in the former,—as if, for example, a man could turn either to right or left without there being any logical contradiction in either case; but this is because of our defective insight. An intelligence cognizant of the whole matter could see that one action would contradict some truth involved in the constitution of the universe. The source of the contingent and changing is in the necessary and eternal. Thus it is that although Leibniz at one time says that “neither one’s self nor any other spirit more enlightened could demonstrate that the opposite of a given action (like going out in preference to staying in) involves contradiction,” at another time he says that “a perfect knowledge of all the circumstances, internal and external, would enable any one to foresee” the decision in a given case. If that be so, any other action must be impossible; that is, according to Leibniz’s invariable logic, imply contradiction.
We get the same result if we consider the relation of final and efficient causes. It is only when speaking in a very general way that Leibniz opposes action as determined by precedent activities to that directed towards the attainment of an end. He does not really mean that some action is physical, while other is teleological. He cannot suppose that some action has an antecedent cause, while other has a purpose. The very essence of his thought is that action is both mechanical and teleological; that all action follows in a law of order from precedent action, and that all fulfils a certain spiritual function. The distinction is not, with Leibniz, one between two kinds of action, but between two ways of looking at every action. The desire to go rather than to stay, has its efficient cause; the movements by which the desire is executed, have their final cause. The truth of the matter seems to be that Leibniz in his desire to guard against being thought a fatalist, or one denying all freedom, uses terms which are compatible only with a freedom of indifference. So in his statement that man’s action is free because “contingent,” he seems actuated rather by a wish to avoid the hateful term “necessity” than by considerations strictly in harmony with his own principles.
Had he confined his use of the term “contingent,” however, simply to re-stating the fact that human action is spontaneous, no such apparent contradiction would have presented itself. Human actions may be called contingent, as physical actions are not, because the latter always seem to be externally determined, while the former are internally directed. Motions act from without; motives from within. The cause of the falling of a stone lies outside it; the source of a desire which moves to action is from the mind itself. We are thus introduced to contingency as a synonym of “spontaneity.”
Kuno Fischer calls attention to the fact that Spinoza and Leibniz both use the same sort of illustration to show the non-arbitrary character of human action, but the same illustration with a difference; and in the difference he finds the distinction between the two philosophies. Spinoza says that a stone falling to the ground, if endowed with consciousness, might imagine itself following its own will in falling. Leibniz says that a magnetic needle similarly endowed might imagine that it turned towards the north simply because it wished. Both examples are used to illustrate the folly of relying upon the immediate “testimony” of consciousness. But the example of Spinoza is that of an object, all whose movements are absolutely necessitated from without; the example of Leibniz is that of an object whose activity, though following law, and not caprice, is apparently initiated from within. Of course in reality the movements of the magnetic needle are just as much externally conditioned as those of the stone; but the appearance of self-action in the latter case may serve at least to exemplify what is meant by spontaneity as attributed to human action.
It must be noticed at the outset that spontaneity belongs to every simple substance. We have only to recall the doctrine of monads. These suffer nothing from without, all their activity is the expression, is the unfolding, of their own law. “By nature,” Leibniz says, “every simple substance has perceptions, and its individuality consists in the permanent law which forms the succession of its perceptions, that are born naturally one of another. Hence it is not necessary for it to receive any physical influence from without; and therefore the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity in such a way that its actions depend only upon God and itself.” Or if we put the matter in its connection with his psychology rather than with his metaphysics, it is true that our actions are determined by our motives; but motives are not forces without the soul, they are forces of the soul. In acting according to motives the soul is simply acting according to its own laws. A desire is not an impulsion from an external cause; it is the expression of an inward tendency. To say that the soul acts from the strongest desire is simply to say, from this standpoint, that it manifests the most real part of itself, not that it obeys a foreign force. Impulses, desires, motives, are all psychical; they admit of no description or explanation except in their relation to the soul itself. Thus when Leibniz compares, as he often does, motives to weights acting upon a balance, we are to remember that the balance is not to be conceived as the soul, and the weights as energies outside it, but that this is only a way of picturing what is going on within the soul itself. The soul may be a mechanism, but it is a self-directing and self-executing mechanism. To say that human action is free because it is spontaneous, is to say that it follows an immanent principle, that it is independent of foreign influences,—in a word, that it is self-determined.
But here again it seems as if Leibniz had stated a principle altogether too wide to throw any light upon the nature 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
