Theodicy
by Freiherr von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · English · Gutenberg #17147 · 1,105,160 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Theodicy
Author: Freiherr von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Commentator: Austin Farrer
Translator: E. M. Huggard
Release date: November 24, 2005 [eBook #17147]
Most recently updated: December 13, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODICY ***
Produced by John Hagerson, Juliet Sutherland, Keith Edkins
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net
Theodicy
Essays on
the Goodness of God
the Freedom of Man and
the Origin of Evil
G.W. LEIBNIZ
Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College,
Oxford
Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's Edition of the Collected
Philosophical Works, 1875-90
Open [Logo] Court
La Salle, Illinois 61301
* * * * *
[Logo]
OPEN COURT and the above logo are registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark
Office.
Published 1985 by Open Court Publishing Company, Peru, Illinois 61354.
This edition first published 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited,
London.
Second printing 1988
Third printing 1990
Fourth printing 1993
Fifth printing 1996
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.
Theodicy: essays on the goodness of God, the
freedom of man, and the origin of evil.
Translation of: Essais de Théodicée.
Includes index.
1. Theodicy--Early works to 1800. I. Title.
B2590.E5 1985 231'.8 85-8833
ISBN O-87548-437-9
[5]
* * * * *
CONTENTS
* * * * *
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION page 7
PREFACE 49
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH 73
REASON
ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE 123, 182, 276
ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS
APPENDICES
SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS 377
EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, § 392 389
REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN 393
ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE'
OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL', 405
PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON
CAUSA DEI ASSERTA 443
INDEX 445
[7]
* * * * *
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
* * * * *
I
Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his
head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for
him. Not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a
mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics,
he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of
looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as
aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after
system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative
reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could
be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means
a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A
professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the
duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at
all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing
them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical
philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is
taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.
Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through
philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods
of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and [8]
such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a
case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to
open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical
position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed
starting-point, it will have to be historical.
The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If
metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination
must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is
no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider
Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _Theodicy_, for
two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be
published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct
influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the _Theodicy_.
Then in the second place, the _Theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in
historical material. It reflects the world of men and books which Leibniz
knew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation
which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century.
Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He was a
gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and
frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The librarian
might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer his own
contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his active
life the learned and confidential servant of the House of Brunswick; when
the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to research into
ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in literature, it was history
rather than philosophy. He was even more closely bound to the interests of
his prince than John Locke was to those of the Prince of Orange. The Houses
of Orange and of Brunswick were on the same side in the principal contest
which divided Europe, the battle between Louis XIV and his enemies. It was
a turning-point of the struggle when the Prince of Orange supplanted
Louis's Stuart friends on the English throne. It was a continuation of the
same movement, when Leibniz's master, George I, succeeded to the same
throne, and frustrated the restoration of the Stuart heir. Locke returned
to England in the wake of the Prince of Orange, and became the [9]
representative thinker of the régime. Leibniz wished to come to the English
court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the duties of his
librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was then an old man, and
before the tide of favour had turned, he died.
Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious
toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was
political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less
personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry,
or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But they had too
much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free thinking or to
make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their stand on a
fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they
repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and Spinoza.
The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences.
The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and of Christian
morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason, without aid
from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down by the general
sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this. 'Scriptural doctrine is
reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason, but it goes beyond them. We
believe the Scriptures, because they are authenticated by marks of
supernatural intervention in the circumstances of their origin. We believe
them, but reason controls our interpretation of them.' There remained the
most forward and the most hazardous line: the special positions which a
Church, a sect, or an individual might found upon the scriptural
revelation. A prudent man would not hold his advance positions in the same
force or defend them with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind
them. He could argue for them, but he could not require assent to them.
One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall
back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle
line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with perfect
seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption, but it
hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is
not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of [10]
us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic
policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from
Christian revelation.
In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz
differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for the
minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious enough
matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in Germany. For
Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants; effective toleration
must embrace them both. English toleration might indulge a harmless
Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic régime as the embodiment of
intolerance. But this was not practical politics on the Continent; you must
tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with Catholic
régimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the Pope with true Protestant
fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles
were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own
church. On some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from
Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint Catholic-Lutheran
front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's writings suggest that
the important decisions cut across all the Churches, and not between them.
Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel?
And could not the Christian alliance be cemented by theological agreement?
Hence Leibniz's famous negotiation with Bossuet for a basis of
Catholic-Lutheran concord. It was plainly destined to fail; and it was
bound to recoil upon its author. How could he be a true Protestant who
treated the differences with the Catholics as non-essentials? How could he
have touched pitch and taken no defilement? Leibniz was generally admired,
but he was not widely trusted. As a mere politician, he may be judged to
have over-reached himself.
It has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that Leibniz[11]
the politician and Leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not
at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency.
We may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established
harmony between nature and grace. Everything happens as though Leibniz were
a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. Yes, but
equally, everything happens as though Leibniz were a philosophical
theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. His appreciation of
Catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his dogmatic ancestry is to
be looked for in Thomism and Catholic humanism as much as anywhere. Above
all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind. It gave him pleasure to
appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to discover a soul of truth
in every opinion.
From the moment when Leibniz became aware of himself as an independent
thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. Sometimes he called it 'my
principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established
harmony'. It could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to
oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an
enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. The doctrine
may have been in Leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every
department of human speculation or enquiry. It provided a new alphabet of
philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be expressed
in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and Leibniz showed tireless
energy in working out restatements of standing problems.
As a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, Leibniz may be
compared to Bishop Berkeley. There was never any more doubt that Leibniz
was a Leibnitian than that Berkeley was a Berkeleian. But there is no
comparison between the two men in the width of their range. About many
things Berkeley never took the trouble to Berkeleianize. To take the most
surprising instance of his neglect--he assured the world that his whole
doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. But what sort of a theology?
He scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. He preferred to
keep on defending and explaining his _esse est percipi_. With Leibniz it is
wholly different; he carries his new torch into every corner, to illuminate
the dark questions.
The wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to its
inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will find it less[12]
surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the
start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon
him? What was he _not_ thinking of? He had a many-sided mind. If the
origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications
were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly
tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of Leibniz's principle,
and one source of its origin. We will here give an account of the matter
which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make
no claims to sufficient interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.
Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science
was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and
there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.
It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we all
know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had done
his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to philosophize at
all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on
from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us that he was
raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with Descartes's
opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they
might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors.
The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of Cartesian
writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist
Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in
the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an
enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The new systems
did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. At the
same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the
limits of human credulity.
[13]
There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific
thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws of motion
could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general
view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for
the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's more strictly
metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that standard of metaphysical
adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? His own
disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from Reason
herself; but the answer will not pass with us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed,
but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he
had. His conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic
training had made it.
There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught,
although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher. Among them
is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and sympathetic
thinker. He had more sense of history than his contemporaries, and he was
instinctively eclectic. He believed he could learn something from each of
his great predecessors. We see him reaching back to cull a notion from
Plato or from Aristotle; he even found something of use in the scholastics.
In particular, he picked out the Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in
the philosophy of his own age.' What this form of statement ignores is that
Leibniz _was_ a scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes
before him, to revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was,
indeed, a piece of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which
it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions.
'Entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an
individual thing. Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name
of 'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation
of the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the
scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz
wanted a term with a more general sound. 'There is an _X_', he wanted to
say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am going
to give a new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for _X_, the
more so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of scholasticism.
Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of [14]
scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
_something_ in it; he could not settle down in the principles of Descartes
or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital _something_. Since the
requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer
scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which
entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side by side.
If one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the
'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied,
'Substantial form'. Let us recall what was rejected under this name, and
why.
The medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we may
call common-sense biology. Biology, indeed, is the science of the living,
and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all physical
bodies with life. What they did do was to take living bodies as typical,
and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. Such an
approach was _a priori_ reasonable enough. For we may be expected to know
best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate, are alive.
Why not argue from the better known to the less known, from the nearer to
the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula of our own being,
and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their degree of unlikeness
to us?
Common-sense biology reasons as follows. In a living body there is a
certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive motions,
and a certain range of characteristic activities. The pattern, the sheer
anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a
refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and
digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent
support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only
breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark
at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the
characteristic acts together express dogginess; they reveal the specific
form of the dog. They _reveal_ it; exactly what the specific form
_consisted in_ was the subject of much medieval speculation. It need not
concern us here.
Taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology proceeds
to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say in the dog Toby. [15]
Before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was displayed
in each of his parents. And now it looks as though the form of dog had
detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up anew on
its own account. How does it do that? By getting hold of some materials in
which to express itself. At first it takes them from the body of the
mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment, and what the
dog eats becomes the dog.
What, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the dog-form
which assimilates them? Before assimilation, they have their own form.
Before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it by its
place in the body of a sheep. What happens to the mutton? Is it without
remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? It loses all its
distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more
basically material characteristics which it preserves. They underlay the
structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the
dog's flesh which supplants it. Whatever these characteristics may be, let
us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they
belong to or compose a common material nature.
The common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own
principles of physical action. We may suppose that we know much or that we
know little about it. This one thing at least we know, that it is capable
of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. It is not essential
to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it
would always be dog's flesh. It is capable of becoming either, according as
it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. So the voters
who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, Englishmen; they
are essentially neither Socialist curs nor Conservative sheep, but
intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either
system of party organization.
According to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the
relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization
capable of capturing it. Considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be
seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. It is heavy,
then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist
intrusions. But considered as material for organization by higher forms, it
is indeterminate. It acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the
sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the [16]
dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is
going to capture it. No amount of study bestowed on the common material
nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of
the higher organizing form. The only way to discover that is to examine the
higher form itself.
Every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. The form
of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that merely
happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences from sheep
to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a science of
probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. Again, the common
material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it will need
a science of itself, which we may call hylology. Each of these sciences is
mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how puzzlingly
they overlap! So long as we remain within the province of a single science,
we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be 'tight'. But as soon
as we consider border-issues between one province and another, farewell to
exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. We can think out hylology till we
are blue in the face, but we shall never discover anything about the entry
of material elements into higher organizations, or how they behave when
they get there. We may form perfect definitions and descriptions of the
form of the dog as such, and still derive no rules for telling what
elements of matter will enter into the body of a given dog or how they will
be placed when they do. All we can be sure of is, that the dog-form will
keep itself going in, and by means of, the material it embodies--unless the
dog dies. But what happens to the matter in the body of the dog is
'accidental' to the nature of the matter; and the use of this matter,
rather than of some other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of
the dog.
No account of material events can dispense with accidental relations
altogether. We must at least recognize that there are accidental relations
between particular things. Accident in the sense of brute fact had to be
acknowledged even by the tidiest and most dogmatic atomism of the last
century. That atomism must allow it to be accidental, in this sense, that
the space surrounding any given atom was occupied by other atoms in a given
manner. It belonged neither to the nature of space to be occupied by just
those atoms in just those places, nor to the nature of the atoms to be [17]
distributed just like that over space; and so in a certain sense the
environment of any atom was an accidental environment. That is, the
particular arrangement of the environment was accidental. The nature of the
environment was not accidental at all. It was proper to the nature of the
atom to be in interaction with other atoms over a spatial field, and it
never encountered in the fellow-denizens of space any other nature but its
own. It was not subject to the accident of meeting strange natures, nor of
becoming suddenly subject to strange or unequal laws of interaction. All
interactions, being with its own kind, were reciprocal and obedient to a
single set of calculable laws.
But the medieval philosophy had asserted accidental relations between
distinct sorts of _natures_, the form of living dog and the form of dead
matter, for example. No one could know _a priori_ what effect an accidental
relation would produce, and all accidental relations between different
pairs of natures were different: at the most there was analogy between
them. Every different nature had to be separately observed, and when you
had observed them all, you could still simply write an inventory of them,
you could not hope to rationalize your body of knowledge. Let us narrow the
field and consider what this doctrine allows us to know about the wood of a
certain kind of tree. We shall begin by observing the impressions it makes
on our several senses, and we shall attribute to it a substantial form such
as naturally to give rise to these impressions, without, perhaps, being so
rash as to claim a knowledge of what this substantial form is. Still we do
not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. We
shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. It
turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the
carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to
ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles. Each of these capacities of the wood
is distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to one another, nor deduce
them from the assumed fundamental 'woodiness'.
We can now see why 'substantial forms' were the _bêtes noires_ of the
seventeenth-century philosophers. It was because they turned nature into an
unmanageable jungle, in which trees, bushes, and parasites of a thousand
kinds wildly interlaced. There was nothing for it, if science was to
proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows: to
postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single
science. Now neither probatology nor cynology could hope to be [18]
universal--the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to be
hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material. Let us
say, then, that there is one uniform material nature of things, and that
everything else consists in the arrangements of the basic material nature;
as the show of towers and mountains in the sunset results simply from an
arrangement of vapours. And let us suppose that the interactions of the
parts of matter are all like those which we can observe in dead manipulable
bodies--in mechanism, in fact. Such was the postulate of the new
philosophers, and it yielded them results.
It yielded them results, and that was highly gratifying. But what,
meanwhile, had happened to those palpable facts of common experience from
which the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? Is the
wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly operations of
its parts? Is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm is? Is the life of
a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a going watch, except
in degree of complication and subtlety of contrivance? And if an animal's
body, say my own, is simply an agglomerate of minute interacting material
units, and its wholeness is merely accidental and apparent, how is my
conscious mind to be adjusted to it? For my consciousness appears to
identify itself with that whole vital pattern which used to be called the
substantial form. We are now told that the pattern is nothing real or
active, but the mere accidental resultant of distinct interacting forces:
it does no work, it exercises no influence or control, it _is_ nothing. How
then can it be the vehicle and instrument of my conscious soul? It cannot.
Then is my soul homeless? Or is it to be identified with the activity and
fortunes of a single atomic constituent of my body, a single cog in the
animal clockwork? If so, how irrational! For the soul does not experience
itself as the soul of one minute part, but as the soul of the body.
Such questions rose thick and fast in the minds of the seventeenth-century
philosophers. It will cause us no great surprise that Leibniz should have
quickly felt that the Formal Principle of Aristotle and of the Scholastic
philosophy must be by hook or by crook reintroduced--not as the detested
_substantial form_, but under a name by which it might hope to smell more
sweet, _entelechy_.
Nothing so tellingly revealed the difficulties of the new philosophy in[19]
dealing with living bodies as the insufficiency of the solutions Descartes
had proposed. He had boldly declared the unity of animal life to be purely
mechanical, and denied that brutes had souls at all, or any sensation. He
had to admit soul in man, but he still denied the substantial unity of the
human body. It was put together like a watch, it was many things, not one:
if Descartes had lived in our time, he would have been delighted to compare
it with a telephone system, the nerves taking the place of the wires, and
being so arranged that all currents of 'animal spirit' flowing in them
converged upon a single unit, a gland at the base of the brain. In this
unit, or in the convergence of all the motions upon it, the 'unity' of the
body virtually consisted; and the soul was incarnate, not in the plurality
of members (for how could it, being one, indwell many things?), but in the
single gland.
Even so, the relation between the soul and the gland was absolutely
unintelligible, as Descartes disarmingly confessed. Incarnation was all
very well in the old philosophy: those who had allowed the interaction of
disparate natures throughout the physical world need find no particular
difficulty about the special case of it provided by incarnation. Why should
not a form of conscious life so interact with what would otherwise be dead
matter as to 'indwell' it? But the very principle of the new philosophy
disallowed the interaction of disparate natures, because such an
interaction did not allow of exact formulation, it was a 'loose' and not a
'tight' relation.
From a purely practical point of view the much derided pineal gland theory
would serve. If we could be content to view Descartes as a man who wanted
to make the world safe for physical science, then there would be a good
deal to be said for his doctrine. In the old philosophy exact science had
been frustrated by the hypothesis of loose relations all over the field of
nature. Descartes had cleared them from as much of the field as science was
then in a position to investigate; he allowed only one such relation to
subsist, the one which experience appeared unmistakably to force upon
us--that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle. He had exorcized the
spirits from the rest of nature; and though there was a spirit here which
could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer had nevertheless confined
it and its unaccountable pranks within a minutely narrow magic circle: all
mind could do was to turn the one tiny switch at the centre of its [20]
animal telephone system. It could create no energy--it could merely
redirect the currents actually flowing.
Practically this might do, but speculatively it was most disturbing. For if
the 'loose relation' had to be admitted in one instance, it was admitted in
principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it would turn up
elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other field represented
a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid metaphysical truth.
Moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with the unitary gland might
do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it did not do justice to the
soul's own consciousness of itself. The soul's consciousness is the 'idea'
or 'representation' of the life of the whole body, certainly not of the
life of the pineal gland nor, as the unreflective nowadays would say, of
the brain. I am not conscious in, or of, my brain except when I have a
headache; consciousness is in my eyes and finger-tips and so on. It is
physically true, no doubt, that consciousness in and of my finger-tips is
not possible without the functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason
for locating the consciousness in the brain. The filament of the electric
bulb will not be incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but
that is a poor reason for saying that the incandescence is in the dynamo.
Certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply equivalent
to the area of our body. But in so far as the confines of mental
representation part company with the confines of the body, it is not that
they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that they may
expand and advance over the surrounding world. The mind does not represent
its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as the world affects
that body or is physically reproduced in it. The mind has no observable
natural relation to the pineal gland. It has only two natural relations: to
its body as a whole and to its effective environment. What Descartes had
really done was to pretend that the soul was related to the pineal gland as
it is in fact related to its whole body; and then that it was related to
the bodily members as in fact it is related to outer environment. The
members became an inner environment, known only in so far as they affected
the pineal gland; just as the outer environment in its turn was to be known
only in so far as it affected the members.
[21]
This doctrine of a double environment was wholly artificial. It was forced
on Descartes by the requirements of mechanistical science: if the members
were simply a plurality of things, they must really be parts of
environment; the body which the soul indwelt must be _a_ body; presumably,
then, the pineal gland. An untenable compromise, surely, between admitting
and denying the reality of the soul's incarnation.
What, then, was to be done? Descartes's rivals and successors attempted
several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here. They
dissatisfied Leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied
posterity. It will be enough for us here to consider what Leibniz did. He
admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact. The unity of consciousness
is the representation of a plurality--the plurality of the members, and
through them the plurality of the world. Here, surely, was the very
principle the new philosophy needed for the reconciliation of substantial
unity with mechanical plurality of parts. For it is directly evident to us
that consciousness focuses the plurality of environing things in a unity of
representation. This is no philosophical theory, it is a simple fact. Our
body, then, as a physical system is a mechanical plurality; as focused in
consciousness it is a unity of 'idea'.
Very well: but we have not got far yet. For the old difficulty still
remains--it is purely arbitrary, after all, that a unitary consciousness
should be attached to, and represent, a mechanical collection of things
which happen to interact in a sort of pattern. If there is a consciousness
attached to human bodies, then why not to systems of clockwork? If the body
is _represented_ as unity, it must surely be because it _is_ unity, as the
old philosophy had held. But how can we reintroduce unity into the body
without reintroducing substantial form, and destroying the mechanistical
plurality which the new science demanded?
It is at this point that Leibniz produces the speculative postulate of his
system. Why not reverse the relation, and make the members represent the
mind as the mind represents the members? For then the unity of person
represented in the mind will become something actual in the members also.
Representation appears to common sense to be a one-way sort of traffic. If
my mind represents my bodily members, something happens to my mind, for it
becomes a representation of such members in such a state; but nothing
happens to the members by their being so represented in the mind. The [22]
mental representation obeys the bodily facts; the bodily facts do not obey
the mental representation. It seems nonsense to say that my members obey my
mind _because_ they are mirrored in it. And yet my members do obey my mind,
or at least common sense supposes so. Sometimes my mind, instead of
representing the state my members are in, represents a state which it
intends that they shall be in, for example, that my hand should go through
the motion of writing these words. And my hand obeys; its action becomes
the moving diagram of my thought, my thought is represented or expressed in
the manual act. Here the relation of mind and members appears to be
reversed: instead of its representing them, they represent it. With this
representation it is the opposite of what it was with the other. By the
members' being represented in the mind, something happened to the mind, and
nothing to the members; by the mind's being represented in the members
something happens to the members and nothing to the mind.
Why should not we take this seriously? Why not allow that there is two-way
traffic--by one relation the mind represents the members, by another the
members represent the mind? But then again, how can we take it seriously?
For representation, in the required sense, is a mental act; brute matter
can represent nothing, only mind can represent. And the members are brute
matter. But are they? How do we know that? By brute matter we understand
extended lumps of stuff, interacting with one another mechanically, as do,
for example, two cogs in a piece of clockwork. But this is a large-scale
view. The cogs are themselves composed of interrelated parts and those
parts of others, and so on _ad infinitum_. Who knows what the ultimate
constituents really are? The 'modern' philosophers, certainly, have
proposed no hypothesis about them which even looks like making sense. They
have supposed that the apparently inert lumps, the cogs, are composed of
parts themselves equally inert, and that by subdivision we shall still
reach nothing but the inert. But this supposition is in flat contradiction
with what physical theory demands. We have to allow the reality of _force_
in physics. Now the force which large-scale bodies display may easily be
the block-effect of activity in their minute real constituents. If not,
where does it come from? Let it be supposed, then, that these minute real
constituents are active because they are alive, because they are minds; for
indeed we have no notion of activity other than the perception we have [23]
of our own. We have no notion of it except as something mental. On the
hypothesis that the constituents of active body are also mental, this
limitation in our conception of activity need cause us neither sorrow nor
surprise.
The mind-units which make up body will not of course be developed and fully
conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a better
word that we call them minds at all. They will be mere unselfconscious
representations of their physical environment, as it might be seen from the
physical point to which they belong by a human mind paying no attention at
all to its own seeing. How many of these rudimentary 'minds' will there be
in my body? As many as you like--as many as it is possible there should
be--say an infinite number and have done with it.
We may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity without
prejudicing mechanical plurality. Each of the mind-units in my body is
itself and substantially distinct. But since each, in its own way and
according to its own position, represents the superior and more developed
mind which I call 'me', they will order themselves according to a common
form. The order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of troops on
a parade-ground. Each man is a distinct active unit, but each is really
expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. He is
expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks--to obey the
officer is to keep in step with them. So the metaphysical units of the
body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the dominant mind:
one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind subordinately.
But if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of mind,
then _the_ mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among spirit-atoms.
What then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and makes it a mind
_par excellence_? Well, what constitutes the officer an officer? Two
things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being obeyed. In
military life these two factors are not always perfectly proportioned to
one another, but in the order of Leibniz's universe they are. A fuller
power to represent the universe is necessarily combined with dominance over
an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the universe only in so
far as the universe is expressed in its body. That is what the [24]
_finitude_ of the mind means. Only an infinite mind appreciates the whole
plurality of things in themselves; a finite mind perceives them in so far
as mirrored in the physical being of an organized body of members. The more
adequate the mirror, the more adequate the representation: the more highly
organized the body, the more developed the mind.
The developed mind has an elaborate body; but the least developed mind has
still some body, or it would lack any mirror whatever through which to
represent the world. This means, in effect, that Leibniz's system is not an
unmitigated spiritual atomism. For though the spiritual atoms, or monads,
are the ultimate constituents out of which nature is composed, they stand
composed together from the beginning in a minimal order which cannot be
broken up. Each monad, if it is to be anything at all, must be a continuing
finite representation of the universe, and to be that it must have a body,
that is to say, it must have other monads in a permanent relation of mutual
correspondence with it. And if you said to Leibniz, 'But surely any
physical body can be broken up, and this must mean the dissolution of the
organic relation between its monadical constituents,' he would take refuge
in the infinitesimal. The wonders revealed by that new miracle, the
microscope, suggested what the intrinsic divisibility of space itself
suggests--whatever organization is broken up, there will still be a minute
organization within each of the fragments which remains unbroken--and so
_ad infinitum_. You will never come down to loose monads, monads out of all
organization. You will never disembody the monads, and so remove their
representative power; you will only reduce their bodies and so impoverish
their representative power. In this sense no animal dies and no animal is
generated. Death is the reduction and generation the enrichment of some
existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the enrichment or the
reduction of the monad's mental life.
'But,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our
credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from what
sense and science make of them. If the real universe is what you say it is,
why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' The philosopher's answer
is, 'Because they _represent_ it. According to the truth of things, each
monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its own thoughts
and desires. To know things as they are would be simultaneously to live
over, as though from within and by a miracle of sympathy, the [25]
biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads. This is absolutely
impossible. Our senses represent the coexistent families of monads _in the
gross_, and therefore conventionally; what is in fact the mutual
representation of monads in ordered systems, is represented as the
mechanical interaction of spatially extended and material parts.' This does
not mean that science is overthrown. The physical world-view is in terms of
the convention of representation, but it is not, for all that, illusory. It
can, ideally, be made as true as it is capable of being. There is no reason
whatever for confusing the 'well-grounded seemings' of the apparent
physical world with the fantastic seemings of dream and hallucination.
So far the argument seems to draw whatever cogency it has from the
simplicity and naturalness of the notion of representation. The nature of
idea, it is assumed, is to represent plurality in a unified view. If idea
did not represent, it would not be idea. And since there _is_ idea (for our
minds at least exist and are made up of idea) there is representation. It
belongs to idea to represent, and since the whole world has now been
interpreted as a system of mutually representing ideations, or ideators, it
might seem that all their mutual relations are perfectly natural, a harmony
of agreement which could not be other than it is. But if so, why does
Leibniz keep saying that the harmony is _pre-established_, by special and
infinitely elaborate divine decrees?
Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes
interaction. By representing environment a mind does not do anything to
environment, that is plain. But it is no less plain that environment does
nothing to it, either. The act of representing is simply the act of the
mind; it represents _in view of_ environment, of course, but not under the
causal influence of environment. Representation is a business carried on by
the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate power to
represent.
Very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology? Is
not Leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely stated
alternatives? '_Either_ finite beings interact _or else_ they do not
directly condition one another. Monads do not interact, therefore they do
not directly condition one another. How then explain the actual conformity
of their mutual representation, without recourse to divine fore-ordaining?'
It seems sufficient to introduce a further alternative in the first line of
the argument, and we are rid of the theology. Things may condition the [26]
action of a further thing, without acting upon it. It acts of itself, but
it acts in view of what they are. We are tempted to conclude that Leibniz
has introduced the _Deus ex machina_ with the fatal facility of his age.
'Where a little further meditation on the characters in the play would
furnish a natural _dénouement_, he swings divine intervention on to the
scene by wires from the ceiling. It is easy for us to reconstruct for him
the end of the piece without recourse to stage-machines.'
Is it? No, I fear it is not. There is really no avoiding the
pre-established harmony. And so we shall discover, if we pursue our train
of reflexion a little further. It is natural, we were saying, than an idea
should represent an environment; indeed, it _is_ the representation of one.
Given no environment to represent, it would be empty, a mere capacity for
representation. Then every idea or ideator, taken merely in itself, _is_ an
empty capacity. But of what is the environment of each made up? According
to the Leibnitian theory, of further ideas or ideators: of empty
capacities, therefore. Then no idea will either be anything in itself, or
find anything in its neighbours to represent. An unhappy predicament, like
that of a literary clique in which all the members are adepts at discussing
one another's ideas--only that unfortunately none of them are provided with
any; or like the shaky economics of the fabled Irish village where they all
lived by taking in one another's washing.
It is useless, then, to conceive representations as simply coming into
existence in response to environment, and modelling themselves on
environment. They must all mutually reflect environment or they would not
be representations; but they must also exist as themselves and in their own
right or there would be no environment for them mutually to represent.
Since the world is infinitely various, each representor must have its own
distinct character or nature, as our minds have: that is to say, it must
represent in its own individual way; and all these endlessly various
representations must be so constituted as to form a mutually reflecting
harmony. Considered as a representation, each monadical existence simply
reflects the universe after its own manner. But considered as something to
be represented by the others, it is a self-existent mental life, or world
of ideas. Now when we are considering the fact of representation, that
which is to be represented comes first and the representation follows upon
it. Thus in considering the Leibnitian universe, we must begin with the[27]
monads as self-existent mental lives, or worlds of ideas; their
representation of one another comes second. Nothing surely, then, but
omnipotent creative wisdom could have pre-established between so many
distinct given mental worlds that harmony which constitutes their mutual
representation.
Our common-sense pluralistic thinking escapes from the need of the
pre-established harmony by distinguishing what we are from what we do. Let
the world be made up of a plurality of agents in a 'loose' order, with room
to manoeuvre and to adjust themselves to one another. Then, by good luck or
good management, through friction and disaster, by trial and error, by
accident or invention, they may work out for themselves a harmony of
_action_. There is no need for divine preordaining here. But on Leibniz's
view what the monads do is to represent, and what they are is
representation; there is no ultimate distinction between what they are and
what they do: all that they do belongs to what they are. The whole system
of action in each monad, which fits with such infinite complexity the
system of action in each other monad, is precisely the existence of that
monad, and apart from it the monad is not. The monads do not _achieve_ a
harmony, they _are_ a harmony, and therefore they are pre-established in
harmony.
Leibniz denied that he invoked God to intervene in nature, or that there
was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology. He was
simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual
representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to be
of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore God-dependent.
He was not adding anything to mutual representation, he was just showing
what it necessarily contained or implied. At least he was doing nothing
worse than recognized scholastic practice. Scholastic Aristotelianism
explained all natural causality as response to stimulus, and then had to
postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being stimulated, and this
was God. Apart from this supreme and first stimulus nothing would in fact
be moving. The Aristotelians claimed simply to be analysing the nature of
physical motion as they perceived it, and to find the necessity of
perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it. No violence was
thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was anything brought in
from without to patch it up; it was simply found to be of its own [28]
nature God-dependent.
It seems as though the reproachful description _'Deus ex machina'_ should
be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than Aristotle's or Leibniz's,
say for the occasionalist theory. Occasionalism appeared to introduce God
that he might make physical matter do what it had no natural tendency to
do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind. Ideas, on the other hand,
have a natural tendency to represent one another, for to be an idea is to
be a representation; God is not introduced by Leibniz to make them
correspond, he is introduced to work a system in which they shall
correspond. This may not be _Deus-ex-machina philosophy_, but it is
_physical theology_; that is to say, it treats divine action as one factor
among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural
system. And this appears to be perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous:
God's action cannot be a factor among factors; the Creator works through
and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'This is the
creature, and that is God' of distinguishable causalities in the natural
world. The creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but
because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its
Creator both in existence and in action.
The only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to the
religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite
existence throughout, because it is finite. All arguments to God's
existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites are
to be rejected. They do not indicate God, they indicate the failure of our
power to analyse the world-order. When Leibniz discovered that his system
of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought to have
seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought not to have
said, 'With the help of God I will leap over the wall.'
If we condemn Leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not him but
his age. No contemporary practice was any better, and much of it a good
deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. And
because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean
that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off.
On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset
any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This is particularly so[29]
in the _Theodicy_, as its many citations of theologians suggest. His
discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence
in which they result has much of that luminous serenity which colours the
best works of the Age of Reason.
Every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to conceive
God by the analogy of the human mind. When Leibniz declares the harmony of
monads to be pre-established by God, he is invoking the image of
intelligent human pre-arrangement. Nor is he content simply to leave it at
that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act by which
God pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for theological
purposes of Leibnitian doctrine about the human mind.
The human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain
system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the human
body. If we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas is more
developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which each of them
conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them. The conception
of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. It will be the
conception of a mind _absolutely_ dominant, to whose ideas, that is to say,
the whole system simply corresponds, without any reciprocating
correspondence on his side. In a certain sense this is to make God the
'Mind of the World'; and yet the associations of the phrase are misleading.
It suggests that the world is an organism or body in which the divine mind
is incarnate, and on which he relies for his representations. But that is
nonsense; the world is not _a_ body, nor is it organic to God. Absolute
dominance involves absolute transcendence: if everything in the world
without remainder simply obeys the divine thoughts, that is only another
way of saying that the world is the creature of God; the whole system is
pre-established by him who is absolute Being and perfectly independent of
the world.
Of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said: we can
think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection to
dominant mind. It is no use asking further _how_ God's thoughts are obeyed
in the existence and action of things. What we can and must enquire into
further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus obeyed. They
must be understood to be volitions or decrees. There are indeed two ways in
which things obey the divine thought, and correspondingly two sorts of
divine thoughts that they obey. In so far as created things conform to [30]
the mere universal principles of reason, they obey a reasonableness which
is an inherent characteristic of the divine mind itself. If God wills the
existence of any creature, that creature's existence must observe the
limits prescribed by eternal reason: it cannot, for example, both have and
lack a certain characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor
can it contain two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one
part and three parts. Finite things, if they exist at all, must thus
conform to the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine
reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it
only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce
from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to
be any. Finite things are particular and individual: each of them might
have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one
of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the
mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. But if so, the whole
universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might
as a whole be otherwise. Therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by
existing have the nature of _choices_ or _decrees_.
What material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of the
infinite mind making choices or decrees? If we use such language of God, we
are using language which has its first and natural application to
ourselves. We all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make
decrees. What is to choose? It involves a real freedom in the mind. A
finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession of
perceptions, ideas, or representations. With regard to some of our ideas we
have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our body. We
think of them as constituting our given substance. They are sheer datum for
us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which they mediate to
us. They make up a closely packed and confused mass; they persevere in
their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual counterpart of
the force which we have to recognize in things as physically interpreted.
Being real spiritual force, it is quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not
love our own existence and, in a sense, will it in all its necessary
circumstances? But if we can be said to will to be ourselves and to enact
with native force what our body and its environment makes us, we are [31]
merely willing to conform to the conditions of our existence; we are making
no choice. When, however, we think freely or perform deliberate acts, there
is not only force but choice in our activity. Choice between what? Between
alternative possibilities arising out of our situation. And choice in
virtue of what? In virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as
seemingly better.
Can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of God's creative
decrees? We will take the second point in it first: our choice is in virtue
of the appeal of the seeming best. Surely the only corrective necessary in
applying this to God is the omission of the word 'seeming'. His choice is
in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. The other point causes more
trouble. We choose between possibilities which arise for us out of our
situation in the system of the existing world. But as the world does not
exist before God's creative choices, he is in no world-situation, and no
alternative possibilities can arise out of it, between which he should have
to choose. But if God does not choose between intrinsic possibilities of
some kind, his choice becomes something absolutely meaningless to us--it is
not a choice at all, it is an arbitrary and unintelligible _fiat_.
Leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us
are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject, possibilities of
action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but
possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can conceive a world
different in many respects from this world, in which, for example,
vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I can do nothing
towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is practically impossible but
speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single
principle of necessary and immutable reason. I, indeed, can explore only a
very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; God does
not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the
possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. So among all
possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it.
But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. Out of
the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a choice?
Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively
turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he
would never come to the end of it. Embracing infinite possibility in [32]
the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy
upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness
through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he
immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it.
But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not
invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole
form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the
choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen for us
by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our
part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are pre-determined, it
would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice
is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any
degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we
have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole
argument cuts its own throat.
There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to
define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination
without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's method, and it can be
studied at length in the _Theodicy_. He certainly makes the very best he
can of it, and it hardly seems that any of those contemporaries whose views
he criticizes was in a position to answer him. The alternative method is to
make the most of the negative element involved in all theology. After all,
we do not positively or adequately understand the nature of infinite
creative will. Perhaps it is precisely the transcendent glory of divine
freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. But so
mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a
late-seventeenth-century philosopher.
One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He
allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to
a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a
choice of mere caprice. There is a sort of choice Leibniz never so much as
considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his categories,
and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic creativity. In such
choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate
simply between shaped and given possible schemes. And perhaps some such
element enters into all our choices, since our life is to some extent [33]
freely designed by ourselves. If so, our minds are even more akin to the
divine mind than Leibniz realized. For the sort of choice we are now
referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an infinite, or at
least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility. And such is the
nature of the divine creative choice. The consequence of such a line of
speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more through us, and
less simply for us, than Leibniz allowed: the 'harmony' into which we enter
would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. Leibniz, in fact, could have
nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would have found it easy to be
ironical about it if his contemporaries had proposed it.
II
Leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned
periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and
letters, preserved in the archives of the Electors of Hanover not because
of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the
political importance of most of them. From among this great mass various
excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors of
Leibniz's works. It may be that the most profound understanding of his mind
is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to consider the
public history of Leibniz, we may set them aside.
Of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. The _New
Essays_ remained in Leibniz's desk, the _Theodicy_ saw the light. And so,
to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author
of the _Theodicy_.
The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In
1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's _Essay concerning
Human Understanding_ was being prepared at Amsterdam. He wrote some polite
comments on Locke's great work, and published them. He also sent them to
Locke, hoping that Locke would write a reply, and that Leibniz's reflexions
and Locke's reply might be appended to the projected French translation.
But Locke set Leibniz's comments aside. Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to
work upon the _New Essays_, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is
systematically discussed in dialogue. The _New Essays_ were written in
1703. But meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between Leibniz [34]
and the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps
Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to
publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the
middle of the century.
The discussion with Locke was a failure: Locke would not play, and the book
in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never appeared. The
discussion with Bayle, on the other hand, was a model of what a discussion
should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly
profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing
forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in
a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which the controversy was
systematized duly appeared with great éclat.
Here is the history of the controversy. In 1695 Leibniz was forty-nine
years old. He had just emerged from a period of close employment under his
prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical principles
upon the polite world and see what would come of it. He therefore published
an article in the _Journal des Savants_ under the title: 'New System of
Nature and of the Communication of Substances, as well as of the Union
between Soul and Body'. In the same year Foucher published an article in
the _Journal_ controverting Leibniz; and in the next year Leibniz replied
with an 'Explanation'. A second explanation in the same year appeared in
Basnage's _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, in answer to reflexions by
the editor. M. Pierre Bayle had all these articles before him when he
inserted a note on Leibniz's doctrine in his article on 'Rorarius', in the
first edition of his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_. The point of
connexion between Rorarius and Leibniz was no more than this, that both
held views about the souls of beasts.
Pierre Bayle was the son of a Calvinist pastor, early converted to
Catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. He held
academic employments in Switzerland and Holland; he promoted and edited the
_Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_, and he produced that
extraordinary work the _Historical and Critical Dictionary._ The notices it
contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs upon which Bayle
could hang his philosophical reflexions. He could write an intelligent
discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to reconcile the points
of view from which he felt impelled to write upon this author and that.[35]
His was not a systematic mind. So far as he had a philosophical opinion, he
was a Cartesian; in theology he was an orthodox Calvinist. He could not
reconcile his theology with his Cartesianism and he did not try to. He made
a merit of the oppositions of faith to reason and reason to itself, so that
he could throw himself upon a meritorious and voluntary faith.
There is nothing original in this position. It was characteristic of
decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the
impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly
personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean
scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read
Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished.
But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole
position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a
scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly
convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality, we
might have suspected Leibniz of inventing him.
In the first edition of his _Dictionary_, under the article 'Rorarius',
Bayle gave a very fair account of Leibniz's doctrine concerning the souls
of animals, as it could be collected from his article in the _Journal des
Savants_, 27 June 1695. He then proceeded to comment upon it in the
following terms:
'There are some things in Mr. Leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to some
difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. He will have
it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of outward
bodies; that _it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect _spontaneity_
with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect _conformity_ to outward
things_.... That _its internal perceptions arise from its original
constitution, that is to say, the representative constitution (capable of
expressing beings outside itself in relation to its organs) which was
bestowed upon it from the time of its creation, and makes its individual
character_ (_Journal des Savants_, 4 July 1695). From whence it results
that it would feel hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there
were not any one body in the universe, and _though nothing should exist but
God and that soul_. He has explained (_Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_,
Feb. 1696) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should
perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular laws
which put the soul upon action, it must feel hunger at such an hour; [36]
and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion of
matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that same
hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. I will forbear preferring
this system to that of occasional causes till the learned author has
perfected it. I cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and spontaneous
actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog would feel
pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the
universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain
when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck
with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed
that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he
were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any
trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity of that soul should
be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general with any unpleasing
perceptions.
'Besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the Cartesian
system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that
the system of occasional causes brings in God acting by a miracle (ibid.),
_Deum ex machina_, in the mutual dependency of the body and soul: for since
God does only intervene according to general laws, he cannot be said to act
in an extraordinary manner. Does the internal and active virtue
communicated to the forms of bodies according to M. Leibniz know the train
of actions which it is to produce? By no means; for we know by experience
that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and such perceptions in an
hour's time. It were therefore necessary that the forms should be directed
by some internal principle in the production of their acts. But this would
be _Deus ex machina,_ as much as in the system of occasional causes. In
fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and
indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a
pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify
their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by
their Creator. It may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always
act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. If it were
composed of several pieces, as a machine, it would act different ways,
because the peculiar activity of each piece might change every moment the
progress of others; but how will you find in a simple substance the [37]
cause of a change of operation?'
Leibniz published a reply to Bayle in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
Savants_ for July 1698. As in all his references to Bayle, he is studiously
polite and repays compliment for compliment. The following are perhaps the
principal points of his answer.
1. On the example of the dog:
(_a_) How should it of itself change its sentiment, since everything left
to itself continues in the state in which it is? Because the state may be a
state of _change_, as in a moving body which, unless hindered, continues to
move. And such is the nature of simple substances--they continue to evolve
steadily.
(_b_) Would it really feel as though beaten if it were not beaten, since
Leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place as though
nothing existed but God and itself? Leibniz replies that his remark refers
to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it. The
spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only
decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of
mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel.
(_c_) Why should the dog ever be displeased _spontaneously_? Leibniz
distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the
mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.
2. On Cartesianism and miracle:
Cartesianism in the form of occasionalism _does_ involve miracle, for
though God is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body and
mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their natural
capacities.
3. On the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than uniformly?
Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not.
A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils
the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for the curve
constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of simple
substances.
Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In the
second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius', he
added the following note:
'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small
difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they [38]
have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to
me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be
admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest,
which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that
of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_
of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a
_way of assistance_ or occasional causality. But here is a new acquisition,
a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr. Lami styles it, a _way of
pre-established harmony_. We are beholden for it to M. Leibniz, and it is
impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power
and wisdom of the Author of all things. This, together with the advantage
of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to
prefer this new system to that of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any
possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_.
'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this way
removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract what I
have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in
God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in _Histoire des
Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698.) I am as much persuaded as ever I was
that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless God produces it as
an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is
immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle
properly so called. But being willing to cut off from this dispute as many
things as I possibly can, I consent it should be said that the surest way
of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all
created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of
nature. I will therefore lay aside what I might reply to that part of M.
Leibniz's answer.
'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion
than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore propose the
difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can
receive from God the power of moving itself. They are strong and almost
unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than
that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether the Cartesians would
presume to say that God cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting.
If they say so, how can they own that Adam sinned? And if they dare not[39]
say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that
matter is not capable of any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more
difficult for M. Leibniz than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to
free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human
liberty. Wherefore, waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to
the system of the _pre-established harmony_.
'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of
the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to yourself a
ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being
directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself
so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and
rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a
harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship sails in that
manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as
it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the
different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that God,
notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a
ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of
receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes about the machine
of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. Let us
apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the
person of Julius Caesar.
'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius Caesar
did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went
through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual
changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no
impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that faculty
of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone
to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have
spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate
his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving
power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of
the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a
certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar passed
from a certain thought to another. Can a blind power modify itself so
exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years [40]
before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing
what it is to do? Is not this much more incomprehensible than the
navigation I spoke of in the foregoing paragraph?
'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the
human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is
continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[1] and
which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts
of modifications. How is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established
harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest
life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal
action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all
sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes
dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a
thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of
external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of
changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here
required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with
the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.
[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be
reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed
of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action
really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the
action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects
_ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring
bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every
one of them.'
'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to
maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was
able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the
reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is
necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is
rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit
it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that
God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see
other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and
knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit
that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily
confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be [41]
necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according
to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of
the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of
the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's
hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties
than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It
puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon
another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey
their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real
action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and
make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants.
'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find the
thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being
exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God was
the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those
actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them
were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not
contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple,
indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not
acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most
philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (Mr.
Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and
disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would
appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and I could refute
it several other ways; which I need not mention since he acknowledges the
immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.
'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial
automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of
Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which
will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this
atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it
without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything:
and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which has received
the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [42]
of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted nor thwarted by
anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions and the ideas of
order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in
motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present
moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always
move in the same manner. This is the consequence of an axiom approved by M.
Leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it
happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ...
we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always
be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or
change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless
something happens to hinder it_. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)
'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power,
as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the
Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform
manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed at, when
he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which
he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he
could give no reason for this new part of his system. It was inconsistent
with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom
which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away
at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a
mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which
begins to play at that very moment. The first of these reasons cannot be
admitted in a vacuum. The second is impossible, since an atom has not the
faculty of thinking. And the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle
that is a perfect unity. I must make some use of all this.
'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. The
faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so M. Leibniz),
which it has received from God, both as to possession and exercise. If the
first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why
the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total
cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this
soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty
of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and
it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43]
moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the
second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be
objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be
in such a state, in the case that I have supposed; I answer that its change
will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in
the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the
preceding situation. A soul may therefore continue in its state of change,
if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding.
'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be
granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some
reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul of
Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it does
immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has
only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images
arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of
thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one
another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot apprehend how
God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle of what I am
going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when
he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's hypothesis which I
am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain
immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk,
which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. By what springs
was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a
sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing
itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? If you
run over the life of that Roman emperor, every page will afford you matter
for a stronger objection than this is.
'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the
soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of
which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made
in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it should be said
that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of
matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine,
awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those
spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[44]
but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just
like all material beings. We are here in quest of a single being, which
produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many
beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.
'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M.
Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
reflexions upon his answers.
'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in
the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the
very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the
law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is
done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner,
and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words
are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it
were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very
things at which the objections of those who take this system to be
impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of
God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes.
Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to
which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as
we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those
laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it,
that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the
soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however
infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a
machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a
piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by
him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the
instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it
I shall make use of a comparison.
'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing
continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs
him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes
or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that
according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after
another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. Without this one cannot
apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [45]
appointed him by God. Let us apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have
it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts
continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of
thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of
the body. This set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the
singing animal above mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or
modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without
knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But
experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least
necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul
a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause
of such and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to
operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence
_pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the
soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible
substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular
instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the
tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a human soul
should execute that law.
'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future
perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are
in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it:
but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from
distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a natural
consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so simple, has
always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which
answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a
machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those that
follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in
motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the
same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable
sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite
variety of what is to result from it in time. This is only a consequence of
the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens
and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of
all the parts of the world_. I have but little to say in answer to this: I
shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the
right way of solving all the difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the [46]
penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and
strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main
inconveniency. I do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of
his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits.
Nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual
world. I hope that his curious explanations will remove all the
impossibilities which I have hitherto found in his system, and that he will
solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these
hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that
learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important
conquest.
'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to
the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the
union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular
law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive
constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do
not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in
angelic nature?'
Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as
though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in
fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard
collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch
for the _Theodicy_.
The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which,
according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity
is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like
the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to
compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole
universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to
play in the total harmony.
As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul
plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony,
this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment
present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to
happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an omniscient
observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[47]
Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from
subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once
we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to be doing is to generalize
this observation. All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of
the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the
least conscious.
Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article
'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the
question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their
fuller treatment in the _Theodicy_.
In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle himself,
offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded it with a
paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the
historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and
revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:
'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking
reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your
boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able to
excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to
descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were
it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I have
worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon these
countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging
to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer
facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should prefer natural history
to political, and the customs and laws God has established in nature, to
what is observed among mankind.'
Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in
Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to
them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work
nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in _Theodicy_.
[49]
* * * * *
PREFACE
* * * * *
It has ever been seen that men in general have resorted to outward forms
for the expression of their religion: sound piety, that is to say, light
and virtue, has never been the portion of the many. One should not wonder
at this, nothing is so much in accord with human weakness. We are impressed
by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires
consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. As true
piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion
imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial
practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. Ceremonies resemble
virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth and
approach, more or less, the true light. All these outward forms would be
commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate to
maintain and to express that which they imitate--if religious ceremonies,
ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human laws were always
like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from any approach to
vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue. That was
the aim of Moses and of other good lawgivers, of the wise men who founded
religious orders, and above all of Jesus Christ, divine founder of the
purest and most enlightened religion. It is just the same with the
formularies of belief: they would be valid provided there were nothing [50]
in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though the full truth
concerned were not there. But it happens only too often that religion is
choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is obscured by the opinions
of men.
The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded, had
only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship, but
they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up
formularies for their dogmatic theology. They knew not whether their gods
were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, as the sun, the
planets, the elements. Their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas
but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who
were not initiated, were excluded. These observances were very often
ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to
guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions: they
boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries,
portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the
goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended to
sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great
future of another life was scarce envisaged; one did not trouble to impart
to men true notions of God and of the soul.
Of all ancient peoples, it appears that the Hebrews alone had public dogmas
for their religion. Abraham and Moses established the belief in one God,
source of all good, author of all things. The Hebrews speak of him in a
manner worthy of the Supreme Substance; and one wonders at seeing the
inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened than the rest
of the human race. Peradventure the wise men of other nations have
sometimes said the same, but they have not had the good fortune to find a
sufficient following and to convert the dogma into law. Nevertheless Moses
had not inserted in his laws the doctrine of the immortality of souls: it
was consistent with his ideas, it was taught by oral tradition; but it was
not proclaimed for popular acceptance until Jesus Christ lifted the veil,
and, without having force in his hand, taught with all the force of a
lawgiver that immortal souls pass into another life, wherein they shall
receive the wages of their deeds. Moses had already expressed the beautiful
conceptions of the greatness and the goodness of God, whereto many
civilized peoples to-day assent; but Jesus Christ demonstrated fully [51]
the results of these ideas, proclaiming that divine goodness and justice
are shown forth to perfection in God's designs for the souls of men.
I refrain from considering here the other points of the Christian doctrine,
and I will show only how Jesus Christ brought about the conversion of
natural religion into law, and gained for it the authority of a public
dogma. He alone did that which so many philosophers had endeavoured in vain
to do; and Christians having at last gained the upper hand in the Roman
Empire, the master of the greater part of the known earth, the religion of
the wise men became that of the nations. Later also Mahomet showed no
divergence from the great dogmas of natural theology: his followers spread
them abroad even among the most remote races of Asia and of Africa, whither
Christianity had not been carried; and they abolished in many countries
heathen superstitions which were contrary to the true doctrine of the unity
of God and the immortality of souls.
It is clear that Jesus Christ, completing what Moses had begun, wished that
the Divinity should be the object not only of our fear and veneration but
also of our love and devotion. Thus he made men happy by anticipation, and
gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity. For there is
nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love. Love is that
mental state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections of the object
of our love, and there is nothing more perfect than God, nor any greater
delight than in him. To love him it suffices to contemplate his
perfections, a thing easy indeed, because we find the ideas of these within
ourselves. The perfections of God are those of our souls, but he possesses
them in boundless measure; he is an Ocean, whereof to us only drops have
been granted; there is in us some power, some knowledge, some goodness, but
in God they are all in their entirety. Order, proportions, harmony delight
us; painting and music are samples of these: God is all order; he always
keeps truth of proportions, he makes universal harmony; all beauty is an
effusion of his rays.
It follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist in the
love of God, but a love so enlightened that its fervour is attended by
insight. This kind of love begets that pleasure in good actions which gives
relief to virtue, and, relating all to God as to the centre, transports the
human to the divine. For in doing one's duty, in obeying reason, one [52]
carries out the orders of Supreme Reason. One directs all one's intentions
to the common good, which is no other than the glory of God. Thus one finds
that there is no greater individual interest than to espouse that of the
community, and one gains satisfaction for oneself by taking pleasure in the
acquisition of true benefits for men. Whether one succeeds therein or not,
one is content with what comes to pass, being once resigned to the will of
God and knowing that what he wills is best. But before he declares his will
by the event one endeavours to find it out by doing that which appears most
in accord with his commands. When we are in this state of mind, we are not
disheartened by ill success, we regret only our faults; and the ungrateful
ways of men cause no relaxation in the exercise of our kindly disposition.
Our charity is humble and full of moderation, it presumes not to domineer;
attentive alike to our own faults and to the talents of others, we are
inclined to criticize our own actions and to excuse and vindicate those of
others. We must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man. There
is no piety where there is not charity; and without being kindly and
beneficent one cannot show sincere religion.
Good disposition, favourable upbringing, association with pious and
virtuous persons may contribute much towards such a propitious condition
for our souls; but most securely are they grounded therein by good
principles. I have already said that insight must be joined to fervour,
that the perfecting of our understanding must accomplish the perfecting of
our will. The practices of virtue, as well as those of vice, may be the
effect of a mere habit, one may acquire a taste for them; but when virtue
is reasonable, when it is related to God, who is the supreme reason of
things, it is founded on knowledge. One cannot love God without knowing his
perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of true piety. The
purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles upon our souls:
but in some strange way it has happened all too often that men, that
teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose. Contrary to the
intention of our divine Master, devotion has been reduced to ceremonies and
doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. All too often these ceremonies
have not been well fitted to maintain the exercise of virtue, and the
formulae sometimes have not been lucid. Can one believe it? Some Christians
have imagined that they could be devout without loving their neighbour,[53]
and pious without loving God; or else people have thought that they could
love their neighbour without serving him and could love God without knowing
him. Many centuries have passed without recognition of this defect by the
people at large; and there are still great traces of the reign of darkness.
There are divers persons who speak much of piety, of devotion, of religion,
who are even busied with the teaching of such things, and who yet prove to
be by no means versed in the divine perfections. They ill understand the
goodness and the justice of the Sovereign of the universe; they imagine a
God who deserves neither to be imitated nor to be loved. This indeed seemed
to me dangerous in its effect, since it is of serious moment that the very
source of piety should be preserved from infection. The old errors of those
who arraigned the Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been
renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible
power of God when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme
goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather
have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. I have
observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused
notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny;
and I have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give
explanations on these important matters. But finally I have been compelled
to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart
them to the public. It is this that I have undertaken in the Essays which I
offer here, on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of
Evil.
There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray:
one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all in
the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists in the discussion
of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The
first perplexes almost all the human race, the other exercises philosophers
only. I shall have perchance at another time an opportunity to declare
myself on the second, and to point out that, for lack of a true conception
of the nature of substance and matter, people have taken up false positions
leading to insurmountable difficulties, difficulties which should properly
be applied to the overthrow of these very positions. But if the [54]
knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of
necessity is none the less so for practical application; and it, together
with the questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the
justice of God, forms the object of this treatise.
Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the
ancients called the 'Lazy Reason', because it tended towards doing nothing,
or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following
inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future
is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. Now
the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the Divinity
foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all
things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through
the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth,
which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events,
as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always be true or
false in itself, even though we know not always which it is. And all these
reasons for determination which appear different converge finally like
lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a truth in the future
event which is predetermined by the causes, and God pre-establishes it in
establishing the causes.
The false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has given
rise to what I call _Fatum Mahometanum_, fate after the Turkish fashion,
because it is said of the Turks that they do not shun danger or even
abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of such reasoning
as that just recorded. For what is called _Fatum Stoicum_ was not so black
as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but
it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the
consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations
needless. In which respect these philosophers were not far removed from the
teaching of our Lord, who deprecates these anxieties in regard to the
morrow, comparing them with the needless trouble a man would give himself
in labouring to increase his stature.
It is true that the teachings of the Stoics (and perhaps also of some
famous philosophers of our time), confining themselves to this alleged
necessity, can only impart a forced patience; whereas our Lord inspires
thoughts more sublime, and even instructs us in the means of gaining
contentment by assuring us that since God, being altogether good and [55]
wise, has care for everything, even so far as not to neglect one hair of
our head, our confidence in him ought to be entire. And thus we should see,
if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even possible to
wish for anything better (as much in general as for ourselves) than what he
does. It is as if one said to men: Do your duty and be content with that
which shall come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine
providence, or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquillity,
but not for contentment), but also because you have to do with a good
master. And that is what may be called _Fatum Christianum_.
Nevertheless it happens that most men, and even Christians, introduce into
their dealings some mixture of fate after the Turkish fashion, although
they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. It is true that they are not
inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest hopes
present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about
to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they
will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without
waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. But when the good or the evil is
remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little to our taste, the
lazy reason seems to us to be valid. For example, when it is a question of
preserving one's health and even one's life by good diet, people to whom
one gives advice thereupon very often answer that our days are numbered and
that it avails nothing to try to struggle against that which God destines
for us. But these same persons run to even the most absurd remedies when
the evil they had neglected draws near. One reasons in somewhat the same
way when the question for consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance
when one asks oneself, _quod vitae sectabor iter_? what profession one must
choose; when it is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being
undertaken, of a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be
inclined to evade the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to
fate or to inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy
cases. One will then all too often reason in the Turkish fashion (although
this way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality
occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy
reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of the
need to reason properly. One will thus overlook the fact that if this [56]
argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would always
hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. This laziness is to
some extent the source of the superstitious practices of fortune-tellers,
which meet with just such credulity as men show towards the philosopher's
stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the attainment of
happiness without trouble.
I do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they
have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. Their
argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the
principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. They overlook the
fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, _una marea_, as
Italians playing basset are wont to call it. With regard to this they make
their own particular observations, which I would, nevertheless, counsel
none to trust too much. Yet this confidence that people have in their
fortune serves often to give courage to men, and above all to soldiers, and
causes them to have indeed that good fortune they ascribe to themselves.
Even so do predictions often cause that to happen which has been foretold,
as it is supposed that the opinion the Mahometans hold on fate makes them
resolute. Thus even errors have their use at times, but generally as
providing a remedy for other errors: and truth is unquestionably better.
But it is taking an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate to
employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. I have often heard
it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker, that it
is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and
fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what
is written is written, and that our behaviour can change nothing therein.
Thus, they would say, it were best to follow one's inclination, dwelling
only upon such things as may content us in the present. They did not
reflect upon the strange consequences of this argument, which would prove
too much, since it would prove (for instance) that one should take a
pleasant beverage even though one knows it is poisoned. For the same reason
(if it were valid) I could say: if it is written in the records of the
Parcae that poison will kill me now or will do me harm, this will happen
even though I were not to take this beverage; and if this is not written,
it will not happen even though I should take this same beverage;
consequently I shall be able to follow with impunity my inclination to [57]
take what is pleasing, however injurious it may be; the result of which
reasoning is an obvious absurdity. This objection disconcerted them a
little, but they always reverted to their argument, phrased in different
ways, until they were brought to understand where the fault of the sophism
lies. It is untrue that the event happens whatever one may do: it will
happen because one does what leads thereto; and if the event is written
beforehand, the cause that will make it happen is written also. Thus the
connexion of effects and causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a
necessity detrimental to conduct, serves to overthrow it.
Yet, without having evil intentions inclined towards libertinism, one may
envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable necessity,
considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so essential to
the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise and blame,
punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will
be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is
absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this consideration
in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape
embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions
of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some
even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will speak presently. And
as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through
the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to
resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to
note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are some
which cannot do harm, as there are others which cannot be admitted without
giving rise to evil consequences.
Some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to
prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood
to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they
imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their
crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of
Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the
dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation with all
the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. Some
able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all action to [58]
creatures, and M. Bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary
opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles,
or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better
solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he
acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the
Principle is incontestably founded on _a priori_ reasons; but he wishes to
infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and
that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which
teach us the existence of one God altogether good, altogether powerful and
altogether wise. But many readers, convinced of the irrefutable nature of
his objections and believing them to be at least as strong as the proofs
for the truth of religion, would draw dangerous conclusions.
Even though there were no co-operation by God in evil actions, one could
not help finding difficulty in the fact that he foresees them and that,
being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits them.
This is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather chosen
to deny to God any knowledge of the detail of things and, above all, of
future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his goodness.
The Socinians and Conrad Vorstius lean towards that side; and Thomas
Bonartes, an English Jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but exceedingly
learned, who wrote a book _De Concordia Scientiae cum Fide_, of which I
will speak later, appears to hint at this also.
They are doubtless much mistaken; but others are not less so who, convinced
that nothing comes to pass save by the will and the power of God, ascribe
to him intentions and actions so unworthy of the greatest and the best of
all beings that one would say these authors have indeed renounced the dogma
which recognizes God's justice and goodness. They thought that, being
supreme Master of the universe, he could without any detriment to his
holiness cause sins to be committed, simply at his will and pleasure, or in
order that he might have the pleasure of punishing; and even that he could
take pleasure in eternally afflicting innocent people without doing any
injustice, because no one has the right or the power to control his
actions. Some even have gone so far as to say that God acts thus indeed;
and on the plea that we are as nothing in comparison with him, they liken
us to earthworms which men crush without heeding as they walk, or in
general to animals that are not of our species and which we do not [59]
scruple to ill-treat.
I believe that many persons otherwise of good intentions are misled by
these ideas, because they have not sufficient knowledge of their
consequences. They do not see that, properly speaking, God's justice is
thus overthrown. For what idea shall we form of such a justice as has only
will for its rule, that is to say, where the will is not guided by the
rules of good and even tends directly towards evil? Unless it be the idea
contained in that tyrannical definition by Thrasymachus in Plato, which
designated as _just_ that which pleases the stronger. Such indeed is the
position taken up, albeit unwittingly, by those who rest all obligation
upon constraint, and in consequence take power as the gauge of right. But
one will soon abandon maxims so strange and so unfit to make men good and
charitable through the imitation of God. For one will reflect that a God
who would take pleasure in the misfortune of others cannot be distinguished
from the evil principle of the Manichaeans, assuming that this principle
had become sole master of the universe; and that in consequence one must
attribute to the true God sentiments that render him worthy to be called
the good Principle.
Happily these extravagant dogmas scarce obtain any longer among
theologians. Nevertheless some astute persons, who are pleased to make
difficulties, revive them: they seek to increase our perplexity by uniting
the controversies aroused by Christian theology to the disputes of
philosophy. Philosophers have considered the questions of necessity, of
freedom and of the origin of evil; theologians have added thereto those of
original sin, of grace and of predestination. The original corruption of
the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to have imposed a
natural necessity to sin without the succour of divine grace: but necessity
being incompatible with punishment, it will be inferred that a sufficient
grace ought to have been given to all men; which does not seem to be in
conformity with experience.
But the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to God's dispositions
for the salvation of men. There are few saved or chosen; therefore the
choice of many is not God's decreed will. And since it is admitted that
those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest, and are not even
fundamentally less evil, the goodness which they have coming only from the
gift of God, the difficulty is increased. Where is, then, his justice [60]
(people will say), or at the least, where is his goodness? Partiality, or
respect of persons, goes against justice, and he who without cause sets
bounds to his goodness cannot have it in sufficient measure. It is true
that those who are not chosen are lost by their own fault: they lack good
will or living faith; but it rested with God alone to grant it them. We
know that besides inward grace there are usually outward circumstances
which distinguish men, and that training, conversation, example often
correct or corrupt natural disposition. Now that God should call forth
circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which
contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for
astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that
inward grace is universal and equal for all. For these same authors are
obliged to resort to the exclamations of St. Paul, and to say: 'O the
depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by what we may call
outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the diversity of
circumstances which God calls forth, whereof men are not the masters, and
which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that concerns their
salvation.
Nor will it help us to say with St. Augustine that, all men being involved
in the damnation caused by the sin of Adam, God might have left them all in
their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to deliver some
of them. For not only is it strange that the sin of another should condemn
anyone, but there still remains the question why God does not deliver
all--why he delivers the lesser number and why some in preference to
others. He is in truth their master, but he is a good and just master; his
power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he exercise that power
in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be tyrannous indeed.
Moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with God's
permission, and God having resolved to permit it only when once he had
considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the
human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the abandonment
of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by limiting one's
view to the mass already corrupt. One must, in spite of oneself, go back to
the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin, preceding the decree
whereby God permitted it, and whereby he permitted simultaneously that [61]
the damned should be involved in the mass of perdition and should not be
delivered: for God and the sage make no resolve without considering its
consequences.
I hope to remove all these difficulties. I will point out that absolute
necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes
geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does
not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from
constraint but also from real necessity. I will show that God himself,
although he always chooses the best, does not act by an absolute necessity,
and that the laws of nature laid down by God, founded upon the fitness of
things, keep the mean between geometrical truths, absolutely necessary, and
arbitrary decrees; which M. Bayle and other modern philosophers have not
sufficiently understood. Further I will show that there is an indifference
in freedom, because there is no absolute necessity for one course or the
other; but yet that there is never an indifference of perfect equipoise.
And I will demonstrate that there is in free actions a perfect spontaneity
beyond all that has been conceived hitherto. Finally I will make it plain
that the hypothetical and the moral necessity which subsist in free actions
are open to no objection, and that the 'Lazy Reason' is a pure sophism.
Likewise concerning the origin of evil in its relation to God, I offer a
vindication of his perfections that shall extol not less his holiness, his
justice and his goodness than his greatness, his power and his
independence. I show how it is possible for everything to depend upon God,
for him to co-operate in all the actions of creatures, even, if you will,
to create these creatures continually, and nevertheless not to be the
author of sin. Here also it is demonstrated how the privative nature of
evil should be understood. Much more than that, I explain how evil has a
source other than the will of God, and that one is right therefore to say
of moral evil that God wills it not, but simply permits it. Most important
of all, however, I show that it has been possible for God to permit sin and
misery, and even to co-operate therein and promote it, without detriment to
his holiness and his supreme goodness: although, generally speaking, he
could have avoided all these evils.
Concerning grace and predestination, I justify the most debatable
assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the [62]
prevenient grace of God and that we cannot do good except with his aid;
that God wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those
whose will is evil; that he gives to all a sufficient grace provided they
wish to use it; that, Jesus Christ being the source and the centre of
election, God destined the elect for salvation, because he foresaw that
they would cling with a lively faith to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Yet
it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and that
this very pre-vision is still a consequence of God's anterior decree. Faith
likewise is a gift of God, who has predestinated the faith of the elect,
for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses grace and
circumstance in accordance with God's supreme wisdom.
Now, as one of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as
great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had
applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the
difficulties on this subject which I have just touched in general, I found
a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in detail. I
acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is easy to see that I speak of him) has
on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the matter, but I
hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our side) by its
very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will prevail over
all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. My hope for success therein
is all the greater because it is the cause of God I plead, and because one
of the maxims here upheld states that God's help is never lacking for those
that lack not good will. The author of this discourse believes that he has
given proof of this good will in the attention he has brought to bear upon
this subject. He has meditated upon it since his youth; he has conferred
with some of the foremost men of the time; and he has schooled himself by
the reading of good authors. And the success which God has given him
(according to the opinion of sundry competent judges) in certain other
profound meditations, of which some have much influence on this subject,
gives him peradventure some right to claim the attention of readers who
love truth and are fitted to search after it.
The author had, moreover, particular and weighty reasons inducing him to
take pen in hand for discussion of this subject. Conversations which he had
concerning the same with literary and court personages, in Germany and in
France, and especially with one of the greatest and most accomplished [63]
of princesses, have repeatedly prompted him to this course. He had had the
honour of expressing his opinions to this Princess upon divers passages of
the admirable _Dictionary_ of M. Bayle, wherein religion and reason appear
as adversaries, and where M. Bayle wishes to silence reason after having
made it speak too loud: which he calls the triumph of faith. The present
author declared there and then that he was of a different opinion, but that
he was nevertheless well pleased that a man of such great genius had
brought about an occasion for going deeply into these subjects, subjects as
important as they are difficult. He admitted having examined them also for
some long time already, and having sometimes been minded to publish upon
this matter some reflexions whose chief aim should be such knowledge of God
as is needed to awaken piety and to foster virtue. This Princess exhorted
and urged him to carry out his long-cherished intention, and some friends
added their persuasions. He was all the more tempted to accede to their
requests since he had reason to hope that in the sequel to his
investigation M. Bayle's genius would greatly aid him to give the subject
such illumination as it might receive with his support. But divers
obstacles intervened, and the death of the incomparable Queen was not the
least. It happened, however, that M. Bayle was attacked by excellent men
who set themselves to examine the same subject; he answered them fully and
always ingeniously. I followed their dispute, and was even on the point of
being involved therein. This is how it came about.
I had published a new system, which seemed well adapted to explain the
union of the soul and the body: it met with considerable applause even from
those who were not in agreement with it, and certain competent persons
testified that they had already been of my opinion, without having reached
so distinct an explanation, before they saw what I had written on the
matter. M. Bayle examined it in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_,
article 'Rorarius'. He thought that my expositions were worthy of further
development; he drew attention to their usefulness in various connexions,
and he laid stress upon what might still cause difficulty. I could not but
reply in a suitable way to expressions so civil and to reflexions so
instructive as his. In order to turn them to greater account, I published
some elucidations in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698. M.
Bayle replied to them in the second edition of his _Dictionary_. I sent[64]
him a rejoinder which has not yet been published; I know not whether he
ever made a further reply.
Meanwhile it happened that M. le Clerc had inserted in his _Select Library_
an extract from the _Intellectual System_ of the late Mr. Cudworth, and had
explained therein certain 'plastic natures' which this admirable author
applied to the formation of animals. M. Bayle believed (see the
continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, ch. 21, art. 11) that,
these natures being without cognition, in establishing them one weakened
the argument which proves, through the marvellous formation of things, that
the universe must have an intelligent Cause. M. le Clerc replied (4th art.
of the 5th vol. of his _Select Library_) that these natures required to be
directed by divine wisdom. M. Bayle insisted (7th article of the _Histoire
des Ouvrages des Savants_, August 1704) that direction alone was not
sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to be
a mere instrument of God, in which case direction would be needless. My
system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to send
a short essay to the illustrious author of the _Histoire des Ouvrages des
Savants_, which he inserted in the month of May 1705, art. 9. In this I
endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is sufficient to
produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of other plastic
natures, provided there be added thereto the _preformation_ already
completely organic in the seeds of the bodies that come into existence,
contained in those of the bodies whence they spring, right back to the
primary seeds. This could only proceed from the Author of things,
infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating all in the beginning
in due order, had _pre-established_ there all order and artifice that was
to be. There is no chaos in the inward nature of things, and there is
organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition proceeds from God. More
and more of it would come to light if we pressed closer our examination of
the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue to observe it even if we
could go on to infinity, like Nature, and make subdivision as continuous in
our knowledge as Nature has made it in fact.
In order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, I made use of
a Pre-established Harmony, that is to say, of the same means I had used to
explain another marvel, namely the correspondence of soul with body, [65]
wherein I proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the principles I had
employed. It seems that this reminded M. Bayle of my system of accounting
for this correspondence, which he had examined formerly. He declared (in
chapter 180 of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p.
1253) that he did not believe God could give to matter or to any other
cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea
and the knowledge of organic nature. Also he was not yet disposed to
believe that God, with all his power over Nature and with all the
foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies that may arrive, could have
so disposed things that by the laws of mechanics alone a vessel (for
instance) should go to its port of destination without being steered during
its passage by some intelligent guide. I was surprised to see that limits
were placed on the power of God, without the adduction of any proof and
without indication that there was any contradiction to be feared on the
side of the object or any imperfection on God's side. Whereas I had shown
before in my Rejoinder that even men often produce through automata
something like the movements that come from reason, and that even a finite
mind (but one far above ours) could accomplish what M. Bayle thinks
impossible to the Divinity. Moreover, as God orders all things at once
beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more
strange than that of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the
whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by
means of their influence one upon the other.
This declaration of M. Bayle pledged me to an answer. I therefore purposed
to point out to him, that unless it be said that God forms organic bodies
himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to
intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine, we must hold the
opinion that God _preformed_ things in such sort that new organisms are
only a mechanical consequence of a preceding organic constitution. Even so
do butterflies come out of silkworms, an instance where M. Swammerdam has
shown that there is nothing but development. And I would have added that
nothing is better qualified than the preformation of plants and of animals
to confirm my System of Pre-established Harmony between the soul and the
body. For in this the body is prompted by its original constitution to
carry out with the help of external things all that it does in accordance
with the will of the soul. So the seeds by their original constitution [66]
carry out naturally the intentions of God, by an artifice greater still
than that which causes our body to perform everything in conformity with
our will. And since M. Bayle himself deems with reason that there is more
artifice in the organism of animals than in the most beautiful poem in the
world or in the most admirable invention whereof the human mind is capable,
it follows that my system of the connexion between the body and the soul is
as intelligible as the general opinion on the formation of animals. For
this opinion (which appears to me true) states in effect that the wisdom of
God has so made Nature that it is competent in virtue of its laws to form
animals; I explain this opinion and throw more light upon the possibility
of it through the system of preformation. Whereafter there will be no cause
for surprise that God has so made the body that by virtue of its own laws
it can carry out the intentions of the reasoning soul: for all that the
reasoning soul can demand of the body is less difficult than the
organization which God has demanded of the seeds. M. Bayle says (_Reply to
the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 182, p. 1294) that it is only very
recently there have been people who have understood that the formation of
living bodies cannot be a natural process. This he could say also (in
accordance with his principles) of the communication between the soul and
the body, since God effects this whole communication in the system of
occasional causes to which this author subscribes. But I admit the
supernatural here only in the beginning of things, in respect of the first
formation of animals or in respect of the original constitution of
pre-established harmony between the soul and the body. Once that has come
to pass, I hold that the formation of animals and the relation between the
soul and the body are something as natural now as the other most ordinary
operations of Nature. A close parallel is afforded by people's ordinary
thinking about the instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes. One
recognizes reason there not in the brutes but in him who created them. I
am, then, of the general opinion in this respect; but I hope that my
explanation will have added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample
range, to that opinion.
Now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new difficulties of
M. Bayle, I purposed at the same time to communicate to him the ideas which
I had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[67]
in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in
regard to the existence of evil. Indeed, there are perhaps few persons who
have toiled more than I in this matter. Hardly had I gained some tolerable
understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over
books in a library. I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for
meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the
work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against
Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I
did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this
nature the records of the Montbéliard Conversation, which had revived the
dispute, appeared to me instructive. Nor did I neglect the teachings of our
theologians: and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me,
served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the
Augsburg Confession. I had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some
excellent men of different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von
Wallenburg, Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier
theologian of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld. To
him I even tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this
subject, about the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God,
having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by
his wisdom to permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still
did not prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that
could be chosen. I have also since read many and various good authors on
these subjects, and I have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge
that seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea
of supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in God. I have not
neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest
the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes and
Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in
his _Physical Elements_ and elsewhere, but also in a special book against
Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient
Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the first
cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with
complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding
in this first source of things.
[68]
I have found the means, so it seems to me, of demonstrating the contrary in
a way that gives one a clear insight into the inward essence of the matter.
For having made new discoveries on the nature of active force and the laws
of motion, I have shown that they have no geometrical necessity, as Spinoza
appears to have believed they had. Neither, as I have made plain, are they
purely arbitrary, even though this be the opinion of M. Bayle and of some
modern philosophers: but they are dependent upon the fitness of things as I
have already pointed out above, or upon that which I call the 'principle of
the best'. Moreover one recognizes therein, as in every other thing, the
marks of the first substance, whose productions bear the stamp of a supreme
wisdom and make the most perfect of harmonies. I have shown also that this
harmony connects both the future with the past and the present with the
absent. The first kind of connexion unites times, and the other places.
This second connexion is displayed in the union of the soul with the body,
and in general in the communication of true substances with one another and
with material phenomena. But the first takes place in the preformation of
organic bodies, or rather of all bodies, since there is organism
everywhere, although all masses do not compose organic bodies. So a pond
may very well be full of fish or of other organic bodies, although it is
not itself an animal or organic body, but only a mass that contains them.
Thus I had endeavoured to build upon such foundations, established in a
conclusive manner, a complete body of the main articles of knowledge that
reason pure and simple can impart to us, a body whereof all the parts were
properly connected and capable of meeting the most important difficulties
of the ancients and the moderns. I had also in consequence formed for
myself a certain system concerning the freedom of man and the cooperation
of God. This system appeared to me to be such as would in no wise offend
reason and faith; and I desired to submit it to the scrutiny of M. Bayle,
as well as of those who are in controversy with him. Now he has departed
from us, and such a loss is no small one, a writer whose learning and
acumen few have equalled. But since the subject is under consideration and
men of talent are still occupied with it, while the public also follows it
attentively, I take this to be a fitting moment for the publication of
certain of my ideas.
It will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this
preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon the [69]
body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one to
disturb the laws of the other, I by no means deny the union of the one with
the other which forms of them a suppositum; but this union is something
metaphysical, which changes nothing in the phenomena. This is what I have
already said in reply to the objection raised against me, in the _Mémoires
de Trévoux_, by the Reverend Father de Tournemine, whose wit and learning
are of no ordinary mould. And for this reason one may say also in a
metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and the body upon the
soul. Moreover, it is true that the soul is the Entelechy or the active
principle, whereas the corporeal alone or the mere material contains only
the passive. Consequently the principle of action is in the soul, as I have
explained more than once in the _Leipzig Journal_. More especially does
this appear in my answer to the late Herr Sturm, philosopher and
mathematician of Altorf, where I have even demonstrated that, if bodies
contained only the passive, their different conditions would be
indistinguishable. Also I take this opportunity to say that, having heard
of some objections made by the gifted author of the book on
_Self-knowledge_, in that same book, to my System of Pre-established
Harmony, I sent a reply to Paris, showing that he has attributed to me
opinions I am far from holding. On another matter recently I met with like
treatment at the hands of an anonymous Doctor of the Sorbonne. And these
misconceptions would have become plain to the reader at the outset if my
own words, which were being taken in evidence, had been quoted.
This tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of others
leads me to observe also, that when I said somewhere that man helps himself
in conversion through the succour of grace, I mean only that he derives
advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance overcome, but
without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no co-operation in
ice when it is broken. For conversion is purely the work of God's grace,
wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human resistance is more
or less great according to the persons and the occasions. Circumstances
also contribute more or less to our attention and to the motions that arise
in the soul; and the co-operation of all these things, together with the
strength of the impression and the condition of the will, determines the
operation of grace, although not rendering it necessary. I have expounded
sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation [70]
unregenerate man is to be considered as dead; and I greatly approve the
manner wherein the theologians of the Augsburg Confession declare
themselves on this subject. Yet this corruption of unregenerate man is, it
must be added, no hindrance to his possession of true moral virtues and his
performance of good actions in his civic life, actions which spring from a
good principle, without any evil intention and without mixture of actual
sin. Wherein I hope I shall be forgiven, if I have dared to diverge from
the opinion of St. Augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable
intelligence, but inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things,
above all in the heat of his controversies. I greatly esteem some persons
who profess to be disciples of St. Augustine, amongst others the Reverend
Father Quênel, a worthy successor of the great Arnauld in the pursuit of
controversies that have embroiled them with the most famous of Societies.
But I have found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous
merit (of whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is
right on both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the
matter of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the
human heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than
defence. I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society
credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine,
will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his
acumen and his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation. And one
must believe that among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there
will arise some new Chemnitz or some new Callixtus; even as one is
justified in thinking that men like Usserius or Daillé will again appear
among the Reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the
misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. For the rest I shall be
well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the
objections with the answers I have given thereto, formulated in the small
treatise I have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. I have
endeavoured to forestall some new objections. I have explained, for
instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as
preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others;
how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all
the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite [71]
that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been
permitted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of good, I mean not according to the
principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of
things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as
always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not
refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that
which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to give on
some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have, moreover,
followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that I should
add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between
Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity, the other of
the learned work on _The Origin of Evil_, published a short time ago in
England.
Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if I
have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary
to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with
that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing
chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for
apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and
refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that
the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in
the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this
hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the
Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to
explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed
probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the
one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of
this name, the other king of the Scythian Celts who made incursions into
the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of
Germania. It seems, indeed, that Zoroaster used the names of these princes
as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble
in the ideas of Asiatics. Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab
authors, who in this might well be better informed than the Greeks, it
appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this
Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great Darius,
did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and [72]
independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. They
relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that
God, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the
darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the
darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and
that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient
author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused
the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians
and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to
this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury,
was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the
Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the
Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by the
Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the Luneburg
region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the Orientals. These
observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. And I flatter
myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays written to oppose M. Bayle
will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult
but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. I have written
in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that
language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and
because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit
by this small work. It is to be hoped that the language errors will be
pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the
copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted
from his task. If, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed,
the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better
informed: he has given elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that
he hopes this declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase.
[73]
* * * * *
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON
* * * * *
1. I begin with the preliminary question of the _conformity of faith with
reason_, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has much
influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because M. Bayle
introduces it everywhere. I assume that two truths cannot contradict each
other; that the object of faith is the truth God has revealed in an
extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but
especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human mind
can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. This
definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has
surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a
vague sense. They gave me the answer that they had never heard of any such
explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with people
who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. They have confessed to
me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason, understood in
the sense which I gave to it. It is in the same sense that sometimes reason
is contrasted with experience. Reason, since it consists in the linking
together of truths, is entitled to connect also those wherewith experience
has furnished it, in order thence to draw mixed conclusions; but reason
pure and simple, as distinct from experience, only has to do with truths
independent of the senses. And one may compare faith with experience, since
faith (in respect of the motives that give it justification) depends [74]
upon the experience of those who have seen the miracles whereon revelation
is founded, and upon the trustworthy tradition which has handed them down
to us, whether through the Scriptures or by the account of those who have
preserved them. It is rather as we rely upon the experience of those who
have seen China and on the credibility of their account when we give
credence to the wonders that are told us of that distant country. Yet I
would also take into account the inward motion of the Holy Spirit, who
takes possession of souls and persuades them and prompts them to good, that
is, to faith and to charity, without always having need of motives.
2. Now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those
called the 'Eternal Verities', which are altogether necessary, so that the
opposite implies contradiction. Such are the truths whose necessity is
logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without being
led into absurdities. There are others which may be called _positive_,
because they are the laws which it has pleased God to give to Nature, or
because they depend upon those. We learn them either by experience, that
is, _a posteriori_, or by reason and _a priori_, that is, by considerations
of the fitness of things which have caused their choice. This fitness of
things has also its rules and reasons, but it is the free choice of God,
and not a geometrical necessity, which causes preference for what is
fitting and brings it into existence. Thus one may say that physical
necessity is founded on moral necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice
which is worthy of his wisdom; and that both of these ought to be
distinguished from geometrical necessity. It is this physical necessity
that makes order in Nature and lies in the rules of motion and in some
other general laws which it pleased God to lay down for things when he gave
them being. It is therefore true that God gave such laws not without
reason, for he chooses nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in
pure indifference; but the general reasons of good and of order, which have
prompted him to the choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger
reasons of a superior order.
3. Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws he has
prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not
bear by performing a miracle. When they have risen to perfections and
faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the
Schoolmen call this faculty an 'Obediential Power', that is to say, a [75]
power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give
that which the thing has not. The Schoolmen, however, usually give
instances of this power which to me appear impossible: they maintain, for
example, that God can give the creature the faculty to create. It may be
that there are miracles which God performs through the ministry of angels,
where the laws of Nature are not violated, any more than when men assist
Nature by art, the skill of angels differing from ours only by degree of
perfection. Nevertheless it still remains true that the laws of Nature are
subject to be dispensed from by the Law-giver; whereas the eternal
verities, as for instance those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and
faith cannot contradict them. Thus it is that there cannot be any
invincible objection to truth. For if it is a question of proof which is
founded upon principles or incontestable facts and formed by a linking
together of eternal verities, the conclusion is certain and essential, and
that which is contrary to it must be false; otherwise two contradictories
might be true at the same time. If the objection is not conclusive, it can
only form a probable argument, which has no force against faith, since it
is agreed that the Mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances. Now
M. Bayle declares, in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc, that he does not
claim that there are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith: and as
a result all these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between
reason and faith, vanish away.
_Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,_
_Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt._
4. Protestant theologians as well as those of the Roman confession admit
the maxims which I have just laid down, when they handle the matter with
attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save against a
kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false appearances. It
is the same with our notions of the justice and the goodness of God, which
are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any idea nor any definition of
their nature. But in that case we should have no ground for ascribing these
attributes to him, or lauding him for them. His goodness and his justice as
well as his wisdom differ from ours only because they are infinitely more
perfect. Thus the simple notions, the necessary truths and the conclusive
results of philosophy cannot be contrary to revelation. And when some [76]
philosophical maxims are rejected in theology, the reason is that they are
considered to have only a physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of
that which takes place usually, and is consequently founded on appearances,
but which may be withheld if God so pleases.
5. It seems, according to what I have just said, that there is often some
confusion in the expressions of those who set at variance philosophy and
theology, or faith and reason: they confuse the terms 'explain',
'comprehend', 'prove', 'uphold'. And I find that M. Bayle, shrewd as he is,
is not always free from this confusion. Mysteries may be _explained_
sufficiently to justify belief in them; but one cannot _comprehend_ them,
nor give understanding of how they come to pass. Thus even in natural
philosophy we explain up to a certain point sundry perceptible qualities,
but in an imperfect manner, for we do not comprehend them. Nor is it
possible for us, either, to prove Mysteries by reason; for all that which
can be proved _a priori_, or by pure reason, can be comprehended. All that
remains for us then, after having believed in the Mysteries by reason of
the proofs of the truth of religion (which are called 'motives of
credibility') is to be able to _uphold_ them against objections. Without
that our belief in them would have no firm foundation; for all that which
can be refuted in a sound and conclusive manner cannot but be false. And
such proofs of the truth of religion as can give only a _moral certainty_
would be balanced and even outweighed by such objections as would give an
_absolute certainty_, provided they were convincing and altogether
conclusive. This little might suffice me to remove the difficulties
concerning the use of reason and philosophy in relation to religion if one
had not to deal all too often with prejudiced persons. But as the subject
is important and it has fallen into a state of confusion, it will be well
to take it in greater detail.
6. The question of the _conformity of faith with reason_ has always been a
great problem. In the primitive Church the ablest Christian authors adapted
themselves to the ideas of the Platonists, which were the most acceptable
to them, and were at that time most generally in favour. Little by little
Aristotle took the place of Plato, when the taste for systems began to
prevail, and when theology itself became more systematic, owing to the
decisions of the General Councils, which provided precise and positive
formularies. St. Augustine, Boethius and Cassiodorus in the West, and [77]
St. John of Damascus in the East contributed most towards reducing theology
to scientific form, not to mention Bede, Alcuin, St. Anselm and some other
theologians versed in philosophy. Finally came the Schoolmen. The leisure
of the cloisters giving full scope for speculation, which was assisted by
Aristotle's philosophy translated from the Arabic, there was formed at last
a compound of theology and philosophy wherein most of the questions arose
from the trouble that was taken to reconcile faith with reason. But this
had not met with the full success hoped for, because theology had been much
corrupted by the unhappiness of the times, by ignorance and obstinacy.
Moreover, philosophy, in addition to its own faults, which were very great,
found itself burdened with those of theology, which in its turn was
suffering from association with a philosophy that was very obscure and very
imperfect. One must confess, notwithstanding, with the incomparable
Grotius, that there is sometimes gold hidden under the rubbish of the
monks' barbarous Latin. I have therefore oft-times wished that a man of
talent, whose office had necessitated his learning the language of the
Schoolmen, had chosen to extract thence whatever is of worth, and that
another Petau or Thomasius had done in respect of the Schoolmen what these
two learned men have done in respect of the Fathers. It would be a very
curious work, and very important for ecclesiastical history, and it would
continue the History of Dogmas up to the time of the Revival of Letters
(owing to which the aspect of things has changed) and even beyond that
point. For sundry dogmas, such as those of physical predetermination, of
mediate knowledge, philosophical sin, objective precisions, and many other
dogmas in speculative theology and even in the practical theology of cases
of conscience, came into currency even after the Council of Trent.
7. A little before these changes, and before the great schism in the West
that still endures, there was in Italy a sect of philosophers which
disputed this conformity of faith with reason which I maintain. They were
dubbed 'Averroists' because they were adherents of a famous Arab author,
who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the
one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle's meaning. This
Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already taught, maintained
that according to Aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time
the two were considered almost identical) there was no case for the [78]
immortality of the soul. Here is his reasoning. The human kind is eternal,
according to Aristotle, therefore if individual souls die not, one must
resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. Or, if there are
always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from
all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine
of the same Aristotle. Therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the
souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies,
or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to
each one individually. Thus there will only remain the active understanding
common to all men, which according to Aristotle comes from outside, and
which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the
wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ
pipes.
8. Nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. It is not true
that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of
the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity
is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians,
and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary
intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in
it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a
universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this
universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are
born and die. According to this opinion the souls of animals are born by
being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body which
they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when
the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. Many even went so
far as to believe that God is that universal soul, although others thought
that this soul was subordinate and created. This bad doctrine is very
ancient and apt to dazzle the common herd. It is expressed in these
beautiful lines of Vergil (_Aen._, VI, v. 724):
_Principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes,_
_Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra,_
_Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus_
_Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._
_Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum._
[79]
And again elsewhere (_Georg._, IV, v. 221):
_Deum namque ire per omnes_
_Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:_
_Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,_
_Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas._
_Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri._
9. Plato's Soul of the World has been taken in this sense by some, but
there is more indication that the Stoics succumbed to that universal soul
which swallows all the rest. Those who are of this opinion might be called
'Monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only one soul
that subsists. M. Bernier observes that this is an opinion almost
universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States of the
Grand Mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the
Cabalists and with the mystics. A certain German of Swabian birth,
converted to Judaism some years ago, who taught under the name Moses
Germanus, having adopted the dogmas of Spinoza, believed that Spinoza
revived the ancient Cabala of the Hebrews. And a learned man who confuted
this proselyte Jew appears to be of the same opinion. It is known that
Spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls
are but transient modifications. Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in
Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it
that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was
also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain quite
pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of epigrams, which
have just been reprinted. In general, the mystics' doctrine of deification
was liable to such a sinister interpretation. Gerson already has written
opposing Ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose intention was evidently good
and whose expressions are excusable. But it would be better to write in a
manner that has no need of excuses: although I confess that oft-times
expressions which are extravagant, and as it were poetical, have greater
force to move and to persuade than correct forms of statement.
10. The annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right, carried to
great lengths by the Quietists, might equally well be veiled irreligion in
certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the Quietism of Foë,
originator of a great Chinese sect. After having preached his religion [80]
for forty years, when he felt death was approaching, he declared to his
disciples that he had hidden the truth from them under the veil of
metaphors, and that all reduced itself to Nothingness, which he said was
the first source of all things. That was still worse, so it would seem,
than the opinion of the Averroists. Both of these doctrines are
indefensible and even extravagant; nevertheless some moderns have made no
difficulty about adopting this one and universal Soul that engulfs the
rest. It has met with only too much applause amongst the so-called
freethinkers, and M. de Preissac, a soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in
philosophy, at one time aired it publicly in his discourses. The System of
Pre-established Harmony is the one best qualified to cure this evil. For it
shows that there are of necessity substances which are simple and without
extension, scattered throughout all Nature; that these substances must
subsist independently of every other except God; and that they are never
wholly separated from organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of
feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but
reasoning souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the Monopsychites. For
it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and
once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can
die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our
souls.
11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable
at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural
religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were
persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with
reason. As a result they declared that man's soul is, according to
philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence in Christian
theology, which declares the soul's immortality. But this distinction was
held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason was vehemently
rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and condemned in the
last Lateran Council under Leo X. On that occasion also, scholars were
urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that appeared to set
theology and philosophy at variance. The doctrine of their incompatibility
continued to hold its ground _incognito_. Pomponazzi was suspected of it,
although he declared himself otherwise; and that very sect of the
Averroists survived as a school. It is thought that Caesar Cremoninus, [81]
a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its mainstays. Andreas
Cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who came nearest after
Michael Servetus to the discovery of the circulation of the blood), was
accused by Nicolas Taurel (in a book entitled _Alpes Caesae_) of belonging
to these anti-religious Peripatetics. Traces of this doctrine are found
also in the _Circulus Pisanus Claudii Berigardi_, an author of French
nationality who migrated to Italy and taught philosophy at Pisa: but
especially the writings and the letters of Gabriel Naudé, as well as the
_Naudaeana_, show that Averroism still lived on when this learned physician
was in Italy. Corpuscular philosophy, introduced shortly after, appears to
have extinguished this excessively Peripatetic sect, or perhaps to have
been intermixed with its teaching. It may be indeed that there have been
Atomists who would be inclined to teach dogmas like those of the
Averroists, if circumstances so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such
good as there is in Corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined
with all that is sound in Plato and in Aristotle, and bring them both into
harmony with true theology.
12. The Reformers, and especially Luther, as I have already observed, spoke
sometimes as if they rejected philosophy, and deemed it inimical to faith.
But, properly speaking, Luther understood by philosophy only that which is
in conformity with the ordinary course of Nature, or perhaps even
philosophy as it was taught in the schools. Thus for example he says that
it is impossible in philosophy, that is, in the order of Nature, that the
word be made flesh; and he goes so far as to maintain that what is true in
natural philosophy might be false in ethics. Aristotle was the object of
his anger; and so far back as the year 1516 he contemplated the purging of
philosophy, when he perhaps had as yet no thoughts of reforming the Church.
But at last he curbed his vehemence and in the _Apology for the Augsburg
Confession_ allowed a favourable mention of Aristotle and his _Ethics_.
Melanchthon, a man of sound and moderate ideas, made little systems from
the several parts of philosophy, adapted to the truths of revelation and
useful in civic life, which deserve to be read even now. After him, Pierre
de la Ramée entered the lists. His philosophy was much in favour: the sect
of the Ramists was powerful in Germany, gaining many adherents among the
Protestants, and even concerning itself with theology, until the revival of
Corpuscular philosophy, which caused that of Ramée to fall into [82]
oblivion and weakened the authority of the Peripatetics.
13. Meanwhile sundry Protestant theologians, deviating as far as they could
from Scholastic philosophy, which prevailed in the opposite party, went so
far as to despise philosophy itself, which to them was suspect. The
controversy blazed up finally owing to the rancour of Daniel Hoffmann. He
was an able theologian, who had previously gained a reputation at the
Conference of Quedlinburg, when Tilemann Heshusius and he had supported
Duke Julius of Brunswick in his refusal to accept the Formula of Concord.
For some reason or other Dr. Hoffmann flew into a passion with philosophy,
instead of being content to find fault with the wrong uses made thereof by
philosophers. He was, however, aiming at the famous Caselius, a man
esteemed by the princes and scholars of his time; and Henry Julius, Duke of
Brunswick (son of Julius, founder of the University), having taken the
trouble himself to investigate the matter, condemned the theologian. There
have been some small disputes of the kind since, but it has always been
found that they were misunderstandings. Paul Slevogt, a famous Professor at
Jena in Thuringia, whose still extant treatises prove how well versed he
was in Scholastic philosophy, as also in Hebrew literature, had published
in his youth under the title of _Pervigilium_ a little book 'de dissidio
Theologi et Philosophi in utriusque principiis fundato', bearing on the
question whether God is accidentally the cause of sin. But it was easy to
see that his aim was to demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse
philosophical terms.
14. To come now to the events of my own time, I remember that when in 1666
Louis Meyer, a physician of Amsterdam, published anonymously the book
entitled _Philosophia Scripturae Interpres_ (by many persons wrongly
attributed to Spinoza, his friend) the theologians of Holland bestirred
themselves, and their written attacks upon this book gave rise to great
disputes among them. Divers of them held the opinion that the Cartesians,
in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to
philosophy. Jean de Labadie (before he had seceded from the Reformed
Church, his pretext being some abuses which he said had crept into public
observance and which he considered intolerable) attacked the book by Herr
von Wollzogen, and called it pernicious. On the other hand Herr Vogelsang,
Herr van der Weye and some other anti-Cocceïans also assailed the same [83]
book with much acrimony. But the accused won his case in a Synod.
Afterwards in Holland people spoke of 'rational' and 'non-rational'
theologians, a party distinction often mentioned by M. Bayle, who finally
declared himself against the former. But there is no indication that any
precise rules have yet been defined which the rival parties accept or
reject with regard to the use of reason in the interpretation of Holy
Scripture.
15. A like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the
Churches of the Augsburg Confession. Some Masters of Arts in the University
of Leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students who sought them
out in order to learn what is called 'Sacra Philologia', according to the
practice of this university and of some others where this kind of study is
not restricted to the Faculty of Theology. These masters pressed the study
of the Holy Scriptures and the practice of piety further than their fellows
had been wont to do. It is alleged that they had carried certain things to
excess, and aroused suspicions of certain doctrinal innovations. This
caused them to be dubbed 'Pietists', as though they were a new sect; and
this name is one which has since caused a great stir in Germany. It has
been applied somehow or other to those whom one suspected, or pretended to
suspect, of fanaticism, or even of hypocrisy, concealed under some
semblance of reform. Now some of the students attending these masters had
become conspicuous for behaviour which gave general offence, and amongst
other things for their scorn of philosophy, even, so it was said, burning
their notebooks. In consequence the belief arose that their masters
rejected philosophy: but they justified themselves very well; nor could
they be convicted either of this error or of the heresies that were being
imputed to them.
16. The question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much
amongst Christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the limits
of its use when it came to detailed consideration. The Mysteries of the
Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the Holy Communion gave most occasion
for dispute. The new Photinians, disputing the first two Mysteries, made
use of certain philosophic maxims which Andreas Kessler, a theologian of
the Augsburg Confession, summarized in the various treatises that he
published on the parts of the Socinian philosophy. But as to their
metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by reading the [84]
work of Christopher Stegmann the Socinian. It is not yet in print; but I
saw it in my youth and it has been recently again in my hands.
17. Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic philosophy,
and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at great length,
and often with success: for they would not content themselves with the
general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that
sect. The drift of such answers was: that their maxims were good in
philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness
called [Greek: metábasis eis állo génos] to apply those maxims to a matter
transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and
not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the title of the book
by a Scot named Robert Baronius, _Philosophia Theologiae ancillans_. In
fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and must be driven from the house
with her Ishmael when she was refractory. There is something good in these
answers: but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of
revelation at variance. Scholars therefore applied themselves to
distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or
philosophic truths and that which is not so.
18. The two Protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a
question of making war on the Socinians; and as the philosophy of these
sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in
reducing it. But the Protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter
of the Eucharistic Sacrament. A section of those who are called Reformed
(namely those who on that point follow rather Zwingli than Calvin) seemed
to reduce the participation in the body of Jesus Christ in the Holy
Communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the
philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time.
Contrariwise the Evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular
sense to distinguish themselves from the Reformed), being more attached to
the literal sense of Scripture, opined with Luther that this participation
was real, and that here there lay a supernatural Mystery. They reject, in
truth, the dogma of Transubstantiation, which they believe to be without
foundation in the Text; neither do they approve that of Consubstantiation
or of Impanation, which one could only impute to them if one were
ill-informed on their opinion. For they admit no inclusion of the body [85]
of Jesus Christ in the bread, nor do they even require any union of the one
with the other: but they demand at least a concomitance, so that these two
substances be received both at the same time. They believe that the
ordinary sense of the words of Jesus Christ on an occasion so important as
that which concerned the expression of his last wishes ought to be
preserved. Thus in order to show that this sense is free from all absurdity
which could make it repugnant to us, they maintain that the philosophic
maxim restricting the existence of, and partaking in, bodies to one place
alone is simply a consequence of the ordinary course of Nature. They make
that no obstacle to the presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the
body of our Saviour in such form as may be in keeping with the most
glorified body. They do not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which
would disperse the body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they
admit the multiple-reduplication theory of some Schoolmen, as if to say one
and the same body could be at the same time seated here and standing
elsewhere. In fine, they so express themselves that many consider the
opinion of Calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the
Churches that have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the
Augsburg Confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the
substance. The divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that Calvin
demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and
consequently excludes the unworthy.
19. Thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial participation can
be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some Schoolmen)
by a properly understood analogy between _immediate operation_ and
_presence_. Many philosophers have deemed that, even in the order of
Nature, a body may operate from a distance immediately on many remote
bodies at the same time. So do they believe, all the more, that nothing can
prevent divine Omnipotence from causing one body to be present in many
bodies together, since the transition from immediate operation to presence
is but slight, the one perhaps depending upon the other. It is true that
modern philosophers for some time now have denied the immediate natural
operation of one body upon another remote from it, and I confess that I am
of their opinion. Meanwhile remote operation has just been revived in
England by the admirable Mr. Newton, who maintains that it is the nature of
bodies to be attracted and gravitate one towards another, in proportion[86]
to the mass of each one, and the rays of attraction it receives.
Accordingly the famous Mr. Locke, in his answer to Bishop Stillingfleet,
declares that having seen Mr. Newton's book he retracts what he himself
said, following the opinion of the moderns, in his _Essay concerning Human
Understanding_, to wit, that a body cannot operate immediately upon another
except by touching it upon its surface and driving it by its motion. He
acknowledges that God can put properties into matter which cause it to
operate from a distance. Thus the theologians of the Augsburg Confession
claim that God may ordain not only that a body operate immediately on
divers bodies remote from one another, but that it even exist in their
neighbourhood and be received by them in a way with which distances of
place and dimensions of space have nothing to do. Although this effect
transcends the forces of Nature, they do not think it possible to show that
it surpasses the power of the Author of Nature. For him it is easy to annul
the laws that he has given or to dispense with them as seems good to him,
in the same way as he was able to make iron float upon water and to stay
the operation of fire upon the human body.
20. I found in comparing the _Rationale Theologicum_ of Nicolaus Vedelius
with the refutation by Johann Musaeus that these two authors, of whom one
died while a Professor at Franecker after having taught at Geneva and the
other finally became the foremost theologian at Jena, are more or less in
agreement on the principal rules for the use of reason, but that it is in
the application of these rules they disagree. For they both agree that
revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose necessity is called by
philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is to say, whose opposite
implies contradiction. They both admit also that revelation will be able to
combat maxims whose necessity is called 'physical' and is founded only upon
the laws that the will of God has prescribed for Nature. Thus the question
whether the presence of one and the same body in divers places is possible
in the supernatural order only touches the application of the rule; and in
order to decide this question conclusively by reason, one must needs
explain exactly wherein the essence of body consists. Even the Reformed
disagree thereon amongst themselves; the Cartesians confine it to
extension, but their adversaries oppose that; and I think I have even
observed that Gisbertus Voëtius, a famous theologian of Utrecht, [87]
doubted the alleged impossibility of plurality of locations.
21. Furthe
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