is possible.”
There are two ways of proving this last clause (namely, that he is possible) the direct and the indirect. The indirect is employed against those who assert that from mere notions, ideas, definitions or possible essences, it is not possible to infer actual existence. Such persons simply deny the possibility of being in itself. But if being-in-itself, or absolute being, is impossible, being-by-another, or relative, is also impossible; for there is no “other” upon which it may depend. Nothing, in this case, could exist. Or if necessary being is not possible, there is no being possible. Put in another way, God is as necessary for possibility as for actual existence. If there is possibility of anything, there is God. This leads up to the direct proof; for it follows that, if there be a possibility of God,—the Being in whom existence and essence are one,—he exists. “God alone has such a position that existence is necessary, if possible. But since there can be nothing opposed to the possibility of a being without limit,—a being therefore without negations and without contradiction,—this is sufficient to prove a priori the existence of God.” In short, God being pure affirmation, pure self-identity, the idea of his Being cannot include contradiction, and hence is possible,—and since possible, necessary. Of this conception of God as the purely self-identical, without negation, we shall have something to say in the next chapter.
The cosmological proof is, as we have already seen, that every cause in the world being at the same time an effect, it cannot be the sufficient reason of anything. The whole series is contingent, and requires a ground not prior to, but beyond, the series. The only sufficient reason of anything is that which is also the sufficient reason of itself,—absolute being. The teleological argument Leibniz invariably, I believe, presents in connection with the idea of pre-established harmony. “If the substances of experience,” runs the argument, “had not received their being, both active and passive, from one universal supreme cause, they would be independent of one another, and hence would not exhibit that order, harmony, and beauty which we notice in nature. This argument possesses only moral certainty which becomes demonstrative by the new kind of harmony which I have introduced,—pre-established harmony. Since each substance expresses in its own way that which occurs beyond it, and can have no influence on other particular beings, it is necessary that each substance, before developing these phenomena from the depth of its own being, must have received this nature (this internal ground of external phenomena) from a universal cause from whom all beings depend, and which effects that one be perfectly in accord with and corresponding to every other. This cannot occur except through a being of infinite knowledge and power.”
Having determined the existence of God, Leibniz states his attributes. These may be reduced to three. He is perfect in power, in wisdom, and in goodness. “Perfection is nothing other than the whole of positive reality separated from the limits and bounds of things. Where there are no limits, as in God, perfection is absolutely infinite.” “In God exists power, which is the source of all knowledge,—which comprehends the realm of ideas, down to its minutest detail,—and will, which directs all creations and changes according to the principle of the best.” Or as he expands it at another time: “The supreme cause must be intelligent, for the existing world being contingent, and an infinity of other worlds being equally possible, it is necessary that the cause of the world take into consideration all these possible worlds in order to decide upon one. Now this relation of a substance to simple ideas must be the relation of understanding to its ideas, while deciding upon one is the act of will in choosing. Finally it is the power of this substance which executes the volition. Power has its end in being; wisdom, or understanding, in truth; and will in good. Thus the cause must be absolutely perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness. His understanding is the source of essences, and his will the origin of existences.”
This brings us to the relation of God to the world, or to an account of the creating activity of God. This may be considered to be metaphysically, logically, or morally necessary. To say that it is metaphysically necessary is to say that it is the result of the divine essence, that it would imply a contradiction of the very being of God for the world not to be and not to be as it is. In short, the world becomes a mere emanation of power, since, as we have just learned, power and being are correlative. But this leaves out of account the divine understanding. Not all possible worlds emanate from God’s being, but there is recognition of them and of their relations to one another. Were the world to proceed from the divine understanding alone, however, it would be logically necessary,—that is, it would bear the same relation to his understanding that necessary truths do. Its opposite would imply contradiction, not indeed of the being of God, but of his understanding. But the will of God plays the all-important part of choosing among the alternative worlds presented by reason, each of which is logically possible. One of these worlds, although standing on the same intellectual plane as the others, is morally better,—that is, it involves greater happiness and perfection to the creatures constituting it. God is guided then by the idea of the better (and this is the best possible) world. His will is not arbitrary in creating: it does not work by a fiat of brute power. But neither is it fatalistic: it does not work by compulsory necessity. It is both free and necessary; free, for it is guided by naught excepting God’s own recognition of an end; necessary, for God, being God, cannot morally act otherwise than by the principle of the better,—and this in contingent matters is the best. Hence the optimism of Leibniz, to which here no further allusion can be made.
Since the best is precisely God himself, it is evident that the created world will have, as far as possible, his perfections. It would thus be possible to deduce from this conception of God and his relation to the world all those characteristics of the Leibnizian monadology which we formerly arrived at analytically. God is individual, but with an infinite comprehensiveness. Each substance repeats these properties of the supreme substance. There is an infinity of such substances, in order that the world may as perfectly as possible mirror the infinity of God. Each, so far as in it lies, reflects the activity of God; for activity is the very essence of perfection. And thus we might go through with the entire list of the properties of the monad.
To complete the present discussion, however, it is enough to notice that intelligence and will must be found in every creature, and that thus we account for the “appetition” and the “perception” that characterize even the lowest monad. The scale of monads, however, would not be as complete as possible unless there were beings in whom appetition became volition, and perception, self-conscious intelligence. Such monads will stand in quite other relation to God than the blind impulse-governed substances. “Spirits,” says Leibniz, “are capable of entering into community with God, and God is related to them not only as an inventor to his machine (as he is to other creatures) but as a prince to his subjects, or, better, as a father to his children. This society of spirits constitutes the city of God,—the most perfect state under the most perfect monarch. This city of God, this truly cosmopolitan monarchy, is a moral world within the natural. Among all the works of God it is the most sublime and divine. In it consists the true glory of God, for there would be no glory of God unless his greatness and goodness were known and admired by spirits; and in his relation to this society, God for the first time reveals his goodness, while he manifests everywhere his power and wisdom. And as previously we demonstrated a perfect harmony between the two realms of nature,—those of efficient and final causes,—so must we here declare harmony between the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace,—that is, between God as the architect of the mechanical world-structure, and God as the monarch of the world of spirits.” God fulfils his creation, in other words, in a realm of spirits, and fulfils it because here there are beings who do not merely reflect him but who enter into relations of companionship with him, forming a community. This community of spirits with one another and with God is the moral world, and we are thus brought again to the ethics of Leibniz.
It has been frequently pointed out that Leibniz was the first to give ethics the form which it has since kept in German philosophy,—the division into Natur-recht and Natur-moral. These terms are difficult to give in English, but the latter corresponds to what is ordinarily called “moral philosophy,” while the former is political philosophy so far as that has an ethical bearing. Or the latter may be said to treat
