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      Chapter XII.

       Criticism and Conclusion.

       Table of Contents

      In the exposition now completed we have in general taken for granted the truth and coherency of Leibniz’s fundamental ideas, and have contented ourselves with an account of the principles and notions that flow from these ideas. The time has come for retracing our steps, and for inquiring whether the assumed premises can be thus unquestioningly adopted. This final chapter, therefore, we shall devote to criticism of the basis of Leibniz’s philosophy, not attempting to test it by a comparison with other systems, but by inquiring into its internal coherency, and by a brief account of the ways in which his successors, or at least one of them, endeavored to make right the points in which he appeared to fail.

      The fundamental contradiction in Leibniz is to be found, I believe, between the method which he adopted—without inquiry into its validity and scope—and the subject-matter, or perhaps better the attitude, to which he attempted to apply this method; between, that is to say, the scholastic formal logic on the one hand and the idea of inter-relation derived from the development of scientific thought, on the other. Leibniz never thought of investigating the formal logic bequeathed by scholasticism, with a view to determining its adequacy as philosophic method. He adopted, as we have seen, the principles of identity and contradiction as sole principles of the only perfect knowledge. The type of knowledge is that which can be reduced to a series of identical propositions, whose opposite is seen to be impossible, because self-contradictory. Only knowledge in this form can be said to be demonstrative and necessary. As against Locke he justified the syllogistic method of the schoolmen as the typical method of all rational truth.

      On the other hand, Leibniz, as we saw in the earlier chapters, had learned positively from the growth of science, negatively from the failures of Descartes and Spinoza, to look upon the universe as a unity of inter-related members,—as an organic unity, not a mere self-identical oneness. Failing to see the cause of the failures of Descartes and Spinoza in precisely their adoption of the logic of identity and contradiction as ultimate, he attempted to reconcile this method with the conception of organic activity. The result is constant conflict between the method and content of his philosophy, between its letter and its spirit. The contradiction is a twofold one. The unity of the content of his philosophy, the conception of organism or harmony, is a unity which essentially involves difference. The unity of his method is a formal identity which excludes it. The unity, whose discovery constitutes Leibniz’s great glory as a philosopher, is a unity of activity, a dynamic process. The unity of formal logic is exclusive of any mediation or process, and is essentially rigid and lifeless. The result is that Leibniz is constantly wavering (in logical result, not of course in spirit) between two opposed errors, one of which is, in reality, not different from Spinozism, in that it regards all distinction as only phenomenal and unreal, while the other is akin to atomism, in that attempting to avoid the doctrine of the all-inclusive one, it does so only by supposing a multitude of unrelated units, termed monads. And thus the harmony, which in Leibniz’s intention is the very content of reality, comes to be, in effect, an external arrangement between the one and the many, the unity and the distinction, in themselves incapable of real relations. Such were the results of Leibniz’s failure, in Kantian language, to criticise his categories, in Hegelian language, to develop a logic,—the results of his assuming, without examination, the validity of formal logic as a method of truth.

      So thoroughly is Leibniz imbued with the belief in its validity, that the very conception, that of sufficient reason, which should have been the means of saving him from his contradictions, is used in such a way as to plunge him deeper into them. The principle of sufficient reason may indeed be used as purely formal and external,—as equivalent to the notion that everything, no matter what, has some explanation. Thus employed, it simply declares that everything has a reason, without in the least determining the what of that reason,—its content. This is what we mean by calling it formal. But this is not the way in which Leibniz conceives of it. According to him, it is not a principle of the external connection of one finite, or phenomenal, fact with another. It is a principle in the light of which the whole phenomenal world is to be viewed, declaring that its ground and meaning are to be found in reason, in self-conscious intelligence. As we have seen, it is equivalent, in Leibniz’s case, to the notion that we have no complete nor necessary knowledge of the world of scientific fact until we have referred it to a conditioning “Supreme Spirit.”

      Looked at in this way, we see that the unity which Leibniz is positively employing is an organic unity, a unity of intelligence involving organic reference to the known world. But such a conception of sufficient reason leaves no place for the final validity of identity and non-contradiction; and therefore Leibniz, when dealing with his method, and not, as in the passages referred to, with his subject-matter, cannot leave the matter thus. To do so indeed would have involved a complete reconstruction of his philosophy, necessitating a derivation of all the categories employed from intelligence itself (that is, from the sufficient or conditioning reason). But the bondage to scholastic method is so great that Leibniz can see no way but to measure intelligence by the ready-made principle of identity, and thus virtually (though not in purpose) to explain away the very principle of sufficient reason. In Leibniz’s words: “Contingent truths require an infinite analysis which only God can carry out. Whence by him alone are they known a priori and demonstratively. For although the reason can always be found for some occurring state in a prior state, this reason again requires a reason, and we never arrive in the series to the ultimate reason. But this progressus ad infinitum takes (in us) the place of a sufficient reason, which can be found only outside the series in God, on whom all its members, prior and posterior depend, rather than upon one another. Whatever truth, therefore, is incapable of analysis, and cannot be demonstrated from its own reasons, but has its ultimate reason and certainty only from the divine mind, is not necessary. Everything that we call truths of fact come under this head, and this is the root of their contingency.”

      The sentences before the one italicized repeat what we have learned СКАЧАТЬ