of moral freedom. Spontaneity is no more an attribute of human activity than it is of all real activity. Every monad, even the unconscious, as truly follows its own law without interference from without as does man himself. If the spontaneity of action constitutes its morality, we are not in a condition to ascribe morality to man any more than to any real thing. We are thus thrown back again upon the conception of rationality as the final and decisive trait of freedom and of ethical conduct. Just as “contingency” gets a moral import only in connection with conscious ends of action, so “spontaneity” comes within the moral realm only when conjoined to reason.
Why is there this close connection between reason and freedom? The reader has only to recall what was said of Leibniz’s theory of causality to get a glimpse into their unity. Causality is not a matter of physical influence, but of affording the reason in virtue of which some fact is what it is. This applies of course to the relation of the soul and the body. “So far as the soul is perfect and has distinct ideas, God has accommodated the body to it; so far as the soul is imperfect and its ideas are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body. In the former case the body always responds to the demands of the soul; in the latter the soul is moved by the passions which are born of the sensuous ideas. Each is thought to act upon the other in the measure of its perfection [that is, degree of activity], since God has adjusted one thing to another according to its perfection or imperfection. Activity and passivity are always reciprocal in created things, because a portion of the reasons which serve to explain what goes on is in one substance, and another portion in the other. This is what makes us call one active, the other passive.”
If we translate these ideas out of their somewhat scholastic phraseology, the meaning is that the self-activity of any substance is accurately measured by the extent to which it contains the reasons for its own actions; and conversely, that it is dependent or enslaved just so far as it has its reasons beyond itself. Sensations, sensuous impulses, represent, as we have seen before, the universe only in a confused and inarticulate way. They are knowledge which cannot give an account of itself. They represent, in short, that side of mind which may be regarded as affected, or the limitation of mind,—its want of activity. So far as the mind acts from these sensations and the feelings which accompany them, it is ideally determined from without; it is a captive to its own states; it is in a condition of passivity. In all action, therefore, which occurs from a sensuous basis, the soul is rightly regarded as unfree.
On the other hand, just in the degree in which distinctness is introduced into the sensations, so that they are not simply experienced as they come, but are related to one another so that their reason for existence, their spiritual meaning, is ascertained, just in that degree is the soul master of itself. In Leibniz’s own words: “Distinct knowledge or intelligence has its place in the true use of reason, while the senses furnish confused ideas. Hence we can say that we are free from slavery just in the degree that we act with distinct knowledge, but are subject to our passions 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
