all, external and not internal has made necessary the foregoing extended account of his method and general results.
On the other hand, what of Locke? How about him who is the recipient of the criticism? I assume that no extended account of his ideas is here necessary, and conceive myself to be justified in this assumption by the fact that we are already better acquainted with Locke. This acquaintance, indeed, is not confined to those who have expressly studied Locke. His thought is an inheritance into which every English-speaking person at least is born. Only he who does not think escapes this inheritance. Locke did the work which he had to do so thoroughly that every Englishman who will philosophize must either build upon Locke’s foundations, or, with conscious purpose, clear the ground before building for himself. And it would be difficult to say that the acceptance of Locke’s views would influence one’s thought more than their rejection. This must not, of course, be taken too literally. It may be that one who is a lineal descendant of Locke in the spiritual generations of thought would not state a single important truth as Locke stated it, or that those who seek their method and results elsewhere have not repudiated the thought of Locke as expressly belonging to him.
But the fundamental principles of empiricism: its conception of intelligence as an individual possession; its idea of reality as something over against and distinct from mind; its explanation of knowledge as a process of action and reaction between these separate things; its account of our inability to know things as they really are,—these principles are congenital with our thinking. They are so natural that we either accept them as axiomatic, and accuse those who reject them of metaphysical subtlety, or, staggered perchance by some of their results, give them up with an effort. But it is an effort,
