NEW ESSAYS CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING ■J>&ix& w NEW ESSAYS conckkmm; HUMAN UNDERSTANDING GOTTFRIED WILHEHM LEIBNITZ TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX CONSISTING OF SOME OF HIS SHORTER PIECES TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN, FRENCH AND GERMAN, WITH NOTES ALFRED GIDEON LANGLEY A.M. (Brown) . AUG? ©?aw Neto fork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1896 All rights reserved *£S THE LIBRARY Or CONGRESS WASHINGTON Copyright, 1896, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. NortooDlt $msg Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. Ea mg fflatytx ano Sister SOMETIME GONE WHERE WE SHALL KNOW AS WE ARE KNOWN &ttD to tug jfatjjet STILL WHERE WE SEE AS IN A MIRROR OBSCURELY IN DEEPEST LOVE AND GRATITUDE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK CONTENTS Translator's Preface xi Gerhardt's Introduction to his edition of Leibnitz's Nouveaux Essais 3 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE On Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, 1696 .... 13 Specimen of Thoughts upon the First Book of the Essay on Human Understanding, 1698 . .' 20 Specimen of Thoughts upon the Second Book, 1698 .... 23 On Coste's Translation of Locke's Essay concerning Human Under- standing ; from the "Monatliche Auszug," September, 1700, pp. 611-636 26 Addition thereto. " Monatliche Auszug," 1701, pp. 73-75 . . 37 New Essays on The Understanding, by the Author of the System op Pre-established Harmony Preface 41 Book I. — Innate Ideas CHAPTER I. Are there innate principles in the mind of man ? . . .64 II. No innate practical principles ....... 85 III. Other considerations touching innate principles, both spec- ulative and practical 100 Book II. — Ideas. I. Which treats of ideas in general, and examines by the way whether the mind of man always thinks . II. Simple ideas HI. Of ideas which come to us by one sense only . IV. Of solidity V. Of simple ideas which come by different VI. Of simple ideas which come by reflection vii 109 120 121 122 129 130 CONTENTS CHAPTER VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. PAGE Of ideas which come by sensation and reflection . . 130 Other considerations upon simple ideas .... 130 Of perception 135 Of retention . . . _ 142 Of discernment, or the faculty of distinguishing ideas . 143 Of complex ideas 147 Of simple modes, and first of those of space . . . 149 Of duration and its simple modes 155 Of duration and expansion considered together . . 158 Of number 100 Of infinity 161 Of other simple modes 164 Of the modes of thinking 164 Of modes of pleasure and pain 167 Of power and freedom 174 Of mixed modes 221 Of our complex ideas of substances 225 Of collective ideas of substances 235 Of relation 235 Of cause and effect and some other relations . . . 237 What identity or diversity is . . . - . . 238 Of some other relations, and especially of moral relations 258 Of clear and obscure, distinct and confused ideas . . 265 Of real and fantastical ideas 275 Of adequate and inadequate ideas ..... 278 Of true and false ideas ....... 281 Of the association of ideas ...... 281 Book III. — Words. Of words or language in general 285 Of the signification of words 291 Of general terms 307 Of the names of simple ideas 318 Of the names of mixed modes and relations . . . 325 Of the names of substances 330 Of particles ' 364 Of abstract and concrete terms . . . . . 368 Of the imperfections of words 369 Of the abuse of words 376 Of the remedies which may be applied to the imperfec- tions and abuses just spoken of . . . . . 390 CONTENTS Book IV. — Of Knowledge CHAPTER PAGE I. Of knowledge in general 397 II. Of the degrees of our knowledge 404 III. Of the extent of human knowledge 423 IV. Of the reality of our knowledge 444 V. Of truth in general 449 VI. Of universal propositions, their truth and certitude . . 452 VII. Of propositions called maxims or axioms .... 462 VIII. Of trifling propositions 490 IX. Of our knowledge of our existence 497 X. Of our knowledge of the existence of God .... 449 XL Of our knowledge of the existence of other things . .511 XII. Of the improvement of our knowledge . . . .517 XIII. Other considerations concerning our knowledge . . 528 XIV. Of judgment 528 XV. Of probability 529 XVI. Of the degrees of assent 532 XVII. Of reason ... 555 XVIII. Of faith and reason and their distinct limits . . . 583 XIX. Of enthusiasm 596 XX. Of error 607 XXI. Of the division of the sciences 621 APPENDIX I. Leibnitz to Jacob Thomasius. April 20-30, 1669 . . .631 II. Fragment, (c. 1671) 651 III. Demonstration against atoms taken from the contact of atoms. (October, 1690) 652 IV. Essay on Dynamics on the laws of motion, in which it is shown that not the same quantity of motion is preserved, but the same absolute force, or rather the same quantity of moving action (Taction motrice). (c. 1691) . . 657 V. Essay on Dynamics in defence of the wonderful laws of nature in respect to the forces of bodies, disclosing their mutual actions and referring them to their causes. Part I. 1695 670 lb. Part II. 1695 684 VI. On the radical origin of things. 1697 692 VII. Appendix to a letter to Honoratus Fabri. 1702 . . . 699 x CONTENTS PAGE VIII. Letter of Leibnitz to Basnage de Beauval, editor of the " Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants," printed in that journal, July, 1698, pp. 829 sq 706 IX. Fragment of a letter to an unknown person. 1707 . . 712 X. That the most perfect Being exists ...... 714 XL What is idea 716 XII. On the method of distinguishing real from imaginary phe- nomena 717 Additions and Corrections 721 Index A. To the Critique of Locke ...... 777 Index B. To the Appendix 823 Index C. To the Notes, Additions, and Corrections . . . 831 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE The work herewith given to the public consists of a transla- tion of the entire fifth volume of Gerhardt's Die phUosopliischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, sub-entitled "Leibniz und Locke," consisting of an Introduction by Gerhardt, several short pieces on Locke's Essay and the New Essays on Human Under- standing ; and of an Appendix containing a translation of other short pieces of Leibnitz bearing on the subjects dis- cussed in the New Essays or referred to therein. The Intro- duction on The Philosophy of Leibnitz by the translator suggested and urged by Professors Palmer and Eoyce of Har- vard University, and for some time contemplated, is deferred, and reserved, if at all, for another time and occasion, owing to the size of the present volume, as well as for other good and sufficient reasons which it is not necessary here to mention. The translation of Leibnitz's Nouveaux Essais sur VEntende- ment Humain was first suggested by the following sentence of the late Professor George S. Morris, of the University of Michigan, in a note to his Pliilosophy and Christianity, page 292: "It suggests no favorable comment on the philosophic interest of the countrymen of Locke that the above-mentioned reply of Leibnitz to Locke has never (so far as I can ascertain) been translated into English." Four instalments, consisting of Book I. and Book II., chapters 1-11 inclusive, were pub- lished in as many numbers of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy. " * Professor Morris very kindly sent me a care- ful criticism of about one-third of the first instalment, with valuable suggestions regarding the further work of transla- tion. His corrections and suggestions received careful con- i Vol. 19, No. 3, July, 1885; Vol. 21, No. 3, July, 1887; Vol. 21, No. 4, Octo- ber, 1887 ; Vol. 22, No. 2, April, 1888. xi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE sideration and were embodied in subsequent revisions of the translation in preparing it for the present issue. The portion of the New Essays thus published being favorably received by professors and students of philosophy in this country and in Europe, and being encouraged to go on and translate the entire piece, the work begun in 1885 was continued in leisure hours until in June, 1891, the translation was completed. Revision, annotation, and the labor of get- ting it through the press have occupied the greater part of my free time since then. The annotation, which was not a part of the original plan, but which was found to be desirable, if not even necessary, as the sheets began to appear in type, has been the chief cause of the delay in the appearance of the book, the labor involved therein proving far greater and una- voidably more protracted than was expected, the annotation also, as is frequent in such cases, growing with the progress of the book. The text-basis of the translation is that of C. I. Gerhardt, in his Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, 7 vols., Berlin, 1875-1890, except for the Dynamical Pieces in the Appendix, Nos. IV., V., the text-basis of which is C. I. Ger- hardtfs Leibnizens mathematische Schriften, Berlin and Halle, 1849-1863, and Appendix No. VII., for which both these editions are used; for Appendix No. IX., the text is that given by Guhrauer, G. W. Freiherr v. Leibnitz. Eine Biographie, Breslau, 1846. The other editions used in the comparison of the text and the preparation of the notes are: J. E. Erd- mann, Leibnitii Opera Philosophica, Berlin, 1839-1840; M. A. Jacques, CEuvres de Leibniz, Paris, 1842; P. Janet, (Euvres PMlosophiques de Leibniz, Paris, 1866; Dutens, Leibnitii Opera Omnia, Geneva, 1768; Foucher de Careil, Lettres et Opuscides inedits de Leibniz, Paris, 1854, Nouvelles Lettres et Opuscides de Leibniz inedits, Paris, 1857, and (Euvres de Leibniz, Paris, 1859 sq., 2d ed., Paris, 1867 sq. R. E. Raspe, (Euvres Philoso- phiques de feu Mr. Leibnitz, Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1765, was received too late to be of service, but as his text is the original printed text of the New Essays, and has been used by all sub- sequent editors, it is not probable that any important variation of reading has been overlooked; and Raspe's text has no notes. Besides these editions of Leibnitz's Works, the German trans- TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE lations of the Theodicee and of the smaller philosophically- important works entitled Die Meineren philosophisch wichtigeren Schriften by J. H. von Kirchmann, in his Philosophische Bibliothek, Berlin, 1879, and the English translation of his important philosophical opuscules by Professor George M. Duncan of Yale University, entitled The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz, New Haven, 1890, have been consulted. From the last-named work, so as to include in one book all of Leib- nitz's discussions of Locke, it was at first intended to reprint in the Appendix all the pieces bearing upon the subject dis- cussed in the New Essays, or especially referred to therein. It finally seemed best to both Professor Duncan and myself to change the plan and translate new material, rather than duplicate that already translated, so that with the exception of Appendix No. VI., Professor Duncan's translation of which was either forgotten or unnoticed till after mine was in type, nothing appears in both books save such portions of the New Essays .as he has included, and the piece entitled On Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, 1696. This statement will explain the references in certain notes, for example, page 101, note 1, page 154, note 1 (cf. infra, pages 737 and 749 respec- tively), to certain pieces of Leibnitz in the Appendix, which references are corrected in the Additions and Corrections by being changed to the proper pages of Professor Duncan's book. Of great value in the revision of the translation, and of the greatest service in the preparation of the notes, has been the German translation of the Nouveaux Essais, with notes, by Professor Carl Schaarschmidt of the University of Bonn. His material has been freely used, either by direct translation and quotation, or in substance, in the notes of the present edi- tion, though always, so far as possible, only after verification and further independent study. His notes, I regret to say, contain many numerical errors, occasioned presumably by in- sufficient care and accuracy in proof-reading; otherwise they are, for the most part, accurate. The fact that Professor Schaarschmidt' s book was not received till after a portion of mine was in type accounts in part for the appearance of so much of his note-material in the Additions and Corrections, rather than in its proper place in the foot-notes to the text. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Professor A. C. Frazer's splendid edition of Locke's Essay, Oxford, 1894, did not appear until after most of the New Essays were in type; and P. Coste, Essai pliilosophique con- cernant V Entenclement humain — par M. Locke, Amsterdam, 1742, 1 vol., 4to, 1774, 4 vols., 12mo, could not be obtained, until all the New Essays and most of the Appendix were in type. Both of these works, therefore, could be used only in the supplementary notes in the Additions and Corrections. With regard to the text itself, particularly of the New Essays, a few words may not be out of place. The variations are slight and chiefly verbal, and scarcely ever essentially modify the thought. They are ultimately due either to the manuscript of Leibnitz — which Erdmann (Preface, p. xxii) says is " written in such small characters often, and so full of corrections, that it is very difficult to read it" ("tarn parvis ssepe Uteris con- scriptum et correctionibus adeo abundans ut perdifficile lectu ") — or to certain changes made for the purpose of improving the literary style of the author, and of thus making his work more acceptable to his French readers. The chief difference between the text as given by Gerhardt, who has compared his impres- sion "with the original, so far as it is still extant," and that of the other editors consists in a transposition of the text in Book I., chap. I., a transposition which is fully indicated in the note at the point in the text of the translation where it occurs, and which is, I suppose, due to Gerhardt' s fidelity to Leibnitz's original text. All the important textual variations are listed in the notes. Gerhardt' s text, having been compared with the original, seems the most trustworthy, and accordingly has been followed in this translation, excepting in a few instances mentioned in the notes, where it is manifestly erroneous from inaccurate proof-reading or other cause, and where the text of some other editor seemed more consistent or correct. Gerhardt has intro- duced into his text the brackets, [ ], in which, " in the original, Leibnitz has enclosed the words of Philalethes, who states the views of Locke," "perhaps as an indication that they are not his own;" and I have introduced them into the translation precisely as they stand in the text of Gerhardt, in order that the translation may conform to and represent as perfectly as possible Leibnitz's original text in its integrity. There seems TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE to be, however, little regularity or consistency in the employ- ment of these brackets, so far, at least, as I can discover upon comparison with Locke's treatise. Besides the editions and translations already named, the various separate editions of single works of Leibnitz, as also the various discussions of his philosophy, theology, etc., and the monographs on different parts of the same, were occasion- ally consulted or referred to, so far as these were accessible or could be procured. Among the monographs, especial men- tion should be made of Professor John Dewey's most excellent Leibniz's New Essays concerning the Human Understanding. A Critical Exposition, 1888, in the series of German Philo- sophical Classics edited by Professor George S. Morris, and published by S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago; and of the earlier monograph of G. Hartenstein, Locke's Lehre von der menscli- lichen Erkenntniss in Vergleiclmng mit Leibniz's Kritik derselben, Leipzig, 1861. The translation has purposely been made close rather than free, a philosophical treatise seeming properly to require a closer adherence on the part of the translator to the author's form of thought and expression than a history, novel, or poem. Whatever view may be taken on this point, — and I frankly admit that at least two views are possible and that each method of translation has its advantages and its disadvantages, its perils and its successes, — the form and style of the New Essays make an elegant and forceful translation well-nigh impossible. Such a translation would necessitate the entire re-writing of Leibnitz's work, would, in fact, be a reproduction rather than a translation, a task I have not attempted nor felt it incumbent on me to attempt. My aim has been simply to represent as faithfully and as accurately as possible, and in as good English as its form and expression admitted, Leibnitz's exact thought. The style of Leibnitz in the New Essays, especially in the abbreviations or abstracts of Locke's Essay put into the mouth of Philalethes, is often abrupt and obscure and sometimes even un grammatical (c/., for example, New Essays, Book III., chap. II., § 18, page 392, lines 6 and 7, and the note thereto, infra, page 768 ad Jin.). This condition of things is due partly to the form of the work, but chiefly to the method of its com- position (cf. Gerhardt's introduction, infra, page 8, and notes, TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE and the letters of Leibnitz cited by Raspe in Ms Preface, page 12, note 6, and which he says, " I found with the manuscript of the New Essays," and "give as I found them "). A work so written, in spite of more or less revision, could not possibly be a finished treatise or a work of literary art like the Dia- logues of Plato, and the character of the work must of neces- sity be reflected in the translation. The notes aim to give the desirable or necessary biographical and bibliographical information regarding the persons and books referred to in the course of the work, so far as such information could be obtained; references to other pieces of Leibnitz, and occasionally to other authors, where the same topic is discussed; and explanations of a few terms thought to be obscure and the explanations of which are not generally known or easily accessible. The notes do not pretend to be a commentary on the text. Except in a few cases, the reader or student has purposely been left to gain his knowledge of Leibnitz's views from Leibnitz himself. Extended com- mentary was impossible within the necessary limits of the volume, and accordingly was not included in the plan. The philosophical notes, therefore, confine themselves to a brief statement of Leibnitz's views and to brief criticism or indica- tion of criticism. The aim was to bring Leibnitz's great work within the reach of English students and to render it more easily accessible, with such annotation, literary and other, as would make it more acceptable to the student. All material taken from other authors has, so far as pos- sible, been verified and made the subject of such independent study as the case seemed to demand. All references to authorities have been verified when possible, and very great pains have been taken to secure perfect accuracy in all refer- ences. The citations have uniformly been taken and the references made to the best editions, and usually to the latest, when these editions were accessible. Occasionally other works or editions are referred to because of their accessibility or for other evident reasons. For the convenience of those possess- ing different editions of Leibnitz's works, as well as for those who may have access to only one of them, reference is usually made, especially in the earlier notes, to all of the editions. Later this procedure seemed to encumber the notes with an TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE unnecessary amount of numerical reference, and it was for the most part discontinued. Attention is called to the Additions and Corrections as containing matter of importance, most of which was not obtained till after the portion of the hook to which it refers was already in type, and which, therefore, could not be inserted in its proper place in the book, but had to be reserved to the end. The Indexes are intentionally full and complete and have been made with great care by Rev. Robert Kerr Eccles, M.D. There is no adequate index to Leibnitz's works, and none whatever exclusively devoted to the New Essays. The refer- ences thereto in the meagre index in Raspe's edition of the Philosophical Works, not generally accessible, and in the general index, full as it is, in Erdmann's edition, are by no means sufficient. It is hoped that the Indexes here furnished may prove adequate for the works of Leibnitz included in this volume, and that thus a beginning at least of an adequate index to Leibnitz's complete works shall have been made. In Appendix No. IV., infra, page 663, and No. V., infra, pages 674, 682, and 686, the numbering of the cuts is changed from that of the original text to conform to their proper numerical order in this book. The fact is here noted to pre- vent confusion in referring to the original. I gratefully acknowledge my obligations and express my thanks to all who have aided me in my long and arduous work. Especially to President E. B. Andrews of Brown University, for aid in the note on the term "quarto modo," page 455, and for the verification of references; to Professor Albert G. Harkness of Brown University, for aid in locating some of the Latin quotations in the New Essays; to Professor J. E. Jameson of Brown University, for the note, page 757, ex- plaining the term "Promoter," page 227; to Professor John M. Manly of Brown University, for information and aid in the notes to the New Essays, Book III., chap. 2, page 294, notes 2, 3, page 295, notes 2, 3; to Professor E. B. Delabarre of Brown University, for aid in the note to page 122, lines 1, 2, infra, pages 739-740; to Professor H. P. Manning of Brown University, for aid in the note on the " perles " of De Sluse, page 768; to Rev. R. H. Ferguson, for aid in the TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE same note, and in the revision of a portion of the Appendix; to Mr. Frank E. Thompson, A.M., Head-master of the Rogers High School, Newport, R. I., for aid in connection with a part of the subject-matter of the Dynamical Pieces in the Ap- pendix; to Professor Benjamin 0. True of Rochester Theo- logical Seminary, for information and verification of references in connection with the notes to the New Essays, Book IV., chap. 19, page 599, note 2, 601, note 1, 602, note 1; to Pro- fessor F. A. March of Lafayette University, for the location of the Latin poetical quotation on page 603 ; to Professor Carl Schaarschmidt of Bonn University, for consulting books inac- cessible in this country, and for information kindly furnished by letter, and for his cordial interest in my work, as well as for the very valuable notes to his translation of the New Essays, without which mine never would have been written in their present form; to the various libraries whose resources have in one way or another been placed at my disposal, among which should be mentioned the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the libraries of Andover Theological Semi- nary, Newton Theological Institution, Rochester Theological Seminary, Brown University, Harvard University, Yale University through Professor Duncan, the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, Washington, D.C., and the Red- wood Library, Newport, R.I.; to the libraries particularly of Newton Theological Institution, Brown University, and Harvard University, for the long-continued loan of needed books ; to Professor Charles R. Brown of Newton Theological Institution for information and the verification of references; to my friend and former pupil Mr. Alfred R. Wightman, of the Morgan Park Academy of the University of Chicago, for the verification of references and aid in the revision of a portion of the Appendix; to Mr. Thomas J. Kiernan of the Harvard University Library, for special favors in the consul- tation of the library, for the loan of books from the same, and for information cordially furnished by mail; to Benjamin Rand, Ph.D., of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, for frequent consultation of authorities, verifica- tion of references and information furnished; to my friend Mr. Richard Bliss, Librarian of the Redwood Library, with- out whose competent criticism and constant advice and aid, TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE added to his comprehensive and accurate knowledge in many fields, and especially in bibliography, my notes would have been far less full and accurate than, I trust, they now are; and last but not least, to my wife for literary criticism in the revision of the translation and notes, and aid in the laborious task of proof-reading. Had I always accepted and adopted her criticism and that of Mr. Bliss, my work would doubtless rank higher as a piece of literature than is now possible. My thanks are also due and most heartily tendered to my publishers, Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for their uniform courtesy and long-suffering patience in the repeated but un- avoidable delays which have characterized the appearance of this book; and to J. S. Cushing & Co., of the Norwood Press, for the excellence of their work, and the pains they have taken to secure the greatest possible accuracy in the same, and for their uniform courtesy and long-suffering patience amid the vexatious delays unavoidably incident to the preparation of the notes and the correction of the proof. In editing the work of a thinker and writer so comprehen- sive as Leibnitz, it is impossible to escape all errors of fact or judgment. I have done the best I could in the circumstances in which I have had to work, away from large libraries and from the advice and criticism of fellow-students in the same lines. Competent and truth-loving criticism, and the correc- tion of any and all real errors will be thankfully received. With one sentence from Leibnitz's letter to Coste, June 16, 1707, as significant of his character and illustrative of his spirit, more truth-loving than polemical, and as beautifully expressing the essence of true criticism, I close this Preface : " Mon but a este plustost d'eclaircir les choses, que cle refuter les sentimens d'autruy," which, being interpreted, is: "My purpose has been to throw light upon things rather than to refute the opinions of another." Alfred G. Langley. Newport, R.I., April 11, 1896. LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING GERHARDT'S INTRODUCTION TO HIS EDITION OE LEIBNITZ'S NOUVEAUX ESSAIS [From the German'] In the first philosophical treatise, Meditaiiones de Gognitione, Veritate, et Ideis, 1 which Leibnitz published in the year 1684, he had firmly laid the foundations of human knowledge ; he de- clared adequate and at the same time intuitive knowledge as the most complete. At the end he adds : Quod ad controver- siam attinet, utrum omnia videamus in Deo ... an vero proprias ideas habeamus, sciendum est, etsi omnia in Deo videremus, necesse tamen esse ut habeamus et ideas proprias, id est non quasi icunculas quasdam, sed affectiones sive modifi- cationes mentis nostra, respondentes ad id ipsum quod in Deo perciperemus : utique enim aliis atque aliis cogitationibus sub- euntibus aliqua in mente nostra mutatio fit ; rerum vero actu a nobis non cogitatarum Ide® sunt in mente nostra, ut figura Herculis in rudi marmore. The assumption of these ideas slumbering in the mind, these innate ideas (angebornen Ideen; ide.es innees), Leibnitz regards as necessary in order to understand the nature of the mind. (Habet anima in se perceptiones et appetitus, iisque natura ejus continetur, he writes to Bierling, Hanoverse 12. Augusti 1711. 2 Et ut in corpore intelligimus avriTv-n-iav, et figuram generatim, etsi nesciamus, quse sint figuree corporum insensibilium : ita in anima intelligimus perceptionem et appetitum, etsi non cognoscamus distincte insensibilia ingredientia perceptionum confusarum, quibus insensibilia corporum exprimuntur.) He could therefore only prove the necessary truths, i.e. i C. I. Gerhardt: Die philosophischen Schriften von (I. W. Leibniz. Vol. i, pp. 422-426. J. E. Erdmann: G. G. Leibnitii Opera PhilosopMca, pp.78- 81. Translated by George M. Duncan, The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz, pp. 27-32, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, & Taylor, 1890. — Tr. 2 The letter is found in Gerhardt's ed., Vol. 7, pp. 500-502. — Tr. 3 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE those which are known by demonstration, inasmuch as the senses indeed teach what happens, but not what necessarily happens. Such ideas innate to the mind are, according to Leibnitz, the conceptions of substance, identity, the true and the good. The writing of the man who questioned and rejected these fundamental principles of the system of Leibnitz could not fail to lay claim to Leibnitz's entire attention. It was John Locke (born, 1632, at Wrington, near Bristol ; died, 1704, at Oates, in the county of Essex, in the house of Sir Francis Masham, whose wife was a daughter of Cud worth), who in his celebrated work (" An Essay concerning Human Understand- ing " ; in four books, London, 1690 *) sought to discover also the origin, the certainty, and the extent of human knowledge, but who denied the existence of innate ideas and principles, and affirmed that the mind is originally like an unwritten tablet (tabula rasa). In the first book of the work named, Locke seeks to set forth the view that there are no innate ideas, and therefore no innate principles and truths ; that the under- standing is by nature like an unwritten sheet of paper. The second book contains the proof whence the understanding gets its ideas. Since there are no innate concepts and principles, the origin of all ideas can be only in experience. Experience, however, has a double sphere, that of external and of internal perception : the first Locke calls Sensation; the second, Reflec- tion. Sensation is the perception of external objects mediated through the senses ; reflection, the perception of the activities of the soul in relation to the ideas presented through the senses. Ideas are partly simple, partly complex. Simple ideas arise through the single senses, remoter ideas through more senses, as extension, form, motion, rest ; through reflection alone, for 1 This work was already completed in the year 1687 ; an abstract made by Locke himself appeared in the following year, 1688, translated into French in Leclerc's " Bibliotheque universelle," T. VIII., pp. 49-142. The contents of the work, after it was completely published in the year 1690, was communi- cated in much detail by Leclerc in the "Biblioth. Univers.," T. XVII., p. 399 sq. The new editions, which already in the shortest time followed each other in quick succession in the years 1694, 1697, 1699, 1705, prove what a mighty impression Locke's work made upon cultivated circles. 1700 appeared Coste's French translation of Locke's work : it was enriched by Locke himself with improvements and additions. Leibnitz followed this French translation in the comx^osition of his Nouveaux Essais. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING example, the idea of thought and will ; through union of sensa- tion and reflection, the ideas of power, existence, unity. The complex ideas are of three kinds : modes, substances, relations. The modes, i.e. the complex concepts, which contain nothing existing for itself, are either pure (simple modes), as space, time, or mixed (mixed modes), as thought, motion, power. By sub- stances Locke understands those combinations of simple ideas or groups of ideas, which are conceived upon the hypothesis that they correspond to definite, actually existing things, so that the substance (substratum) presupposed for and in them is considered as the point of union for the rest of the constitu- ent parts contained in the group of ideas. Of substance, man has no clear conception ; it is, according to Locke, worthless. According to him this conception is not limited to single things, but he extends it also to the collective ideas of many things ; thus an army, a herd of sheep, is just as much a substance as a single man or one sheep. Relations arise from the comparison of many things with one another, as the conceptions of cause and effect, time — and place — relations, identity and diversity. Ideas and their combinations are apprehended in language ; therefore Locke begins in the third book with an investigation upon language, in so far as our knowledge, although relating to things, is bound to words, and words are an indispensable middle-term between thoughts and things. The extent and the certainty of knowledge are on this account conditioned upon the constitution and significance of words. In the fourth book Locke pronounces the concluding judgment upon the extent and the different grades of certainty in human knowledge. 1 Leibnitz's attention was already turned from his own work to that of the English philosopher by the above-mentioned edition published by Locke himself in the " Bibliotheque universelle." When later Locke's work reached his hands, he threw off, as was his custom while he skimmed through the book, some remarks ; 2 they follow here under the superscription : " Sur 1 For the foregoing are of value : Hartenstein, Locke's Lehre von der menschlichen Erkenntniss in Verr/leichung mit Leibniz's Eritik derselben. Leipzig, 1861. — Ueberweg, Grundrlss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 3 Theil. Berlin, 1880. 2 They came into being after the year 1693, since mention is made in them of Locke's Tract upon Education: Thoughts on Education, London, 1693. They were first printed in Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his Friends, London, 1708, pp. 196-205. LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE l'Essay de l'entendement humain de Monsieur Lock." * Leibnitz sent it in accord with his pleasant custom to Thomas Burnett, with whom he corresponded. 2 Through him they came to the knowledge of Locke, who, however, upon vain pretexts, de- clined every reply thereto. 3 When Leibnitz received among others the communication from Burnett (July 26, 1698), that Locke had so far expressed his opinion that he for his part did not sufficiently understand Leibnitz's remarks upon his book, he resolved upon a remodelling of the same. Two fragments of the year 1698 are thereupon at hand ; they are printed here for the first time, under the superscription : " Echantillon * de Reflexions sur le I. Livre de l'Essay de l'Entendement de l'homme. — Echantillon de Reflexions sur le II. Livre." Leib- nitz again sent them to Burnett ; through whom Locke re- ceived them ; but this attempt also on Leibnitz's side remained without result, as appears from Burnett's letter to Leibnitz October 23, 1700. 1 On Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. See infra, pp. 13-19. — Tr. 2 Leibnitz to Thomas Burnett, 7th-17th March, 1696: " I found, also, finally, a rough draught which I had had copied formerly, of some remarks I made when running through the excellent essay of Locke upon Human Understand- ing; I take the liberty of sending you a copy." —Leibnitz to Th. Burnett, 17th-27th July, 1697 : " What I sent you of my reflections upon the important book of Locke is entirely at your disposal, and you can communicate it to whomever it seems good to you ; and if it falls into his hands, or those of his friends, so much the better; for that will give him an opportunity to instruct us and to clear up the matter." 3 Highly characteristic is that which Burnett communicated to Leibuitz upon the 23d of July, 1697: " I must tell you a joke of Locke's the other day, on this matter. We began to speak of the controversies of savants with those of this country. He said : ' It seems to me we live very peaceably as good neighbors of the gentlemen in Germany, for they do not know our books, and we do not read theirs, so that the tale (la [? le — Tr.] conte) (? le compte, the account) was well adjusted on each side.'" — On the other hand, we find a very dissenting judgment of Locke's upon Leibuitz and his remarks in his letter to Dr. Molyneux, of April 10, 1697: '"'I must confess to you that Mr. L 's great name had raised in me an expectation which the sight of his paper did not answer, uor that discourse of his in the 'Acta Eruditorum,' which he cpiotes, and I have since read, and had just the same thoughts of it, when I read it, as I find you have. From whence I only draw this infer- ence, That even great parts will not master any subject without great thinking, and even the largest minds have but narrow swallows." — Not less disparaging is Locke's judgment upon Leibnitz in the next letter to Molyneux, of May 3, 1697. — The correspondence between Locke and Molyneux is contained in the already quoted book: Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke, etc. 4 Specimen of Reflections on Book I. of the Essay on Human Understand- ing. Specimen of Reflections on Book II. See infra, pp. 20-25. —Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING In the year 1700 appeared the French translation of Locke's work published by Pierre Coste ; 1 it was prepared according to the fourth edition and contained accordingly the additions which Locke had made to the previous editions of his book. Leibnitz at once took occasion thereof to write a sketch for the "Monatliche Auszug 2 aus allerhand neu-herausgegebenen, niitz- lichen und artigen Buchern," for the year 1700 (September,, pp. 611-636) . This follows here under No. III. 3 together with the supplement of the following year, 1701. 4 In this sketch Leib- nitz discusses two of the weightiest of Locke's additions, filling two separate chapters, viz. : chapter 33 of the second book, wherein Locke treats of the Association of Ideas, and then chapter 19 of the fourth book, in which he discourses of Enthusiasm. Through the French translation Leibnitz first gained real access to Locke's work. 5 He recognized the importance of its contents in its fullest extent ; at the same time the extremely large circulation and the universal recognition, which ex- pressed itself through the editions following each other in rapid succession, must have made upon him a deep impression. Evidently for these reasons Leibnitz conceived the plan of 1 Essai Philosophique concernant 1'entendement humain, oil Ton montre, quelle est l'entendue cle nos Conuoissances certaines et la maniere dont nous y parvenons, traduit de 1' Anglais de Mr. Locke par Mr. Pierre Coste, sur la quatrienie edition, revue, corrigee et augnientee par l'Auteur. A Amsterd., 1700. 4. This first edition of Coste's translation was not accessible to me : I have been able to make use of the second : Essai Philosophique concernant, etc. Traduit de l'Anglois par M. Coste. Seconde edition, revue, corrigee, et augmentee de quelques Additions import-antes de l'Auteur qui n'ont paru qu'apres sa mort, et de quelques Remarques du Traducteur. A Amsterd., 1729. 4. 2 I.e. " ' Monatliche Auszug' (Monthly Abstract) of the various newly pub- lished, profitable, and pleasing books." — Tr. 3 See infra, pp. 2G-38. — Tr. 4 This " Monatliche Auszug " appeared in three annual sets from 1700-1702. Guhrauer (Leibnitz's deutsehe Schriften, 2ter Band) has tried to prove in a very complete excursus that Leibnitz was the real editor of this Journal . Certainly the sketch of Locke's work originated with him. 5 Leibnitz to Thomas Burnett, 17th-27th July, 1696: "I could wish I had the same knowledge of the English language " (as of the French); "but, not having had the occasion for it, all I can do is to understand passably the books written in this language. And at the age at which I have arrived, I doubt if I could ever make myself better acquainted with it." — Leibnitz to Coste, of June 16, 1701: "I have followed your French version, because I thought it proper to write my remarks in French, since nowadays this kind of investiga- tion is but little in fashion in the Latin Quarter." LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE answering Locke's work with a more extensive writing. It grew out of the often hastily-thrown-off remarks which, he occasionally put on paper in the years following that of 1700, in which he was not permitted to undertake any continuous work. 1 In order to obliterate the traces of this method of 'work, Leibnitz considered it advisable, before he published it, to submit his book, as to composition and style, to the judg- ment of a native Frenchman. This revision was protracted until the year 1705, as appears from a writing which has no signature. 2 Another delay occurred by reason of the fact that Leibnitz in the following year, 1706, entered into correspond- ence with Pierre Coste, the translator of Locke's work ; Coste told him (April 20, 1707) that the translation of Locke itself would be examined and furnished with important improve- ments; he would urgently advise him (Leibnitz) to put off the publication of his work until he obtained a knowledge of these changes of Locke. This further consideration, that he learned of the dissenting opinions of Locke in his corre- spondence with Molyneux, as also Locke's death, which had 1 " I have made these remarks in the leisure hours when I was travelling or at Herrenhausen, where I could not apply myself to researches which required more care " (besoin * in sense of soin ? — Tr.) . l 2 " The frequent diversions to which I have been exposed have prevented me from pushing forward my remarks. Besides, I have been obliged to divide my time between the reading of your work and the commissions with which I have been entrusted by the Count de Schwerin, of which I must give accoimt to him. You will find few remarks upon this paper; but I have taken the liberty of changing in the work itself a very large number of places in reference to which I did not at all hesitate when I saw that I could do this without dis- arranging the rest of the writing. I have not touched what is properly called the style ; but the confidence with which you have honored me obliges me to say to you here that it greatly needs amendment, and that you seem too much to have neglected it. You know, sir, to what excess our French people have carried their well- or ill-founded delicacy. Too long periods are distasteful; an And (Et) or some other word too of Ijen repeated in the same period offends them; unusual constructions embarrass them; a trifle, so to speak, shocks them. It is proper, however, to accommodate yourself to their taste if you wish to write in their language ; and, in case you should decide to print your work, I believe you will do well to retouch it with a little more severity. I am certain that you will not be displeased at the freedom with which I speak to you, since it comes from a person devoted to your service." — Feb. 2, 1705. 1 "W. T. Harris, editor of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," suggests that per- haps the reading was besogne (work) — instead of besoin. So that the passage read, " researches which required more work (or labor)." — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING already followed in the year 1704, altered Leibnitz's original plan. 1 In order to obtain an easier entrance for his own ideas, and at the same time to make his reader familiar with those of Locke, Leibnitz had composed his work in the form of a dia- logue. Two friends, Philalethes and Theophilus, converse together ; the first states the views of Locke, the second joins thereto his own (Leibnitz's) remarks. This form of composi- tion Leibnitz thought of abandoning. He writes to Thomas Burnett, May 26, 1706 : " The death of Locke has taken away my desire to publish my remarks upon his works. I prefer now to publish my thoughts independently of those of another." On the other hand, he remarks, wellnigh it seems in the opposite sense, to the same, three years later, May 12, 1709: "My remarks upon the excellent work of Locke are almost finished ; although we are not of the same opinion, I do not cease to value it and to find it valuable." Leibnitz's work remained, in form at least, unfinished ; a magnificent torso, and unpublished. 2 He turned to the compo- 1 Leibnitz to Coste, June 16, 1707 : " The great merit of Mr. Locke, and the general esteem which his work has with so much justice gained, united to some intercourse by letters which I have had the pleasure of having with my Lady Masham, caused me to employ some weeks in remarks upon this impor- tant work, in the hope of conferring upon them with Mr. Locke himself. But his death shocked me, and caused my reflections to be behindhand, although they are finished. My purpose has been to throw light upon things rather than to refute the opinions of another. I shall be delighted, however, sir, to receive the additions and corrections of this excellent man, in order to profit from them." — Leibnitz to Remond, March 14, 1711: "He (Hugony) has also seen my somewhat extended reflections upon Locke's work, which treats of Human Understanding. But I dislike to publish refutations of dead authors, although they might appear during their lifetime and be communicated to the authors themselves. Some minor remarks escaped me, I know not how, and were carried to England by a relative of the late Mr. Burnett, bishop of Salis- bury. Locke having seen them, spoke of them slightingly in a letter to Molyneux, which may be found among some posthumous letters of Locke. I learned his opinion of them only from this impression. I am not astonished at it : we differed a little too much in principles, and the views I advanced seemed to him paradoxical. However, a friend more biassed in my favor and less so in favor of Locke informs me that those of my reflections there inserted appear to him the best of the collection. I do not adopt this view, not having examined the collection." 2 Over the Preface, which certainly was composed after the completion of the entire work, Leibnitz has written as the title of the work : Nouveaux Essais sur l' entendement par VAuteur du systeme de VHarmonie preestablie. In the Preface itself he leaves out the word " humain." The superscription of the 10 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE sition of the " Theodicy." For the first time, fifty years after his death, it was sent to the press in " CEuvres Philosophiques latines et francoises de feu Mr. de Leibnitz. Tirees de ses manuscrits qui se conservent dans la bibliotheque E-oyale a Hanovre, et publiees par Mr. Rud. Eric. Easpe. Avec une Preface de Mr. Kaestner, Professeur en Mathematiques a Gottingen. A Amsterdam et a Leipzig, 1765." The present impression has been newly compared with the original, so far as it is still extant. 1 The corrections in reference to the style proposed by the native Frenchman are not taken into consider- ation, in order not to obliterate Leibnitz's style of expression ; they relate, indeed, only to the first books. In the preface to his work, in which Leibnitz has put together the points of difference between his system and that of Locke, he remarks in the first place that Locke's Essay upon Human Understanding is one of the most beautiful and valua- ble works of its time ; that he has determined to make some remarks upon it, because he himself has considered the same subject for a long time, and deemed it a good opportunity to create a favorable entrance for his own ideas in this way. His own system differs, in truth, from Lo.cke's considerably, in so far as Locke's is more closely related to Aristotle, his own, on the other hand, to Plato ; Locke's is more universally com- prehensible, his own more abstract. Meanwhile, by clothing his own remarks in the form of a dialogue between two per- sons, one of whom presents Locke's views, the other joins thereto his own, he hopes to avoid the dryness belonging to abstract remarks ; at the same time the reader is spared the labor of comparing the passages from Locke's essay under dis- cussion. — The first important point of difference, wherein Leibnitz distinguishes himself from Locke, is in the ques- tion whether the soul is in itself empty like a tabula rasa, as Aristotle had already maintained, and that it receives every- thing through sense-perceptions and experience, or whether fourth book runs thus : Nouveaux Essays sur V 'entendement ; in the case of the three first hooks we find the superscription : Nouveaux Essais sur V en- tendement humaine. 1 In the original, Leibnitz has enclosed the words of Philalethes, who states the views of Locke, in [], perhaps as an indication that they are not his own. Raspe has omitted them. — Gerhaedt's Note. In this translation Gerhardt's use of [] has been strictly followed. — Tit. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING the soul originally has the principles of many conceptions and doctrines, as Leibnitz with Plato thinks. Hence arises another question, whether all truths depend upon experience, or whether there is still another principle. The senses are necessary for our actual knowledge, but they give us only examples, i.e. in- dividual truths, which are not adequate for grounding the uni- versal necessity of a truth. The necessary truths, which are found in pure mathematics, appear to rest upon other princi- ples, whose proof depends not upon experience and the testi- mony of the senses, — a point to be well considered. Logic, metaphysics, ethics, are full of such truths, which can arise only from such principles as are called innate. It is neverthe- less possible, continues Leibnitz, that my opponent is not wholly remote from my view. For after he has rejected innate ideas in the first book of his essay, he begins the second book with the statement that the ideas which have not their origin in sensation arise through reflection. What, however, is reflection but a regard for what is in us and born in us ? Such are the ideas of being, unity, substance, etc. If, thinks Leibnitz, an understanding with his opponent might easily, perhaps, be re-established in reference to the above, yet it might create more difficulty in reference to the affirmation that the soul does not always think, just as bodies do not - always have motion. To this Leibnitz opposes the statement that bodies are always in motion and that a substance cannot exist without activity ; there are in the soul a multitude of impressions too small to be separately distinguished, but which, however, united produce an activity, although simply inarticu- late, like the noise of the waves. These little perceptions are of greater significance than we think. By means of these in- sensible perceptions the pre-established harmony between the soul and the body is explained. In the same manner they are of great importance for Physics, for thereupon rests the law of continuity. These minute insensible perceptions are also the reason why there are not two perfectly similar souls or things of the same kind. Another point of difference between Leibnitz and Locke is in reference to the conception of the nature of Matter. Locke considered the smallest particles of matter to be rigid bodies, and therefore assumed that space is empty, else were any mo- LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE tion impossible. Leibnitz, on the other hand, supposes space to be filled with a fluid matter which is divisible to infinity ; he calls especial attention to the fact that Locke, who at first professed the gravitation theory of Newton constantly contested by Leibnitz, viz. : that bodies work upon each other from any distance whatever without touching, at a later period freed himself from this assumption of Newton. In discussing the concepts of space, time, and number, Locke had remarked that only with these concepts may that of infinity be united. Leibnitz agrees with him in this, that there is neither an infinite space, nor an infinite time, nor an infinite number, that in general the infinite is not given in that which is put together out of parts. But the true infinite, Leibnitz adds, is in the Absolute, which is without parts. From this proceeds the concept of the finite through limitation. In the beginning of the third book Locke had undertaken a discussion of language as the expression of the forms of knowledge. He had made thereby a distinction between nom- inal and real being. Leibnitz rejects this distinction as a perplexing innovation. Things, Leibnitz affirms, have only one essence, but different definitions of them, nominal and real definitions, are possible. The contents of the fourth book, in which is treated the knowledge of the truth, gives Leibnitz no occasion to raise an important point of controversy. In reference to the axioms, whose indispensableness to scientific investigations Leibnitz affirms, Locke contests, the former enters into a more protracted explanation. In like manner he turns against Locke's notion that the use of Logic is rather unfruitful. ON LOCKE'S ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 1 1696 [From the French] I find so many marks of unusual penetration in what Mr. Locke has given us on the Human Understanding and on Education, and I consider the matter so important, that I have thought I should not employ the time to no purpose which I should give to such profitable reading ; so much the more as I have myself meditated deeply upon the subject of the foundations of our knowledge. This is my reason for putting upon this sheet some of the reflections which have occurred to me while reading his Essay on the Understanding. Of all researches, there is none of greater importance, since it is the key to all others. The first book considers chiefly the principles said to be born with us. Mr. Locke does not admit them, any more than he admits innate ideas. He has doubtless had good reasons for opposing himself on this point to ordinary prejudices, for the name of ideas and principles is greatly abused. Common philosophers manufacture for themselves principles according to their fancy ; and the Cartesians, who profess greater accuracy, do not cease to intrench themselves behind so-called ideas of extension, of matter, and of the soul, desiring to avoid thereby the necessity of proving what they advance, on the pretext that those who will meditate on these ideas will discover in them the same thing as they ; that is to say, that those who will accustom them- selves to their jargon and mode of thought will have the same prepossessions, which is very true. My view, then, is that nothing should be taken as first principles but experiences and the axiom of identity or (what 1 Erdmann, Leibnitii Opera Philosophica, pp. 136-139. — Tit. 14 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [i is the same thing) contradiction, which is primitive, since otherwise there would be no difference between truth and falsehood ; and all investigation would cease at once, if to say yes or no were a matter of indifference. We cannot, then, prevent ourselves from assuming this principle as soon as we wish to reason. All other truths are demonstrable, and I value very highly the method of Euclid, who, without stopping at what would be supposed to be sufficiently proved by the so- called ideas, has demonstrated (for instance) that in a triangle one side is always less than the sum of the other two. Yet Euclid was right in taking some axioms for granted, not as if they were truly primitive and indemonstrable, but because he would have come to a standstill if he had wished to reach his conclusions only after an exact discussion of principles. Thus he judged it proper to content himself with having pushed the proofs up to this small number of propositions, so that it may be said that if they are true, all that he says is also true. He has left to others the task of demonstrating further these principles themselves, which besides are already justified by experience ; but with this we are not satisfied in these matters. This is why Apollonius, Proclus, and others have taken the pains to demonstrate some of Euclid's axioms. Philosophers should imitate this method of procedure in order finally to attain some fixed principles, even though they be only provisional, after the way I have just mentioned. As for ideas, I have given some explanation of them in a brief essay printed in the " Actes des Scavans " 1 of Leipzig for November, 1684 (p. 537), which is entitled Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate, et Ideis; 2 and I could have wished that Mr. Locke had seen and examined it ; for I am one of the most docile of men, and nothing is better suited to advance our thought than the considerations and remarks of clever per- sons, when they are made with attention and sincerity. I shall only say here, that true or real ideas are those whose i The "Acta Eruditorum," Lipsiae, 1682-1731.— Tr. 2 Gerhardt, Vol. 4, pp. 422-426 ; Erdmann, pp. 78-81. Translated in part by Sir William Hamilton, Lectures on Logic. Lect. X., t XXX., pp. 127-129, Amer. ed. ; and complete by George M. Duncan, The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz, pp. 27-32, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, & Taylor, 1890; also by Professor Thomas Spencer Baynes, in the Appendix to his edition of the Port Royal Logic. — Tr. i] ON HUMAN UNDEKSTANDING 15 execution we are assured is possible.; Jhe others are doubtful, or^iiruase^of - proved impossibility) chimerical. Now the possibility of ideas is proved as much a priori by demon- strations, by making use of the possibility of other more simple ideas, as a posteriori by experience ; for what exists cannot fail to be possible. But primitive ideas are those whose possibility is indemonstrable, and which are in truth nothing else than the attributes of God. I do not find it absolutely essential for the beginning or for the practice of the art of thinking to decide the question whether there are ideas and truths born with us ; whether they all come to us from without or from ourselves ; we will reason correctly provided we observe what I have said above, and proceed in an orderly way and without prejudice. The ques- tion of the origin of our ideas and of our maxims is not pre- liminary in Philosophy, and we must have made great progress in order to solve it successfully. I think, however, that I can say that our ideas, even those of sensible things, come from within our own soul, 1 of which view you can the better judge by what I have published 2 upon the nature and connection of sub- stances and what is called the union of the soul with the body. For I have found that these things had not been well under- stood. I am nowise in favor of Aristotle's tabula rasa; and there is something substantial in what Plato called reminis- cence. There is even something more; for we not only have a reminiscence of all our past thoughts, but also a presentiment of all our future thoughts. It is true that this is confused, and fails to distinguish them, in much the same way as when I hear the noise of the sea I hear that of all the particular waves which make up the noise as a whole, though without discerning one wave from another. Thus it is true in a cer- tain sense, as I have explained, that not only our ideas, but also our sensations, spring from within our own soul, and that the soul is more independent than is thought, although it is always true that nothing takes place in it which is not deter- 1 The French is : " de nostre propre fonds." — Tr. 2 In the "Journal des Savants," June, 1695. For the piece, cf. Gerhardt, Vol. 4, pp. 477 sq. (first sketch 470 sq.) ; and the portion of his introduction and notes referring to the same, Vol. 4, pp. 414-417; Erdmann, pp. 124-128; cf. also pp. 129-136. For the translation, Appendix, pp. . — Tr. 16 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [i mined, and nothing is found in creatures that God does not continually create. sj In Book II., which conies to the details of ideas, I admit that the reasons brought forward by Mr. Locke to prove that the soul sometimes exists without thinking of anything, do not ap- pear to me convincing, unless he gives the name of thoughts to those perceptions only which are sufficiently noticeable to be distinguished and retained. I hold that the soul (and even the body) is never without action, and that the soul is never with- out some perception : even in dreamless sleep we have a con- fused and dull sensation of the place where we are ; and of other things. But even if experience should not confirm the view, I believe that it may be demonstrated. It is much the same as we cannot prove absolutely by experience whether there is a vacuum in space, and whether there is rest in matter. Nevertheless, questions of this kind appear to me, as well as to Mr. Locke, to be decided demonstratively. I admit the difference which he puts with much reason be- tween matter and space ; but as for the vacuum, many clever people have believed in it. Mr. Locke is of this number. I was nearly persuaded of it myself ; but I gave it up long ago. And the incomparable Mr. Huygens, who was also for the vacuum and the atoms, began at last to reflect upon my reasons, as his letters can testify. The proof of the vacuum derived from motion, of which Mr. Locke makes use, assumes that body is originally hard, and that it is composed of a cer- tain number of inflexible parts. For in this case it would be true, whatever finite number of atoms might be taken, that motion could not take place without a vacuum. But all the parts of matter are divisible and even pliable. There are also some other things in this second book which arrest my attention : for example, when it is said (chap. 17) that infinity should be attributed only to space, time, and num- bers. I believe, indeed, with Mr. Locke that, properly speak- ing, we may say that there is no space, time, nor number which is infinite, but that it is only true that however great * may be 1 Gerhardt's text seems here, for some reason, to be defective. It reads thus : " Mais qu'il est settlement vray que pour grand que luy sans fin," etc. Erdmann's seems the more correct, and is therefore followed in the translation. It reads thus: "Mais qu'il est seulement vrai que pour grand que soit un espace, un terns, ou un nonibre, il y en a toujours un autre plus grand que lui i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 17 a space, a time, or a number, there is always another greater than it without end; and that thus the true infinite is not found in a whole composed of parts. It is none the less, how- ever, found elsewhere ; namely, in the absolute, which is with- out parts, and which has influence over compound things, because they result from the limitation of the absolute. The positive infinite, then, being nothing else than the absolute, it may be said that there is in this sense a positive idea of the infinite, and that it is anterior to that of the finite. For the rest, in rejecting a composite infinite, we do not deny the demonstrations of the geometers de Seriebus infinitis, and par- ticularly what the excellent Mr. Newton has given us, not to mention my own contributions to the subject. As for what is said (chap. 30) de ideis adcequatis, it is allowable to give to the terms the signification which one finds pertinent. Yet without, finding fault with Mr. Locke's mean- ing, I put degrees in ideas, according to which I call those adequate in which there is nothing more to explain, much the same as in numbers. Now all ideas of sense-qualities, as of light, color, heat, not being of this nature, I do not reckon them among the adequate. So it is not through themselves, nor a priori, but through experience, that we know their reality or possibility. There are further many good things in Book III. in which he treats of words or terms. It is very true that everything cannot be defined, and that sense-qualities have no nominal definition : thus they may be called primitive in this sense ; but they can none the less receive a real definition. I have shown the difference between these two kinds of definition in the meditation 1 cited above. The nominal definition explains the name by the marks of the thing ; but the real definition makes known a priori the possibility of the thing defined. For the rest, I strongly commend Mr. Locke's doctrine of the demon- strability of moral truths. The fourth or last book, which treats of the knowledge of truth, shows the use of what has just been said. I find in it, as well as in the preceding books, an infinite number of beauti- sans fin." p. 138 a. Cf. also Leibniz's Neio Essays concerning the Human Understanding . — A Critical Exposition, by John Dewey, Ph.D. pp. 190. Chicago: S. C. GriggsPfe Co., 1888. — Tr. 1 I.e. Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate, et Ideis. — Tr. C 18 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [i ful reflections. To make suitable remarks upon them would be to make a book as large as the work itself. It seems to me that the axioms receive therein a little less consideration than they deserve. The apparent reason for this is that, excepting those of the mathematicians, we ordinarily find none which are important and solid: I have tried to remedy this defect. I do not despise identical propositions, and I have found that they are of great use even in analysis. It is very true that we know our own existence by an immediate intuition, and that of God by demonstration; and that a mass of matter, whose parts are without perception, cannot make a thinking whole. I do not despise the argument invented some centuries ago by Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, which proves that the perfect being must exist; although I find that the argu- ment lacks something, because it assumes that the perfect being is possible. For if this single point were proved in addi- tion, the whole demonstration would be complete. As for the knowledge of other things, it is very well said, that experience alone does not suffice for a sufficient advance in Physics. A penetrating mind will draw more conclusions from some quite ordinary experiences, than another could draw from the most choice ; besides, there is an art of experimenting upon and, so to speak, questioning nature. Yet it is always true that we can make progress in the details of Physics only in proportion as we have experience. Our author shares with many able men the opinion that the forms of logic are of little use. I should be quite of another opinion, and I have often found that the paralogisms, even of mathematics, are the faults of form. Mr. Huygens has made the same observation. Much might be said upon this point, and many excellent things are despised because the use of which they are capable is not made of them. We are inclined to despise what we have learned in the schools. It is true we learn there many useless things ; but it is good to exercise the function della Orusca, 1 i.e. to separate the good from the bad. 1 "La Crusca, a celebrated academy of Florence, founded in 1582, for the purpose of maintaining the purity of the Italian language, that is to say, of separating the bran (crusca) from the flour : hence the name." Duncan's note. Philos. Works of Leibnitz, p. 378. i J ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 19 Mr. Locke can do this as well as any one whatsoever ; and in addition he gives us important thoughts of his own invention ; his penetration and fairness appear everywhere. 1 He is not only an assayer, but he is also a transmuter by the increase of good metal he gives. Should he continue to present it to the public, we should be greatly indebted to him. 1 Erdmann omits this clause. — Tr. II SPECIMEN OF THOUGHTS UPON THE FIEST BOOK OF THE ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING [From the French'] In order to prove that there are no ideas born with us, the excellent author of the Essay on Human Understanding ad- duces experience, which shows us that we need external occa- sions in order to think of these ideas. I agree with him, but it does not seem to me that it follows that the occasions which cause us to see them, cause them to spring into being. And this experience cannot determine whether it is through immis- sion of a species or by impression of outlines upon an empty tablet, or whether it is by the development of what is already in us that we perceive ourselves. It is not extraordinary that there be somewhat in our mind of which we are not always conscious. Reminiscence shows us that we often have diffi- culty in remembering what we know, and in seizing what is already in the enclosure and possession of our understanding. This proving to be the truth in acquired knowledge, nothing prevents its being also true in the case of that which is innate. And, indeed, there is still more difficulty in perceiving this last, since it has not yet been modified and detailed by ex- perience, as is the acquired, of which often the circumstances remind us. The author undertakes to show in particular that impossibil- ity and identity, whole and part, etc., are not innate ideas. But I do not understand the force of the proofs he brings. I ad- mit that it is difficult to make men perceive distinctly these metaphysical notions, for abstraction and thought cost them effort. But one may have in himself that which he has diffi- culty in distinguishing there. Something else, however, than 20 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING the idea of identity is necessary to answer the question, which is here proposed, viz. : Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras and the cock, 1 in which the soul of Pythagoras dwelt for some time, were always the same individual, and it does not at all follow that those who cannot solve this question have no idea of identity. What is clearer than the ideas of geometry? Yet there are some questions which we have not yet been able to decide. But that one which considers the identity of Pytha- goras following the story of his metempsychosis is not one of the most impenetrable. Eegarding the idea of God, he brings forward examples of some nations who have had no such knowledge. M. Fabritius, a very distinguished theologian of the late Elector Palatine Charles Louis, has published the " L'Apologie du genre humain contre l'accusation de PAtheisme," in which he replies to such passages as are here cited. But I do not enter into this dis- cussion. Suppose there are men, and even peoples, who have never thought of God ; we may say that this fact proves only that there has not been an occasion sufficient to awaken in them the idea of the supreme substance. Before passing to the complex principles or primitive truths, I will say that I agree that the knowledge, or better, the actual consideration (envisagement), of ideas and truths is not innate, and that it is not necessary that we have distinctly known them in a former state of being, according to Plato's doctrine_ of reminiscence. But the idea being taken for the immediate internal object of a notion, or of what the logicians call an incomplex term, there is nothing to prevent its always being in us, for these objects can subsist Avhen they are not per- ceived. Ideas and truths may, furthermore, be divided into primitive and derivative : the knowledge of the primitives does not need to be formed ; they must be distinguished only ; that of the derivative is formed by the understanding and by the reason upon occasion. However, we may say in one sense, that the internal objects of this knowledge, that is to say, the ideas and truths themselves, primitive as well as derivative, are all in us, since all the derivative ideas and all the truths deduced from them result from the relations of primitive ideas which are in us. But usage makes it customary to call innate i Cf. Locke, Philos. Works (Bohn's eel.), Vol. 1, p. 181 sq., and note. — Tr. 22 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [n the truths to which credence is given as soon as they are heard, and the ideas whose reality (that is to say, the possibility of the thing which it represents) is of the number of these truths, and needs not to be proved by experience or by reason; there is then considerable ambiguity in this question, and it suffices at the last to recognize that there is an internal light born with us, which comprises all the intelligible ideas and all the necessary truths which are only a result of these ideas and need not experience in order to be proved. To reduce, then, this discussion to something practical, I believe that the true end one should have is the determination of the grounds of truths and their origin. I admit that con- tingent truths, or truths of fact, come to us by observation and experience ; but I hold that necessary derivative truths de- pend upon demonstration, i.e. upon definitions or ideas, united with the primitive truths. And the primitive truths (such as the principle of contradiction) do not come at all from the senses or from experience, and cannot be perfectly proved, but from the natural internal light, and this is what I mean in saying that they are innate. The geometers also have very well understood this. They could prove passably their proposi- tions (at least, the most important of them) by experience, and I do not doubt that the ancient Egyptian and the Chinese had such an experimental geometry. But the true geometers, above all, the Greeks, have desired to show the force of rea- son, and the excellence of science, by showing that they can in these matters foresee everything, by the internal light in advance of experience. It must also be admitted that experi- ence never assures us of a perfect universality, and still less of necessity. Some of the ancients laughed at Euclid because he proved what a fool even is not ignorant of (as they say), viz. : that in a triangle two sides together are greater than the third. But those who know what genuine analysis is, are much obliged to Euclid for his proof. And it is much that the Greeks, if less exact in other things, have been so much so in geometry. I attribute it to providence ; and I believe without that we should hardly know what demonstration is. I also believe that it is principally in that respect that we are thus far superior to the Chinese. But it is needful further to look a little at what our clever n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 23 and celebrated author says in chapters 2 and 3, to sustain his point that there are no innate principles. He is opposed to the universal consent alleged in their favor, maintaining that many races doubt even this famous principle that two contra- dictories cannot be true or false at once, and that the greater part of the human race ignores it altogether. I admit that there are an infinite number of persons who have never made a statement of them. I have indeed seen authors who desired to refute them, apprehending them, without doubt, wrongly. But where shall we find one who does not avail himself of them in practical life, and who is not offended with a liar who contradicts him ? Nevertheless, I do not ground myself wholly upon universal consent ; and as for propositions which are ap- proved as soon as they are proposed, I admit that it is not at all necessary for them to be primitive or proximate to them, for they may be very common facts. As for this statement which teaches us that one and one make two (which the author brings forward as an example), it is not an axiom, but a defini- tion. And when he says that sweetness is a different thing from bitterness, he states only a fact of primitive experience, or of immediate perception. Or better, we have only to say that the perception of what is understood by the term sweet- ness is different from the perception of that which is under- stood by the term bitterness. I do not here distinguish at all the practical truths from the speculative ; they are always the same. And as we can say that it is one of the most manifest truths, that a substance whose knowledge and power are infinite should be honored, we can say that it emanates at once from the light which is born with us, provided one can give his attention to it. SPECIMEN OE THOUGHTS UPON THE SECOND BOOK [From the French] It is very true that our perceptions of ideas come either from the external senses or from the internal sense, which may be called reflection ; but this reflection is not limited to the 24 LEIBNITZ'S CEITIQUE OF LOCKE [n operations alone of the mind, as is stated (chap. 1, § 4) ; it reaches even to the mind itself, and it is in the consciousness of self that we perceive substance. I admit that I am of the opinion of those who believe that the soul always thinks, although often its thoughts are too confused and too feeble for it to be able distinctly to remember them. I believe I have certain proofs of the continual activity of the soul, and I believe also that the body can never be without motion. The objections raised by the author (Book II., chap. 1, §§ 10 to 19) can be easily met by what I have just said or am about to say. They are based upon the experience of sleep, which is sometimes dreamless ; and in fact there are some persons who do not know what it is to dream. How- ever, it is not always safe to deny everything that is not per- ceived. It is much the same as when there are people who deny the corpuscles and insensible motions, and laugh at the particles because they cannot be proved. But some one will tell me that there are proofs which force us to admit them. I reply that there are in like manner proofs which compel us to admit perceptions which are not marked enough for us to remember them. Experience, furthermore, favors this view ; for instance, those who have slept in a cold place notice that they have had while sleeping a confused and feeble sensation. I know a person who wakes up when the lamp which he always keeps lighted at night in his room goes out. But here is something more precise, and which shows that if we did not always have perceptions, we could never be waked up from. sleep. Let a man who is sleeping be called by several persons at once, and let it be assumed that the voice of each by itself is not loud enough to awake him, but that the noise of all these voices together awakes him : let us take one of them ; it is very necessary that he be touched by this voice in particular, for the parts are in the whole, and if each one by itself does nothing at all, the whole will do nothing, either. Yet he would have continued to sleep, if the voice had been a single one, and that, too, without remembering that he had been called. Thus there are some perceptions too feeble to be noticed, although they are always retained, but among an infi- nite number of other small perceptions which we have con- tinually. For neither motions nor perceptions are ever lost; ii] ON HUMAN UNDEKSTANDING 25 both continue always, only becoming indistinguishable through composition with many others. One might reply to this reasoning, that each voice by itself effectively touches the body, but that a certain quantity of it is needed in order that the motion of the body may reach the soul. I reply, that the least impression reaches the entire body, and consequently to that part whose motions correspond to the actions of the soul. And accordingly no principle of limitation can be found, how- ever necessary a certain quantity may be. I do not wish to insist upon the interest that the immortality of the soul has in this doctrine. For if the soul is passive, it is also without life, and it seems that it can be immortal only by grace and by miracle — a view which there is reason to disapprove. I admit, however, that our interest is not the measure of truth, and I do not wish to mix here theological reasons with those of philosophy. Ill [From the German'] Essai Pliilosophique coucernant l'Entendement humain, ou Ton montre, quelle est l'entendue de nos connoissances certaines et la maniere dont nous y parvenons, traduit de l'Anglois de Mr. Locke par Mr. Pierre Coste, sur la quatrieme edition, revue, corrigee et augmentee par l'Auteur. A Amstei-d. 1700 in 4to. Philosophischer Versuch, betreffend den Menschlichen Verstand, alwo gewiesen wird, wie weit sich unsre gewisse Erkaiidtniissen erstrecken, unci anJ wass Weise wir darzu gelangen ; ausz den Engliscken iibersetzet von Hrn. Peter Coste nach der vierten vom Autor selbst iibersehenen, verbesserten mid vermehrten Edition. 5. Alpb. 12. Bog. It j is unnecessary for us to give a complete abstract of this notable book, after the author himself has relieved us of this task, since in the year 1688 he prepared such an abstract for Mr. Clerc for insertion in his " Bibliotheque universelle," 2 T. VIII., p. 49 sqq., before he gave it to the press. In the year 1690 it appeared first in London in folio, and Mr. Clerc again published lengthy excerpts in the said " Bibliotheque univer- sale," T. XVII., p. 399. Soon afterwards a new English edition appeared, enlarged with many pieces, and in particular with an entire chapter 3 on Identity and Diversity, which he treats in an exceedingly clear and excellent manner. In the second edition mentioned, Locke acknowledges that he erred in the first edition when he assumed, in accordance with the common view, that what brings the will to any change of action in the course of arbitrary actions is the assurance of a much greater good. For when he considered the matter more carefully, he found that a present unrest which consists in desire or is constantly accompanied by the same, places its limits upon the will. For the reasons for this view, see Book i From the " Monatliche Auszug," Sept. 1700, pp. 611-636. — Tr. 2 " Bibliotheque universelle et historique," Amsterdam, 1686-1693. — Tr. 3 In the present edition this chapter is 27 in the second book. — Gerhardt's note. 26 in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 27 II., chap. 21. He will gladly, however, be informed of a bet- ter view. Some time after, a third, and in the year 1699, a fourth, edition appeared, in which last edition Locke either further explained his previous thoughts by many additions or supported them by wholly new grounds. Peter Coste made his translation on the basis of this edition, and when Locke sent him his manuscript, had worked upon the same for more than two years. Locke himself considered this translation a good one and presented his thanks accordingly, so that con- sequently it must be the more welcome by a great deal to us. To enumerate all the new additions would take too long; hence we will content ourselves with the mention of the two most important, which make two separate chapters, of which the first is Book II., chap. 33, and treats of the Association of Ideas. Locke says there is almost no one who does not find something in the opinions, conclusions, and actions of other people which seems to him fantastic and extravagant, and is so in fact. Every one may have eyes keen-sighted enough to mark the least fault of this kind in the case of another, if only it may be distinguished from his own, and he himself may have sufficient understanding to condemn the same, although he also may have in his own opinions and his own conduct the greatest errors of which he might be aware, and of which, where not impossible, he may yet with difficulty be convinced. This arises, he continues, not merely from self-love, although this passion has often a great part therein. For one daily sees such people lying sick with the same disease, who are otherwise skilful and whole enough to make nothing of their own merits. This defect of reason is customarily ascribed to education and to the force of prejudice, and this, according to the common opinion, not without cause, but according to Locke's statement, this explanation reaches not to the root of the disease, and does not show completely its origin and peculiarity. He himself explains it as follows : Some of our ideas [his own words] have among themselves an exact correspondence and connection. The obligation and highest perfection of our reason consists in the fact that it reveals such ideas and holds them together in the selfsame unity and correspondence as that which is grounded in their particular nature. There is 28 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [in besides this another bond of ideas which depends upon chance or custom, so that the ideas which naturally are wholly unre- lated become so exactly united in the minds (esprit 1 ) of some men, that they can with difficulty be separated from one another. They accompany one another constantly, and one can no sooner present itself to the understanding (intellectui) than the others or, indeed, more of them, so united are they, appear also, nor can they at all be separated from one another. This association of ideas, which the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance, is the sole source of the defect of which we now speak. And as this strong union of ideas is not originally caused by nature, it is for this reason wholly dif- ferent in different persons, viz. : according to their different inclinations, education, and self-interests. That there are such associations of ideas, which custom begets in the minds of most men, no one, according to Locke's statement, can doubt, who with much earnestness considers himself and other people. And to this cause can perhaps with convenience and reason be ascribed the greater part of those sympathies and antipathies which one finds among men, and which work as strongly and produce as regular effects^ as if they were natural, which fact then makes them to be called so, although at first view they had no other origin than the chance connection of two ideas, which the strength of a first impres- sion, or of an excessively great compliance, so firmly united, that they always thereafter remain together in the mind of the man, as though only a single idea. Locke, however, in no respect denies that there are wholly natural antipathies which depend upon our original constitution and are born with us. He believes, however, that with proper consideration man would recognize the most of those which have been regarded as natural, as in the beginning caused by impressions which were not heeded, whether they were suggested sufficiently early or through a ridiculous fancy. Locke notices incidentally the difference which may be made between natural and ac- quired antipathies, so that those who have children or who 1 This word I have voluntarily retained here and for the most part in what follows, because it cannot be expressed quite clearly in German. — Leibnitz's note, Gerhardt, p. 27. Perhaps we should retain the word " esprit " in English. — Tr. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 29 must educate them, may see how much heed they should take of this principle, and with what care this disorderly union of ideas in the mind of the youth should be prevented. He thereupon points out by some examples how such a union of ideas, which are not of themselves united, yet depend one upon another, is sufficient to impede our moral and natural action, yea more, our notions themselves. The ideas of goblins or of spirits agree as little with dark- ness as with light ; if, however, a foolish maid instils and awakens these different ideas in the mind of a child, as though they were connected with each other, the child during his entire life will perhaps not be able to separate them from each other; so that the darkness ever more will seem to him to be accom- panied with these horrible ideas. If any one has suffered a grievous wrong on account of another, he thinks very often of the persons and the deed, and while he thus strongly or for a long time thinks thereupon, he at the same time glues these two ideas together so firmly, that he makes them almost one, as it were, and never remembers the person but that the wrong received also enters his head. And while he can scarcely distinguish these two things, he has just as much aversion for the one as for the other. Thence it comes, Locke adds, that hatred arises from slight and worth- less reasons, and quarrels are taken up and continued in the world. One of Locke's friends was wholly cured of madness by a certain man through a very painful operation, for which service he acknowledged himself under great obligation to him through- out his life, as he was so circumstanced that he required from no one a greater service during his life. Reason or gratitude might suggest to him what they would, yet he could never bear the sight of this surgeon. For as the sight of him always brought again to mind the idea of the very great pain which he had been obliged to endure at his hands, he could not endure this idea, so violent were the impressions it produced in his mind. Many children hold their books, which were the occasion hereto, accountable for most of the ill treatment they endured at school, and they unite these ideas so well that they regard a book with great disgust, and all their life study and books 30 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [in cannot win their love, because to them reading, which might otherwise have greatly delighted them, became a genuine tor- ture. An example notable for its singularity is the following which an eminent man, who assured him he had himself seen it, re- lates to Locke : A young man had learned to dance very prettily and perfectly. There chanced to stand, however, in the hall where he first learned, an old trunk, the idea of which com- bined so imperceptibly with his turns and steps in the dance, that although he could dance incomparably well in this hall, he could do this only when the old trunk was there ; in other places, however, he could not dance at all, unless the old trunk itself or one like it stood in its accustomed place. The habitus intellectuales which are contracted through such association of ideas, are, as Locke further informs us, just as strong and numerous, even though very little heeded. Sup- posing the ideas of being and matter were very strongly united, either by education or by an excessively great application to these two ideas, according as they are combined in the mind, what notions and reasonings would they not produce concern- ing different spirits ? If a custom accepted from childhood up had united a form or figure with the idea of God, into what absurdities would such a thought in the contemplation of deity not plunge us ? We shall no doubt find, Locke adds, that it is nothing else than similar ill-grounded and unnatural combi- nations of ideas, which break the path for the many conflicting sects in philosophy and religion ; for it is not to be supposed that each member of those different sects is willingly deceived, and against his better knowledge and conscience rejects the truth demonstrated to him by clear evidence. It is indeed certain that sometimes interest assists greatly in this sort of thing, yet no one could affirm that it could captivate and lead astray whole societies, so that they all, none excepted, should affirm plain and deliberate falsehoods. For it must be that some at least do what others pretend to do, viz. : seek truth sincerely. Therefore there must be something which blinds their un- derstanding and hinders them from recognizing the falsehood of what they consider as pure and refined truth. If now we investigate accurately what takes reason prisoner and darkens ni] ON HUMAN UNDEESTANDING 31 the understanding of otherwise sincere people, we find that it is simply and solely some free ideas, which, properly speaking, really have no bond among themselves, but which, by educa- tion, custom, and uninterrupted action on their part, are so united in the mind that they can no more be separated and distinguished from one another than a single idea. Thence it comes, Locke continues, that often the crudest things are taken for worthy opinions, absurdities for demonstrations, and intolerable and absurd results for strong and fluent reason- ings. The other chapter we promised to present, treats of Enthu- siasm, and is the 19th in the 4th book. Locke's thoughts thereupon are as follows : — Whoever will earnestly seek for truth must first before all things acquire a love for it. Whoever does not love the truth, to him we must necessarily attribute the opposite. Hence we can rightly say, that among those who pretend to seek it, there are very few who really love it. We may recognize a genuine seeker of the truth, since he does not assume for a statement any greater certainty than the proofs upon which he grounds it warrant. Whoever steps beyond this limit lays hold of the truth not out of love for it, but from another indi- rect purpose. For while the unquestionable clearness of a statement truly consists in the evidence for it (excepting those which are sufficiently clear of themselves), yet it is plain that so far as space is given to assent beyond the unques- tionable clearness of a proposition, the remaining portion of the assurance is not drawn from love for the truth, but from another passion. For as it is impossible that love for the truth can bring any one to give to any proposition an assent greater than that certified by the truth itself, just so is it also impossible that any one out of love for the truth can assent to a statement in view of evidence of such a character that from it he cannot see whether the statement is true ; which would be actually equivalent to the assumption that the proposition is a truth because possibly, or, indeed, probably, it seems not to accord with the truth. Locke adds, it follows indisputably from this evil disposi- tion of the mind, that men assume the authority to dictate their own opinions to others. For how should one who has 32 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [in imposed on his own belief, not be willing also to impose on the belief of others ? How is it to be expected that one will use valid arguments and proofs in dealing with others, who is not accustomed to use them in dealing with himself, who does violence to his own powers, who tyrannizes over his own mind, and misuses the advantage which truth alone has, viz. : that it assents to nothing but what is indisputably true ? After Locke has laid this foundation, he proceeds to the in- vestigation of Enthusiasm, to which some people ascribe as much power as to faith and reason, and would establish revela- tion without the aid of reason, whereby, however, they would at once destroy both reason and revelation, and without any reason erect in their place the fancies forged in their own brain, which they choose as the plumb-line of their opinions and conduct. Reason is nothing else than a natural revela- tion, whereby God bestows upon men that portion of truth which he has poured into the capacity of their natural powers. Eevelation is natural reason, enlarged by a new set of discov- eries flowing immediately from God, the ground (raisoii) of which is the truth by testimony and proof they offer that these discoveries actually come from God. 1 Whoever, there- fore, destroys reason to make room for revelation, extin- guishes both these lights at the same time. As, however, men find that an immediate revelation is a much easier means of strengthening their opinions and of directing their conduct than the labor of arranging all according to strict reasoning, which is usually irksome, prejudiced, and for the most part without successful progress ; so it is not to be wondered at that they often pretend revelations and persuade themselves that God directs them in particular as regards their actions and opinions, and especially in those things which they cannot justify by the principles of reason. ' If their minds are once possessed with this thought, the most absurd opinions which are firmly impressed upon their fancy, must seem to be illu- minations coming from the Spirit of God and having divine authority. Every extraordinary thing to which they are led by a strong impulse, they consider as certainly a divine call 1 On this whole discussion, cf. an article by the translator entitled "Reve- lation, Inspiration and Authority," in "The Andover Review," April 1891. — Tr. m] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 33 which they must follow, and as a command from on high in whose execution it is impossible to err. This is, properly speaking, what is meant by Enthusiasm, which is not adjusted to reason nor to divine revelation, but springs forth only from the imagination of a heated and con- ceited spirit, and which, as soon as it has taken a little root, plays much more strongly upon the opinion and actions of men than reason or revelation separately or together. Although now the extravagant actions and opinions, wherein enthusiasm has involved men, should spur them on to be more on their guard and to avoid the false principia, which lead astray both their belief and their conduct; yet through its love for the extraordinary, through its ease and illumined by its glory, and through its extraordinary paths to knowledge it has come to pass that the laziness, ignorance, and vanity of many are so tickled, and they are brought to such a point, that after they are captivated by such ways of an immediate reve- lation, of an illumination without search, of a certainty with- out proof and investigation, it is very difficult to bring them out of it again. They are transported beyond reason, and reason in their case perishes. They see a light infused into their understand- ing and can no longer be deceived. This light visibly appears as the clearest sunbeam and requires no other proof than its own clearness. They feel, according to their statements, the hand of God moving them within ; they feel the impulses of the Spirit, and cannot be mistaken in their feeling. Thus they persuade themselves that reason has nothing to do with what they see and feel in themselves. The things which they clearly experience are beyond all doubt, and need no proof; and so of all the rest of their strange talk. They are sure of these things because they are sure of them, and their opinions are correct because they are firmly fixed in their mind. For this is the upshot of their words when stripped of the meta- phors of hearing and feeling in which they are clothed. Locke investigates the ground of this inner light and feel- ing, upon which these people so firmly base themselves, and speaks thus : Is this seeing of the light a perception of the truth of a certain particular statement, or perhaps of this, that it is a revelation from God ? Is this feeling a perception of D 34 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [in an inclination, which, comes from a fancy to do something, or from the spirit of God, which begets in it this inclination? These are two wholly different feelings, which must be care- fully distinguished from one another if we would not deceive ourselves. I can perceive the truth of a proposition; but I cannot thereby know as yet whether it is an immediate revela- tion from God. I can perceive the truth of a proposition in Euclid without its being or my knowing that it is a revelation. I may also know that I did not attain this knowledge through natural means, thence may indeed conclude that it is revealed to me, but I cannot thereby yet know it is a revelation from God; because there may be minds which without a divine commission for this work arouse these ideas in me and set them in such order in my mind that I may perceive their con- nection. So that the knowledge of a proposition, which enters my head, I know not how, is thus not an evidence that it comes from God. Still less is a firm persuasion that this fancy is true, a certain evidence that it comes from God, or that it is true. We may call such a fancy sight or light, yet it is nothing more than belief and confidence. 1 For if the proposition under discussion be one which they have imagined, but do not know to be true, it cannot be seeing, but believing. One may also give to such fancy any name he pleases. What I believe, I must put forth as true upon another's testimony, and must know certainly in the case that this testimony is given ; for without this my belief would be groundless. I must see whether God reveals this to me, or whether I see nothing. Thus the issue is, that I know how I am to know that God reveals something to me, that this impression in my soul occurs through the Holy Spirit, and that consequently I am bound to follow it. If I do not know this, my confidence, great as it may be, is without the least foundation, and all the light with which I perceive myself illumined, is but enthusi- asm. For whether the proposition supposed to be revealed, be evidently true in itself, or visibly probable, or whether it be difficult to vindicate it by the ordinary paths of knowledge, this must nevertheless before all things be clearly established and proved, that God has revealed this proposition, and that 1 The German is " Creckilitat unci Confiderttz." — Tk. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 35 what I take as a revelation certainly comes of itself into my mind, and is no illusion, which some one else has thrust in or my own fancy has awakened. Until one has come this far, all confidence that this revelation comes from God is a mere conjecture, and all this light which dazzles one is nothing but an ignis fatuus, which will unceasingly lead us into this circle : This is a revelation because I firmly believe it; and I believe it because it is a revelation. It follows from this that those who imagine that they have such revelations of this or that truth must be assured that it is God who has revealed it to them. For to say, as they gen- erally do, that they know it by the light which it brings with it,* which shines and flashes in their souls, and which they cannot resist, means only that it is a revelation because they believe it certainly is one ; since all the light of which they speak is nothing but a strong imagination which is firmly fixed in their mind, and yet has not the least ground that it is a truth. For they must consider that to assume accepted grounds as reasonable and as a proof that it is a truth, is a nec- essary acknowledgment that they have no such (grounds). 1 Because, if they have such, they receive this truth no longer as a revelation, but as a truth established upon common grounds. And if they believe it to be true, because it is no revelation, and if they have no other reason to prove it a revelation than simply because they are completely persuaded of its truth, without any other ground and only on account of this fancy, then they believe it to be a revelation only be- cause they strongly believe it to be a revelation. Who does not see that if we build upon such grounds, we make our own fancy the only rule of our opinions and conduct, and conse- quently subject ourselves to the strangest errors and vexa- tions. For once for all the strength of our opinions is no proof of their correctness. Meanwhile men can approve an error as a truth, as may be seen in the case of those zealous people who maintain in the sharpest manner two propositions contrary to one another. In reference to which Locke well says, that if the light, 1 The text is: "Derm dieses miisseu sie vor raisouable unci von einigem Beweise halten, der da zeige, class es eine Warheit sey, genommene Griinde annehmen, class sie erkennen raiissen, wiesie dergleicheu nicht kaben." — Tn. 3G LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [ni which every one thinks he has in himself, and which in this case is nothing but the strength of his own opinion, be a proof that his thought comes from God, then we must conclude that all contrary opinions have the right to pass as divine inspira- tions ; and God would be not only the father of light, but also of wholly opposite lights, which lead men in ways wholly contrary. Therefore Locke concludes that he who does not wish to fall into a mass of disorderly delusions and errors must first test thoroughly this inner light which offers itself as a guide. God, he says, does not destroy the man when he makes a prophet. He leaves all his faculties in their natural condi- tion, so that he may thereby judge whether the inspirations which he feels within have sprung from God or not. If God will have us acknowledge the truth of a proposition, he permits us to see this truth either through the ordinary paths of nat- ural reason, or he makes us know that it is a truth which we must receive upon his authority, while he convinces us by certain marks which reason cannot reject that it comes from him. I will not, however, Locke adds, say by this, that we are to examine by reason whether a proposition thus revealed to us by God may be proved by natural principles, and if not we may reject it; but I will say, that we must consult reason and by its aid see whether it be a revelation from God or no. Lor if reason finds it to be a divine revelation, it declares for it as such from that hour on as well as for any other truth, and makes it one of its rules, so that it cannot be rejected. If this inner light, or a proposition which presents itself in our mind as revealed, accords with the principles of reason or with the word of God which is an attested revelation, we have the warrant of reason for it, and may accept this light as true, and direct our faith and walk accordingly. If, however, this light has the witness or proof of neither of these rules, we cannot consider it as a revelation ; nay more, as a truth. Lor if we at the same time believe it to be a revelation, that does not, however, make it so ; it may, however, be shown by some other mark to be really a revelation. The old prophets, when they were to receive revelations from God, had other proof than the inner light which assured them that these revelations really came from God. They imagined not only that their in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 37 imaginations came from God, but they had also external signs which convinced them that God was the author of their reve- lation. And if they were to convince others of the same, they received beforehand a special power to set forth the truth of the commission given them of Heaven with visible signs. Thus Moses saw a burning bush which was yet not consumed and heard a voice out of the bush. This was something more than an inner feeling of an impulse to free the children of Israel from the hands of Pharaoh. Yet, Moses did not believe that this was enough to warrant him in going into Egypt with God's commission ; until God assured him by still another miracle, of the rod changed into a serpent, that such was his real will, and granted him the power to work precisely similar wonders in the sight of Pharaoh. Precisely similar was it in Gideon's case. These and other examples of the old prophets show sufficiently that they did not believe that an inner vision or their own imagination attested by no other affirmation a suffi- cient evidence that their imagination came from God ; although the Scripture does not everywhere mention that they always asked for or received such proofs. These few passages from the clever work of Locke, under the guidance of the accurate translator Coste, we have brought forward as specimens. Perhaps we shall have further oppor- tunity to speak of it, when the Latin translation, with which some one 1 is now occupied in England, is published. In the " Monatliche Auszug " of the year 1701 is found (pp. 73-75) the following addition to the foregoing sketch : — What Locke says of the connection and accompaniment of ideas is not to be despised, and serves often to arouse the emo- tions ; as for errors and false judgments, however, they spring from other contiguous and peculiar causes, viz.: that one assumes false principles, and imagines that he once had proof of them in -his mind, within which now a lapse of memory occurs ; and then from incorrect conclusions which he produces from these principles assumed as known, because he gives not the time and labor to investigate all in a formal and orderly way. 1 Burridge of Dublin. The version appeared in 1701. — Tr. 38 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [in Meanwhile it is true that the emotions greatly assist this credu- lity concerning principles and carelessness in false deduction ; for one believes and easily draws the conclusion he would gladly have. It is besides noticeable in this book of Locke's, that in his last writings against the Rev. Lord Bishop Stillingneet he has changed a large part of his opinions concerning the nature of the body contained in this Tentamen or Essay on Human Understanding ; while in this Tentamen he held opinions, in common with modern philosophers, especially the followers of Descartes and Gassendi, that in the body nothing is to be met with but size, solidity or impenetrability, and motion or change ; now, however, he begins to hold the opinion that there is something to be found therein not revealed through these qualities. He repudiates, besides, in this essay innate ideas and the natural light, but appears not to distinguish suffi- ciently the necessary truths arising from possibility, from those others whose ground must be assumed from the experience of realities, and thus must be drawn from without. Thus he accepts the tabula rasa of Aristotle, rather than the implanted (ideas) of Plato. It is true that we do not come upon thoughts in these most abstract matters, without external sensations, but in the case of these necessary truths, such sensations serve more as a reminder than as a proof; which (proof) must come simply and solely from internal grounds, as those do not sufficiently understand who deal little in demonstration proper. NEW ESSAYS ON THE UNDERSTANDING By the Author of the System op Pee-Established Harmony PREFACE The Essay on the Understanding, by a distinguished English- man, being one of the most beautiful and esteemed works of this period, I have resolved to make some remarks upon it, because having sufficiently meditated for a long time upon the same subject and upon the greater part of the matters therein touched upon, I have thought that it would be a favorable opportunity to publish something under the title of " New Essays on the Understanding," and to procure a favor- able reception to my thoughts, by putting them in so good company. I 1 have thought also that I could profit from the labor of another not only to lessen my own (since in fact it is less difficult to follow the thread of a good author than to work wholly independently), but further to add something to what he has given us, which is always easier than to start from the beginning ; for I think I have cleared up some difficulties which he had left in their entirety. Thus his reputation is an advantage to me ; having for the rest a disposition to render justice, and very far from wishing to diminish the esteem in which this work is held, I would increase it, if my approval carried any weight. It is true I often differ in my views (from 1 Gerhardt's text reads as follows: "J'ai cru encor pouvoir profiter dix travail d'autruy non seulement pour diminuer le mien (puisqu'en effect il y a moins de peine a suivre le fil d'un bon auteur qu'a travailler a nouveaux frais en tout), mais encor pour adjouter quelque chose a ce qu'il nous a donne, ce qui est tousjours plus facile que de commencer; car je crois d'avoir leve quelques difficultes qu'il avoit laisse'es en leur entier. Ainsi sa reputation m'est avantaguese ; estant d'ailleurs d'Mimeur a rendre justice et Men loin de vouloir diminuer l'estime qu'on a poitr cet ouvrage, je l'accroistrois, si mon approbation estoit de quelque poids. II est vray que je suis souvent d'un autre avis, mais Men loin de disconvenir du merite des Ecrivains celebres, on leur rend temoignage, en faisant connoistre en quoy et pour quoy on s'eloigne de leur sentiment, quand on juge necessaire d'empecher que leur autorite' ne prevaille a la raison en quelques points de consequence, outre qu'en satisfaisant a de si excellens homines, on rend la verite plus recevable, et il faut supposer que c'est principalement pour elle qu'ils travaillent." — Tr. 41 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE him 1 ), but very far from denying the merit of celebrated writers, we bear witness to it, by making known in what and why we differ from their views, when we judge it necessary to prevent their authority from prevailing over reason on some important points ; besides, by satisfying such excellent men, we render the truth more acceptable, and it must be supposed that it is principally for truth that they labor. In fact, although the author of the Essay says a thousand beautiful things which I commend, our systems are very dif- ferent. His has more relation to Aristotle, mine to Plato, although we both differ in many things from the doctrine of these two ancient philosophers. He is more popular, and I am compelled sometimes to be a little more acroamatic and more abstract, which is not an advantage to me, especially when writing in a living language. I think, nevertheless, that by making two persons speak, one of whom sets forth the views drawn from the Essay of this author, and the other joins thereto my observations, the parallel will be more to the liking of the reader than wholly dry remarks, the reading of which would be interrupted at every moment by the necessity of recurring to his book in order to understand mine. It will nevertheless be well still to compare sometimes our writings, and not to judge of his views except by his own work, although I have ordinarily preserved its expressions. It is true that the constraint, which another's discourse, whose thread must be followed, gives in making remarks, has prevented me from thinking to secure the charms of which the dialogue is sus- cej^tible ; but I hope the matter will make amends for the defects of the style. Our differences are upon subjects 2 of some importance. The question is to know whether the soul in itself is entirely empty as the tablets upon which as yet nothing has been written (tabula rasa) according to Aristotle, and the author of the Essay, and whether all that is traced thereon comes solely from the senses and from experience ; or whether the soul con- tains originally the principles of many ideas and doctrines which external objects merely call up on occasion, as I believe 1 Erdmann and Jacques read : " que lui," which does not occur in Gerhardt's text. — Tr. 2 Erdmann and Jacques read : " ohjects." — Tb. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING with Plato, and even with the schoolmen, and with all those who interpret in this way the passage of St. Paul (Rom. 2 : 15) where he states . that the law of God is written in the heart. The Stoics call these principles 1 prolepses, i.e. fundamental assumptions, or what is taken for granted in advance. The Mathematicians call them general notions (kolvoI evvocat). Mod- ern philosophers give them other beautiful names, and Julius Scaliger in particular named them semina ceternitatis, also zopyra, i.e. living fires, luminous flashes, concealed within us, but which the encounter of the senses makes appear like the sparks which the blow makes spring from the steel. And the belief is not without reason, that these glitterings indicate something divine and eternal which appears especially in the necessary truths. Whence another question arises, whether all truths depend upon experience, i.e. upon induction and examples, or whether there are some which have still another foundation. For if some events can be foreseen prior to any proof which may have been made of them, it is manifest that we ourselves contribute something thereto. The senses, although necessary for all our actual knowledge, are not suffi- cient to give it all to us, since the senses never give us anything but examples, i.e. particular or individual truths. Now all the examples which confirm a general truth, whatever their num- ber, do not suffice to establish the universal necessity of that same truth, for it does not follow that what has happened will happen in the same way. For example, the Greeks and the Romans, and all the other peoples of the earth known to the ancients, have always observed that before the lapse of twenty- four hours day changes into night, and night into day. But we would be deceived, if we believed that the same law holds good everywhere else; for since then, the contrary has been experienced in the region of Nova Zembla. And he would still be in error who believed that, in our climates at least, this is a necessary and eternal truth, which will always endure, since we must think that the earth, and the sun even, do not necessarily exist, and that there will perhaps be a time when this beautiful star, together with its whole system, will not longer exist, at least in its present form. Whence it appears 1 For a very full nomenclature of these principles, see Hamilton's Reid, Note A., § V., Vol. II., pp. 755-770. 8th ed., Edinburgh and London, 1880. — Tr. 44 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE that necessary truths such as are found in pure mathematics, and particularly in arithmetic and in geometry, must have principles whose proof does not depend upon examples, nor consequently upon the testimony of the senses, although with- out the senses it would never have occurred to us to think of them. This distinction must be carefully made, and was so well understood by Euclid, that he often proved by the reason, what is sufficiently seen through experience and by sensible images. Logic also, together with metaphysics and ethics, one of which shapes theology and the other jurisprudence, both natural (sciences), are full of such truths, and consequently their proof can come only from internal principles which are called innate. It is true that Ave must not imagine that these eternal laws of the reason can be read in the soul as in an open book, as the praetor's edict is read upon his album without diffi- culty and research ; but it is sufficient that they can be discov- ered in us by dint of attention, for which the senses furnish occasions, and successful experience serves to confirm reason, in much the same way as proofs in arithmetic serve for the better avoidance of error in calculating when the reasoning is long. Herein, also, human knowledge differs from that of the brutes : the brutes are purely empirics and only guide themselves by examples ; for, so far as we can judge of them, they never attain to the formation of necessary propositions ; while men are capable of demonstrative sciences. It is also for this reason that the faculty the brutes have for making consecutions is something inferior to the reason of man. The consecutions of the brutes are merely like those of simple empirics, who claim that what has sometimes happened will happen again in a case where something strikes them as similar, without being able to judge whether the same reasons hold good. This is why it is so easy for men to entrap the brutes, and so easy for simple empirics to make mistakes. This is why persons who have become skilful through age and experi- ence are not exempt (from error) when they depend too much upon their past experience, as has happened to many in civil and military affairs ; because they do not consider sufficiently that the world changes, and that men become more skilful by finding a thousand new dexterities, while the deer and hares of the present do not become more cunning than those of the ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 45 past. The consecutions of the brutes are only a shadow of reasoning, i.e. are only connections of the imagination and passages from one image to another, because in a new juncture which appears similar to the preceding they expect anew that connection which they formerly met with, as if things were united in fact because their images are united in the memory. It is true that reason also counsels us to expect ordinarily to see that happen in the future which is conformed to a long past experience, but it is not on this account a necessary and infalli- ble truth, and success may cease when least expected, when the reasons change which have sustained it. Therefore the wisest men do not so commit themselves to it as not to try to discover, if possible, something of the reason of this fact in order to judge when it is necessary to make exceptions. For reason is alone capable of establishing sure rules, and supply- ing what is wanting to those which were not such by inserting their exceptions ; and of finding at length certain connections in the force of necessary consequences, which often furnish the means of foreseeing the result without the necessity of experiencing the sense-connections of images, to which the brutes are reduced, so that that which justifies the internal principles of necessary truths also distinguishes man from the brutes. Perhaps our clever author will not wholly differ from my view. For after having employed the whole of his first book in rejecting innate intelligence, taken in a certain sense, he nevertheless, at the beginning of the second and in the sequel, admits that ideas, which do not originate in sensation, come from reflection. Now reflection is nothing else than attention to what is in us, and the senses do not give us what we already carry with us. That being so, can it be denied that there is much that is innate in our mind, since we are innate, so to speak, in ourselves ? and that there is in us : being, unity, substance, duration, change, action, perception, pleasure, and a thousand other objects of our intellectual ideas ? And these objects being immediate to our understanding and always pres- ent (although they cannot always be perceived by reason of our distractions and needs), what wonder that we say that these ideas with all depending upon them are innate in us ? I have made use also of the comparison of a block of marble which 46 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE has veins, rather than of a block of marble wholly even, or of blank tablets, i.e. of what is called among philosophers a tabula rasa. For if the soul resembled these blank tablets, truths would be in us as the figure of Hercules is in the marble, when the marble is wholly indifferent to the reception of this figure or some other. But if there were veins in the block which should indicate the figure of Hercules rather than other fig- ures, this block would be more determined thereto, and Her- cules would be in it as in some sense innate, although it would be needful to labor to discover these veins, to clear them by polishing, and by cutting away what prevents them from ap- pearing. Thus it is that ideas and truths are for us innate, as inclinations, dispositions, habits, or natural potentialities, and not as actions ; although these potentialities are always accom- panied by some actions, often insensible, which correspond to them. It seems that our clever author claims that there is nothing virtual in us, and indeed nothing of which we are not always actually conscious ; but he cannot take this rigorously, other- wise his opinion would be too paradoxical ; since, moreover, acquired habits and the stores of our memory are not always perceived and do not even always come to our aid at need, although we often easily recall them to the mind upon some slight occasion which makes us remember them, just as we need only the beginning of a song to remember it. 1 He limits his thesis also in other places, by saying that there is nothing in us of which we have not at least formerly been conscious. But besides the fact that no one can be assured by reason alone how far our past apperceptions, which we may have for- gotten, may have gone, especially according to the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence which, wholly fabulous as it is, is in no respect incompatible at least in part with reason wholly pure: besides this, I say, why must we acquire all through the perception of external things, and nothing be unearthed in ourselves ? Is our soul then by itself such a blank that besides the images borrowed from without, it is nothing ? This is not an opinion (I am sure) that our judicious author could approve. 1 Erdmann and Jacques read : " le commencement d'une chanson pour nous faire ressouvenir du reste," i.e. the beginning of a song to remind us of the rest. — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING And where do we find tablets that have no variety in them- selves ? For we never see a plane perfectly even and uniform. Why, then, could we not furnish also ourselves with something of thought from our own depths if we should dig therein ? Thus I am led to believe that at bottom his opinion upon this point is not different from mine, or rather from the common view, inasmuch as he recognizes two sources of our knowledge, the Senses and Reflection. I do not know whether it will be so easy to harmonize him with us and with the Cartesians, when he maintains that the mind does not always think, and particularly that it is without perception when we sleep without dreaming; and he objects 1 that since bodies can exist without motion, souls can also exist without thought. But here I make a somewhat different reply than is customary, for I hold that naturally a substance cannot exist without action, and that there is indeed never a body without movement. Experience already favors me, and you have only to consult the book of the distinguished Mr. Boyle against absolute rest, to be con- vinced of it ; but I believe reason favors it also, and this is one of the proofs I have for doing away with atoms. Moreover, there are a thousand indications which make us think that there are at every moment an infinite number of perceptions in us, but without apperception and reflection, i.e. changes in the soul itself of which we are not conscious, be- cause the impressions are either too slight and too great in number, or too even, so that they have nothing sufficiently distinguishing them from each other; but joined to others, they do not fail to produce their effect and to make themselves felt at least confusedly in the mass. Thus it is that habit makes us take no notice of the motion of a mill or a waterfall when we have lived quite near it for some time. It is not that the motion does not always strike our organs, and that something no longer enters into the soul corresponding thereto, in virtue of the harmony of the soul and the body, but these impressions which are in the soul and the body, be- ing destitute of the attractions of novelty, are not strong enough to attract our attention and our memory, attached to objects more engrossing. For all attention requires memory, 1 Erdmaim and Jacques read : " II dit que," i.e. He says that. — Tb. LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE and often when we are not admonished, so to speak, and warned to take note of some of our own present perceptions, we allow them to pass without reflection, and even without being noticed ; but if any one directs our attention to them immediately after, and makes us notice, for example, some noise which was just heard, we remember it, and are conscious of having had at the time some feeling of it. Thus there were perceptions of which we were not conscious at once, con- sciousness arising in this case only from the warning after some interval, however small it may be. And to judge still better of the minute perceptions which we cannot distinguish in the crowd, I am wont to make use of the example of the roar or noise of the sea which strikes one when on its shore. To understand this noise as it is made, it would be necessary to hear the parts which compose this whole, i.e. the noise of each wave, although each of these little noises makes itself known only in the confused collection of all the others, i.e. in the roar itself, and would not be noticed if the wave which makes it were alone. For it must be that we are affected a little by the motion of this wave, and that we have some per- ception of each one of these noises, small as they are ; other- wise we would not have that of a hundred thousand waves, since a hundred- thousand nothings cannot make something. One never sleeps so soundly as not to have some feeble and confused sensation, and one would never be awakened by the greatest noise in the world if he did not have some perception of its small beginning; just as one would never break a rope by the greatest effort in the world if it were not stretched and lengthened a little by smaller efforts, although the slight extension they produce is not apparent. These minute perceptions are, then, of greater efficacy in their results than one supposes. They form I know not what, these tastes, these images of the sense-qualities, clear in the mass, but confused in the parts, these impressions which sur- rounding bodies make upon us, which involve the infinite, this connection which each being has with all the rest of the uni- verse. We may even say that in consequence of these minute perceptions, the present is big with the future and laden with the past, that all things conspire (avjXTrvoia iravra, as Hip- pocrates said), and that in the least of substances eyes as ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 49 penetrating as those of God could read the whole course of the things in the universe. Quae sint, quae fuerint, quae mox futura trahantur. 1 These insensible perceptions indicate also and constitute the same individual who is characterized by the traces or expres- sions which they conserve of preceding states of this individual, in making the connection with his present state ; and they can be known by a superior mind, even if this individual himself should not be aware of them, i.e. when there would no longer be in him the express recollection of them. But they (these perceptions, I say) furnish, indeed, the means of finding again this recollec- tion at need by the periodic developments which may some day happen. It is for this reason that death can be only a sleep, and cannot, indeed, continue, the perceptions ceasing merely to be sufficiently distinguished, and being reduced in the animals to a state of confusion which suspends consciousness, but which can- not last always ; not to speak 2 here of man, who must have in this regard great privileges in order to preserve his personality. It is also by means of the insensible perceptions that this admirable pre-established harmony of the soul and the body, and indeed of all the monads or simple substances, is ex- plained ; 3 which supplies the place of the unmaintainable influence of one upon the others, and which in the judgment of the author of the most excellent of dictionaries exalts the grandeur of the divine perceptions beyond what has ever been conceived. After this I would add little if I should say that it is these minute perceptions which determine us in many junctures without being thought of, and which deceive the vulgar by the appearance of an indifference of equilibrium, as if we were entirely indifferent whether we turned (for ex- ample) to the right or to the left. It is not needful also that I notice here, as I have done in the book itself, that they cause that uneasiness which I show to consist in something which differs from pain only as the small from the great, and which, however, often constitutes our desire and even our 1 Erdmann reads : qux mox, etc. ; Jacques : qvse mox ventura trahantur. Gerhardt's reading: " que " is evidently an error. — Tr. 2 Erdmann and Jacques omit: "pour ne parler icy de l'homme qui doit avoir en cela des grands privileges pour garder sa personalite'." — Tr. 3 Erdmann and Jacques read " j'explique," I explain. —Tr. E 50 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE pleasure by giving to it an exciting flavor. It is also 1 the insensible parts of our sensible perceptions, which produce a relation between the perceptions of colors, heat, and other sensible qualities, and between the motions in bodies which correspond to them ; while the Cartesians together with our author, penetrating as he is, conceive the perceptions which we have of these qualities as arbitrary, i.e. as if God had given them to the soul according to his good pleasure, without any regard to any essential relation between these perceptions and their objects : a view which surprises me and which appears to me little worthy of the wisdom of the Author of things, who does nothing without harmony and without reason. In a word, the insensible perceptions are as eminently use- ful in Pneumatology 2 as are the insensible corpuscles in Physics, and it is equally unreasonable to reject the one or the other under the pretext that they are out of reach of our senses. Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most verified, that nature makes no leaps : a maxim which I called the Law of Continuity, when I spoke of it in the first "Nouvelles de la Eepublique des Lettres," 3 and the use of this law is very considerable in Physics. This law declares that we pass always from the small to the great, and the reverse, through the medium, in degree as in parts, and that motion never springs immediately from rest, nor is reduced thereto save by a smaller motion, as one never completes the survey of any line or length until he has com- pleted a smaller line, although hitherto those who have set forth the laws of motion have not observed this law, believing that a body can receive in a moment a motion contrary to the preceding. And all this makes one indeed think that the 1 Erdmann and Jacques read : " Ce sont les memes parties insensibles," etc., It is the same insensible parts, etc. — Tr. 2 I.e. Psychology. Cf. Hamilton's Reid, 8th ed., Vol. I., p. 217 a, and note. — Tr. 3 A literary journal published by Pierre Bayle at Amsterdam, 1684-1687 ; afterwards continued, at Bayle's request, by Basnage, under the title " Histoire de ouvrages des Savants," 1687-1709. Leibnitz published in this journal in July, 1698, his Eclaircissement des difficulte's que M. Bayle a trouvees dans le systems nouveau de I'union de I'ame et du corps. Gerhardt, Vol. 4, pp. 517- 524; Erdmann, pp. 150-154; Jacques, Vol. 1, pp. 481-487. Translation, Appen- dix, pp. 706-712.— Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING noticeable perceptions also arise by degrees from those which are too minute to be observed. To think otherwise, is to have little knowledge of the immense subtilty of things which always and everywhere surrounds an actual infinite. I have also noticed that in virtue of these insensible varia- tions, two individual things cannot be perfectly alike, and that they must always differ more than numero : a fact which destroys the blank tablets of the soul, a soul without thought, a substance without action, a vacuum in space, atoms and even particles not actually divided in matter, absolute rest, entire uniformity in one portion of time, place, or matter, perfect globes of the second element, born of cubes perfect and orig- inal, and a thousand other fictions of philosophers which arise from their incomplete notions, and which the nature of things does not allow, and which our ignorance and the little atten- tion we give to the insensible let pass, but which cannot be made tolerable unless they are limited to the abstractions of the mind which protests that it does not deny what it puts aside, and thinks should not enter into any present considera- tion. Otherwise if it were very well understood, viz. : that things of which we are not conscious are neither in the soul nor the body, we should be lacking in philosophy as in politics, in neglecting to /juKpov, the insensible progressions, while an abstraction is not an error, provided we know what it is that we feign therein. Just as the mathematicians employ it when they speak of the perfect lines which they propose to us, of uniform motions and of other regulated effects, although matter (i.e. the medley of the effects of the surrounding infinite) always makes some exception. It is for the sake of distinguishing the considerations and of reducing so far as we may do so the effects to reasons, and of foreseeing some of their consequences, that we proceed thus. For the more we are careful to neglect no consideration that we can regulate, the more practice corre- sponds to theory. But it belongs only to the supreme Reason, whom nothing escapes, distinctly to comprehend all the infinite and to see all the reasons and all the consequences. All that we can do in regard to infinites is to know them confusedly, and to know at least distinctly that they are such ; otherwise we judge very wrongly of the beauty and the grandeur of the universe ; so also we could not have a sound Physics explaining 52 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE the nature of bodies in general, and still less a proper Pneuma- tology comprising the knowledge of God, of souls, and of simple substances in general. This knowledge of insensible perceptions serves also to explain why and how two souls, human or otherwise, 1 of one and the same species never come forth perfectly alike from the hands of the Creator and have always each its original relation to the points of view which it will have in the uni- verse. But this it is which already follows from the remarks I have made about two individuals, viz. : that their difference is always more than numerical. There is, moreover, another point of importance, in respect to which I am obliged to devi- ate not only from the opinions of our author, but also from those of the majority of modern philosophers : I believe with the majority of the ancients that all genii, 2 all souls, all simple created substances, are always joined to a body, and that there are never souls entirely separated. I have a priori reasons for my view ; but the doctrine will be found to have this advan- tage, that it resolves all the philosophical difficulties as to the condition of souls, their perpetual conservation, their immor- tality, and their operation. The difference between one of their states and another, never being and never having been other than that of more sensible to less sensible, of more perfect to less perfect, or the reverse, this doctrine renders their past or future state as explicable as that of the present. One feels sufficiently, however little reflection he makes, that this is rational, and that a leap from one state to another infinitely different could not be natural. I am astonished that by leaving the natural without reason, the schoolmen have been willing purposely to plunge themselves into very great difficulties, and to supply matter for apparent triumphs of the strong-minded, all of whose reasons fall at once by this explanation of things, in which there is no more difficulty in conceiving the conservation of souls (or rather, according to my view, of the animal) than there is in conceiving the change of the caterpillar into the butterfly, and the conservation of thought in sleep, to which Jesus Christ has divinely well com- pared death. I have already said also that sleep could not 1 Erdmann reads : " ou deux choses," or two things. — Te. 2 I.e. Angels and archangels. — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 53 last always, and it will last least or almost not at all in the case of rational souls who are always destined to preserve the personality which has been given them in the City of God, and consequently remembrance : and this in order to be more susceptible of chastisements and recompenses. And I add further that in general no derangement of the visible organs is capable of throwing things into entire confusion in the animal or of destroying all the organs and depriving the soul of all its organic body and of the ineffaceable remains of all preceding traces. But the ease . with which the ancient doc- trine of subtile bodies connected with the angels (which was confounded with the corporeality of the angels themselves) has been abandoned, and the introduction of pretended sepa- rate intelligences in creatures (to which those who make the heavens of Aristotle revolve have contributed much), and finally the poorly understood view into which we have fallen, that the souls of brutes could not be preserved without falling into metempsychosis, and 1 without conducting them from body to body, and the perplexity into which men have fallen by their ignorance of what to do with them, have caused us, in my opinion, to neglect the natural explanation of the conserva- tion of the soul. This has done much harm to natural relig- ion, and has caused many to believe that our immortality was only a miraculous grace of God, of which also our cele- brated author speaks with some hesitation, as I shall presently remark. But it would be well had all those who are of this opinion spoken as wisely and in as good faith as he, for it is to be feared that many who speak of immortality as a grace do so only to keep up appearances, and resemble at bottom these Averroists and some bad Quietists who picture to themselves an absorption and the reunion of the soul with the ocean of divinity : a notion whose impossibility my system alone perhaps evinces. It seems also that we differ further in regard to matter, in that the author thinks that a vacuum is necessary to motion, because he thinks that the minute parts of matter are rigid. And I admit that if matter were composed of such parts, 1 Gerhardt's text is: "et sans les promener de corps en corps, et l'embar- ras ou Ton a este en ne sachant ce qu'on en devoit faire." Erdmann and Jacques omit the clause. — Tr. 54 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE motion in a plenum would be impossible, as if a room were full of a quantity of little pebbles without there being the least empty space. But this supposition, for which there appears also to be no reason, is not admissible, although this learned author goes as far as to believe that rigidity or cohe- sion of the minute parts makes the essence of the body. It is necessary rather to conceive space as full of a matter origi- nally fluid, susceptible of all the divisions, and even actually subject to divisions and subdivisions to infinity, but with this difference, however, that it is divisible and divided un- equally in different parts on account of the motions which more or less concur there. This it is which causes matter to have everywhere a degree of rigidity as well as of fluidity, and no body to be hard or fluid in the highest degree, i.e. no atom to be found of an insurmountable hardness nor any mass entirely indifferent to division. The order, also, of nature, and particularly the law of continuity, destroy equally the one and the other. I have also shown that cohesion, which by itself would not be the effect of impulse or of motion, would cause a traction, taken strictly. For if there were a body originally rigid, — for example, an Epicurean atom, — which should have a part pro- jecting like a hook (since we can imagine atoms of all sorts of shapes), this hook pushed would draw with it the rest of this atom ; i.e. the part which is not pushed, and which does not fall in the line of the impulsion. Our learned author, how- ever, is for himself opposed to these philosophic tractions, such as were formerly attributed to the abhorrence of a vacuum, and he reduces them to impulsions, maintaining with the moderns that one part of matter works immediately upon another only by pushing it by contact, in which I think they are right, because otherwise there is nothing intelligible in the operation. I must not, however, conceal the fact that I have noticed a sort of retraction by our excellent author on this subject, whose modest sincerity I cannot forbear praising in this respect as much as I have admired on other occasions his penetrating genius. It is in his reply to the second letter of the late Bishop of Worcester, 1 printed in 1699, p. 408, where, 1 Edward Stillingfleet, 1635-1699: Bishop oi: Worcester, 1689-1699. — Tk. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 55 in order to justify the view which he had maintained against this wise prelate, viz. : that matter might think, he says among other things: U I admit that I said (Essay on Understanding, Book II. chap. 8, § 11) that body acts by impulse and not otherwise. This also was my vieiv when I wrote it, and even now I cannot conceive its action in any other way. But since then I have been convinced by the judicious Mr. Newton's incomparable book that there is too much presumption in wishing to limit the power of God by our limited conceptions. The gravitation of matter ioioards matter in ivays inconceivable to me, is not only a devionstratio?i that God, when it seems to him good, can put into bodies powers and modes of acting ivhich are beyond what can be derived from our idea of body or explained by tohat we know of matter; but it is furthermore an incontestable instance that he has really done so. I shall therefore take care to correct this passage in the next edition of my book." 1 I find that in the French version of this book, made undoubtedly from the latest edi- tions, the matter has been put thus in this § 11 : It is evident, at least so far as we can conceive it, that it is by impulse and not otherivise that bodies act on each other; for it is impossible for us to understand how the body can act upon what it does not touch, which is the same as to imagine that it can act ivhere it is not. I can only praise this modest piety of our celebrated author, who recognizes that God can do more than we can understand, and that thus there may be inconceivable mysteries in the articles of faith ; but I should not wish to be obliged to recur to the miracle in the ordinary course of nature and to admit powers and operations absolutely inexplicable. Otherwise too much license will be given poor philosophers, under cover of what God can do, and by admitting these centripetal virtues or these immediate attractions from afar without being able to make them intelligible, I see nothing to hinder our Scholastics from saying that everything is done simply by their faculties and from maintaining their intentional species which proceed I I have retranslated the passage from the French version, as given hy Ger- hardt. For the original, cf. Locke, Philos. Works (Bohn's ed.), Vol. II., p. 395. The entire letter is found in Locke's Works, Vol. I., pp. 578-774; this particu- lar passage, p. 754. Edition of 4 vols., 4to. 7th ed., 1768. Printed for H. Wood- fall, A. Millar, and others. — Tr. 56 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE from objects even to us and find means of entering even into our souls. If that is so, Omnia jam fient, fieri quae posse negabam. So that it seems to me that our author, quite judicious as he is, goes here a little too much from one extreme to the other. He makes a difficulty in regard to the operations of souls when the question is only of admitting what is not sensible, and behold he gives to bodies what is not even intelligible; granting them powers and actions which surpass in my view all that a created spirit can do and understand, since he grants them attraction, and that even at great distances without limiting them to any sphere of activity, and this in order to maintain a view which does not appear less inexplicable, viz. : the possi- bility of the thought of matter in the natural order. The question which he discusses with the celebrated Prelate who attacked him, is, ivJiether matter can think, and as it is an important point even for the present work, I cannot refrain from entering upon it a little and from taking note of their controversy. I will give the substance of their discussion upon this subject, and take the liberty of saying what I think of it. The late Bishop of Worcester, fearing (but in my opinion without good reason) lest our author's doctrine of ideas might be liable to certain abuses prejudicial to the Christian faith, undertook to examine some points in it in his "Vindication of the Doctrine, of the Trinity " ; x and having rendered justice to this excellent writer, by recognizing that he thinks the exist- ence of spirit as certain as that of body, although one of these substances is as little known as the other, he asks (p. 241 sq.) how reflection can assure us of the existence of spirit, if God can give to matter the power of thought according to the view of our author, Book IV., chap. 3, since thus the way of ideas which must serve to discern 2 what may suit the soul or the body, would become useless ; while he had said in Book II. of the Essay on Understanding, chap. 23, §§ 15, 27, 28, that the operations of the soul furnish us the idea of mind and the 1 Published in the autumn of 1696. Of. Alexander Campbell Fraser, Locke, pp. 245-246 (Philosophical Classics), Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood and Sons, 1890. — Tk, 2 Gerhardt reads: "discerner"; Erdniann and Jacques: " discuter," to discuss, debate, argue. — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING understanding, and the will renders this idea as intelligible to us as the nature of body is rendered intelligible to us by solid- ity and impulse. This is how our author replies in his first letter (p. 65 sq.) : " I believe I have proved that there is a spirit- ual substance in us, for we experience in ourselves thought. Noiv this action or this mode cannot be the object of the idea of a thing subsisting by itself and consequently this mode needs a support, a subject, in which it may inhere, and the idea of this support forms what we call substance. . . . For since the general idea of sub- stance is everywhere the same, it follows that the modification, which is called thought or power of thinking, being joined to it, there results a mind without the necessity of considering what other modification it has besides; i.e. whether it has solidity or not. And, on the other hand, the substance which has the modifi- cation called solidity will be matter, whether thought is joined to it or not. But if by a spiritual substance you mean an immaterial substance, I admit that I have not jjroved that there is one in us, and that it cannot be demonstrably proved on my principles. Al- though ivhat I have said on the systems of matter (Book IV., chap. 10, § 16) in proving that God is immaterial, renders it in the highest degree probable, that the substance which thinks in us is immaterial. . . . However, I have shoivn [the author adds, p. 68] that the great ends of religion and of morals are assured by the immortality of the soul, without the need of supposing its immateriality." l The learned Bishop in his reply to this letter, in order to make it evident that our author held another view, when he wrote the second book of the Essay, quotes, p. 51, this passage (taken from the same book, chap. 23, § 15), where it is said, that by the simple ideas which we have deduced from the opierations of our mind, we can form the complex idea of a mind. And that putting together the ideas of thought, of perception, of liberty, and of power to move our body, we have as clear a notion of immate- rial substances as of material. He quotes still other passages to show that the author opposes mind to body. And he says (p. 54) that the ends of religion and of morals are the better 1 1 have retranslated the passage from the French version as given hy Ger- hardt. For the original, cf. Locke, PMlos. Works (Bonn's ed.), Vol. II., p. 387. The entire letter is found in Locke's Works, Vol. I., pp. 458-517 ; this particular passage, p. 477. Edition of 4 vols., 4to. 7th ed., 1768. Printed for H. Woodfall, A.' Millar, and others. — Tr. 58 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE assured by proving that the soul is immortal by its nature, i.e. immaterial. He quotes also (p. 70) this passage, that the ideas we have of particular and distinct kinds of substances are nothing else than different combinations of simple ideas; 1 and that thus the author believed that the idea of thinking and of willing gave another substance different from that which the idea of solidity and of impulse gives, and that (§ 17) he remarks that these ideas constitute the body as opposed to mind. The Bishop of Worcester might add that from the fact that the general idea of substance is in the body and in the mind, it does not follow that their differences are modifications of one and the same thing, as our author has just said in the part of his first letter which I have quoted. It is necessary carefully to distinguish between modifications and attributes. The faculties of having perception and of acting, extension, solid- ity, are attributes or perpetual and principal predicates ; but thought, impetuosity, figures, movements, are modifications of these attributes. Furthermore, we must distinguish between jjhysical (or, rather, real) genus and logical or ideal genus. Things which are of the same physical genus, or which are homogeneous, are of the same matter, so to speak, and may often be changed the one into the other by the change of mod- ification, as circles and squares. But two heterogeneous things may have a common logical genus, and then their differences are not simple accidental modifications of one and the same subject, or of one and the same metaphysical or physical mat- ter. Thus time and space are very heterogeneous things, and we should do wrong to imagine I know not what real common subject which had only the continuous quantity in general, and whose modifications should cause the rise of time and space. 2 Some one will perhaps laugh at these distinctions of the philosophers of two genera, the one merely logical, the other real ; and of two matters, the one physical, viz. : that of bodies, the other metaphysical only or general ; as if some one said that two parts of space are of one and the same matter, or that two hours are likewise among themselves of one and 1 Locke, Philos. Works (Bohn's ed.), Vol. 1, p. 426, chap. 23, § 6. — Tr. 2 Erdmami and Jacques add : " Cepeudant leur genre logique commun est la quantite continue," i.e. Nevertheless their common logical genus is the con- tinuous quantity. —Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 59 the same matter. Nevertheless, these distinctions are not dis- tinctions of terms merely, but of things themselves, and seem to come in here very opportunely, where their confusion has given rise to a false conclusion. These two genera have a common notion, and that of the real genus is common to the two matters, so that their genealogy will be as follows : — C Logical merely, varied by simple differences. Metaphysical only, where 1 Beat, whose differences are modi [ Jications, i.e. Matter. there is homogeneity. Physical, where there is solid homogeneous mas I have not seen the second letter of the author to the Bishop, and the reply which this prelate makes to it scarcely touches the point relating to the thinking of matter. But the reply of our author to this second answer returns to it. God (says he, nearly in these words, p. 397) adds to the essence of matter the qualities and perfections which please him r simple movement in some parts, but in plants, vegetation, and in ani- mals, sentiency. Those who agree up to this point, cry out as soon as we go a step farther, and say that God can give to matter thought, reason, will, as if this destroyed the essence of matter. But to prove it, they allege that thought or reason is not included in the essence of matter, a point of no consequence, since move- ment and life are not included therein either. They assert, also, that we cannot conceive of matter as thinking; but our conception is not the measure of God's power} After this he cites the ex- ample of the attraction of matter (p. 99, but especially p. 408), where he speaks of the gravitation of matter towards matter, attributed to Mr. Newton (in the terms which I have quoted above), admitting that we can never conceive the manner of it. This is in reality to return to the occult, or, what is more, in- explicable qualities. He adds (p. 401) that nothing is more calculated to favor the sceptics than to deny what we do not understand ; and (p. 402) that we do not conceive even how the soul thinks. He will have it (p. 403) that, since the two sub- i For the original, cf. Locke, Philos. Works (Bohn's ed.), Vol. 2, pp. 390, 391. The entire letter is found in Locke's Works, Vol. 1, pp. 578-774 ; this particu- lar passage, pp. 749, 750. Edition of 4 vols., 4to. 7th ed., 1768. Printed for H. Woodfall, A. Miller, and others. — Tr. 60 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE stances, material and immaterial, are capable of being conceived in their naked essence without any activity, it depends upon God to give to each the power of thought. And he wishes to take advantage of the admission of his opponent, who had granted sentiency to the brutes, but who would riot grant them any immaterial substance. He claims that liberty, conscious- ness (p. 408), and the power of abstract thought (p. 409) can be bestowed upon matter, not as matter, but as enriched by a divine power. Finally, he quotes (p. 434) the remark of a traveller as eminent and judicious as M. de la Loubere, 1 that the pagans of the East acknowledge the immortality of the soul without being able to comprehend its immateriality. On all this I would remark, before coming to the explana- tion of my view, that it is certain that matter is as little capa- ble of mechanically producing feeling, as of producing reason, as our author admits ; that in truth I acknowledge that it is not permissible to deny what we do not understand, but I add that we are right in denying (at least in the natural order) what is absolutely neither intelligible nor explicable. I main- tain, also, that substances (material or immaterial) cannot be conceived in their naked essence without any activity ; that activity belongs to the essence of substance in general ; that, finally, the conception of creatures is not the measure of God's power, but that their conceptivity, or power of conception, is the measure of nature's power; all this is in harmony with the natural order, being capable of being conceived or under- stood by some creature. Those who understand my system will think that I cannot wholly agree with the one or the other of these two excellent authors, whose discussion, however, is very instructive. But to explain myself distinctly, it is necessary before all things to consider that the modifications which may belong naturally or without miracle to a subject must come to it from the limi- tations or variations of a real genus, or of a constant and abso- lute original nature. For it is thus that Philosophers dis- i La Loubere, Simon de, 1642-1729. Sent by Louis XIV. in 1687 to Siam, to establish diplomatic aud commercial relations between that kingdom and France. While there he collected a large amount of exact and interesting information concerning the country, its history, customs, religion, etc., which, on his return, he published in his Da royaume de Siam, Paris, 1691 ; English translation, London, 1693. — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 61 tinguish the modes of an absolute being from that being itself ; as it is known that size, figure, and movement are manifestly limitations and variations of corporeal nature. For it is clear how a limited extension gives figures, and that the change which is made in it is nothing but motion. And whenever we find any quality in a subject, we must believe that if we understood the nature of this subject and of this quality, we should conceive how this quality can result therefrom. Thus in the order of nature (miracles aside) it is not optional with God to give to substances indifferently such or such qualities, and he will never give to them any, save those which will be natural to them, i.e. which can be derived from their nature as explicable modifications. Thus it may be asserted that matter will not naturally possess the attraction mentioned above, and will not proceed of itself in a curved line, because it is impossi- ble to conceive how this takes place there, i.e. to explain it mechanically, while that which is natural must be capable of becoming distinctly conceivable if we were admitted into the secrets of things. This distinction between what is natural and explicable and what is inexplicable and miraculous removes all the difficulties, and by rejecting it, we should maintain something worse than the occult qualities ; and in so doing would renounce philosophy and reason, by opening retreats for ignorance and idleness, though a dead system, which admits not only that there are qualities which we do not understand, of which there are only too many, but also that there are some which the greatest mind, if God gave him every possible opening, could not comprehend, i.e. which would be either miraculous or Avithout rhyme and reason ; and also that God should work miracles ordinarily would be without rhyme and reason, so that this hypothesis would destroy equally our philosophy which seeks reasons, and the divine wisdom which furnishes them. Now as to thought, it is certain, and the author admits it more than once, that it could not be an intelligible modifica- tion of nature or one which could be comprised therein and explained, i.e. that a being who feels and thinks is not a mech- anism like a watch or a mill, so that we might conceive sizes, figures, and movements, whose mechanical conjunction might produce something thinking, and even feeling in a mass in 62 LEIBNITZ'S CEITIQUE OF LOCKE which there was nothing of the kind, which would cease also in the same manner upon the derangement of this mechanism. It is not then a natural thing for matter to feel and think, and this can happen within it only in two ways, of which one will be that God should unite with it a substance to which thought is natural, and the other that God by a miracle should put thought therein. In this, then, I am wholly of the opinion of the Cartesians, except that I extend it even to the brutes, and that I believe they have sentiency and (properly speak- ing) immaterial souls, and are as imperishable as the atoms of Democritus or Gassendi, while the Cartesians, perplexed with- out reason by the souls of brutes, and not knowing what they are to do with them if they are preserved (for want of having thought of the conservation of the same animal reduced to miniature), have been compelled to refuse even sentiency to the animals against all appearances and contrary to the judgment of the human race. But if any one should say that God at least may add the faculty of thinking to the prepared mechan- ism, I should reply that if this were done, and if God added this faculty to matter without putting therein at the same time a substance which was the subject of inhesion of this same faculty (as I conceive it), i.e. without adding thereto an immaterial soul, it would be necessary that matter should be miraculously exalted in order to receive a power of which it is naturally incapable ; as some scholastics * claim that God ex- alts fire even to the point of giving it the force to burn imme- diately spirits separated from matter, a thing which would be a miracle, pure and simple. And it is enough that it cannot be maintained that matter thinks without putting into it an imperishable soul, or a miracle, and that thus the immortality of our souls follows from what is natural, since their extinc- tion can be maintained only by a miracle, whether by exalting matter or by annihilating the soul. For we know well that God's power can make our souls mortal, wholly immaterial (or immortal by nature alone) as they may be, since he can annihilate them. Now this truth of the immateriality of the soul is undoubt- 1 Erdmann and Jacques read : " Quelques scholastiques ont pretendu quelque chose d'approchant savoir," i.e. Some scholastics have claimed something like this : viz. — Tr. ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 63 edly of importance. For it is infinitely more advantageous to religion and morality, especially in our times (when many people hardly respect revelation alone and miracles ] ), to show that souls are immortal by nature, — and that it would be a mir- acle if they were not, — than to maintain that our souls ought naturally to die, but that it is in virtue of a miraculous grace grounded in the promise of God alone that they do not die. Also for a long time it has been known that those who have desired to destroy natural religion and to reduce all to revealed religion, as if reason taught us nothing regarding it, have been looked upon with suspicion ; and not always without reason. But our author does not belong to that number. He maintains the demonstration of the existence of God, and he attributes to the immateriality of the soul a probability in the highest de- gree, which could consequently pass for a moral certainty, so that I think that, having as much sincerity as penetration, he could easily accommodate himself to the doctrine which I have just set forth, and which is fundamental in every rational phi- losophy. For otherwise I do not see how one can prevent him- self from falling back into the fanatical philosophy,' 2 ' such as the "Philosophia Mosaica" of Fludd, 3 which saves all phenomena by attributing them to God immediately and by miracle ; or into the barbaric philosophy like that of certain philosophers and physicians of the past, which still manifested the barbarity of their age, and which to-day is with reason despised, who saved appearances by forging purposely occult qualities or faculties which they imagined to be like little demons or goblins capa- ble of producing without ceremony what is demanded, just as if watches marked the hours by a certain horodeictic faculty without needing wheels, or as if mills ground the grain by a fractive faculty without needing anything resembling mill- stones. As to the difficulty that many people have had in conceiving an immaterial substance, it will easily cease (at least in good part) if they will not demand substances sepa- rated from matter, as in fact I do not believe there ever are any naturally among creatures. 1 Erdmann and Jacques omit this clause. — Tr. 2 Erdmann and Jacques read: " la philosophic ou fanatique," i.e. philosophy or fanaticism. — Tr. 3 Robert Fludd (1574-1637), an English physician and mystical philosopher. The Philosophia Mosaica was published at Gouda in 1638. — Tr. NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING Book I. — Innate Ideas CHAPTER I 1 ABE THERE INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND OF MAN ? Philaletlies. Having recrossed the sea after finishing my business in England, I thought at once of paying you a visit, sir, in order to cultivate our former friendship, and to con- verse upon matters which lie close to our hearts, and upon which I believe I have acquired some new light during my long stay in London. When we were living formerly quite near each other at Amsterdam, we both took much pleasure in making researches into the principles and means of pene- trating into the heart of things. Although our opinions often differed, this diversity increased our satisfaction, when, in our conference together, notwithstanding the contrariety which sometimes existed, there mingled nothing disagreeable. You were for Descartes 2 and for the opinions of the celebrated author 2 of "The Search after Truth," and I found the opinions of Gassendi, 2 cleared up by Bernier, easier and more natural. Now I feel myself greatly strengthened by the excellent work which an illustrious Englishman, with whom I have the honor of a particular acquaintance, has since published, and which has several times been reprinted in England, under the modest 1 Book I. of Locke's Essay has four chapters, of which chap. 1 is introduc- tory. Chap. 1 of Leibnitz corresponds to chap. 2 of Locke. — Tr. 2 Rene' Descartes, 1596-1650; Nicolas Malehranche, 1638-1715, his chief work, De la Recherche de la Verite, 1674; Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655, Abrege de la Philosophic de Gassendi, 8 vols., 1678, 2d ed., 7 vols., 1684, by Francois Bernier. — Tr. 64 ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 65 title of "An Essay concerning Human Understanding." And I am delighted that it has appeared lately in Latin and in French, in order that it may be more generally useful. I have greatly profited by the reading of this work, and indeed from the conversation of the author, with whom I have talked often in London, and sometimes at Oates, at the house of my Lady Masham, 1 worthy daughter of the celebrated Cudworth, 2 a great English philosopher and theologian, author of the Intellectual System, from whom she has inherited the spirit of meditation and the love for good learning, which appeared particularly in the friendship which she kept up with the author of the Essay. And, as he had been attacked by some clever Doctors, I took pleasure in reading also the defence which a very wise and very intelligent young lady made for him, besides those which he made for himself. This author writes in the spirit of the system of Gassendi, which is at bottom that of Democritus ; 2 he is for the vacuum and for atoms ; he believes that matter might think ; that there are no innate ideas, that our mind is a tabula rasa, and that we do not always think; and he appears disposed to approve the most of the objections which Gassendi has made 3 to Descartes. He has enriched and strengthened this system by a thousand beautiful reflections ; and I do not at all doubt that now our party will triumph boldly over its adversaries, the Peripa- tetics and the Cartesians. This is why, if you have not yet read this book, I invite you to do so, and if you have read it, I ask you to give me your opinion of it. Theophilus. I rejoice to see you, on your return after a long absence, happy in the conclusion of your important business, full of health, steadfast in your friendship for me, and always transported with an ardor equal to the search for the most 1 The correspondence between Leibnitz and Lady Masham is given in full by Gerhardt, Vol. 3, pp. 331 sq.— Tr. 2 Ralph Cudworth, 1617-1688, his principal work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London, 1678; Democritus, born probably about the middle of the fifth century B.C., as he says (Diog. L., IX., 41) he was "still young when Anaxagoras," 500-428 B.C., "was already old (veo? Kara vpea-pvTriv 'Avagayopav)." . . . "The year of his death is unknown," Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, pp. 76, 77, New York: H. Holt & Co., 1886.— Tr. ' 3 In Vol. 3 of his Opera, of which two editions were published : by Mont- mort, 1655, 6 vols, folio, Lyons ; by Averanius, 1727, also 8 vols, folio. — Tr. F 66 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i important truths. I no less have continued my meditations in the same spirit, and I believe I have profited as much as, and, not to flatter myself, perhaps more than yourself. -J In- deed, my need therein was greater than yours, for you were more advanced than I. You were more conversant with spec- ulative philosophers, and I was more inclined towards ethics. But I have learned more and more how ethics receives strength from the solid principles of true philosophy ; therefore I have lately studied these principles more diligently, and have begun meditations quite new. So that we shall have the means of giving ourselves a reciprocal pleasure of long duration in com- municating the one to the other our solutions. But it is nec- essary for me to tell you, as a piece of news, that I am no longer a Cartesian, and that, nevertheless, I am farther re- moved than ever from your Gassendi, whose knowledge and merit I, for the rest, recognize. I have been impressed with a new system, of which I have read something in the " Jour- naux des Savans " of Paris, Leipzig, and Holland, and in the marvellous Dictionary of Bayle, article "Korarius" 1 ; and since then I believe I see a new aspect of the interior of things. This system appears to unite Plato 2 and Democritus, Aristotle 2 and Descartes, the scholastics with the moderns, theology and ethics with the reason. It seems to take the beet from all sides, and then it goes much farther than any has yet gone. I find in it an intelligible explanation of the union of soul and body, of which I had before this despaired. I find the true principles of things in the Unities of Substance, which this system introduces, and in their harmony pre-established by the primitive Substance. I find therein a wonderful sim- plicity and uniformity, so that it may be said that this sub- stance is everywhere and always the same thing, differing only in degrees of perfection. I see now what Plato meant when he assumed matter to be an existence imperfect and transitory ; what Aristotle meant by his Entelechy ; what that promise of another life is which Democritus himself made according to Pliny ; how far the Sceptics were right in de- claiming against the senses ; how animals are in fact automata 1 Cf. Gerhardt, Vol. 4, pp. 524-554, the article " Rorarius " with Leibnitz's remarks. — Tr. 2 Plato, 427-347 B.C. ; Aristotle, 384-322 b.c. — Tr. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 67 according to Descartes, and how they have, nevertheless, souls and feeling according to the opinion of mankind ; how it is necessary to explain rationally those who have lodged life and perception in all things, as Cardan, 1 Campanella, 1 and, better than they, the late Countess of Connaway, a Platonist, and our friend, the late M. Francois Mercure van Helmont 2 (although elsewhere bristling with unintelligible paradoxes), with his friend, the late Mr. Henry More. 2 How the laws of nature (a good part of which were unknown before this system) have their origin in principles superior to matter, and how, never- theless, everything takes place mechanically in matter, in which respect the spiritualizing authors I just named have failed with their Archeei, 3 and even the Cartesians, in believ- i Girolamo Cardano, 1501-1576 ; Tommaso Campanella, 1568-1639 ; ef. Erd- mann, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Philos., 3d ed., Vol. 1, §§ 242, 246, Berlin: Wil- helm Hertz, 1878, and the English translation of the same, London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889; also the articles "Cardan" and "Campanella" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. — Tr. 2 Van Helmont, 1618-1698: Henry More, 1614-1687. — Tr. 3 Archmus, i. Modern Latin, from the Greek ipx 6 " ?. a-px~n> that which is at the beginning, source, origin, a first principle. Littre' defines the term thus : " Arche'e. Terme de physiologie ancienne. Principe immaterial diffe'rent de l'ame intelligent et qu'on supposait presider a tous les phenomenes de la vie materielle." I.e. "A term of ancient physiology. An immaterial princi- ple different from the intelligent soul, and which is supposed to preside over all the phenomena of the material life." The Century Dictionary gives the following exposition and illustration: "In the philosophy of Paracelsus and other spagyrics, mystics, and theosophists, a spirit or invisible man or animal of ethereal substance, the counterpart of the visible body, within which it resides, and to which it imparts life, strength, and the power of assimilating food. The word is said to have been used by Basil Valentine, a German chemist of the fifteenth century, to denote the solar heat as the source of the life of plants. Paracelsus uses it with the above meaning. It is frequent in the writings of Van Helmont, who explains it as a material jDre-existence of the human or animal form in posse. He regards the archseus as a fluid, i.e. as a semi-material substance like air, and seems to consider it a chemical constituent of the blood. Paracelsus has particularly made use of the hypothesis of the archseus to explain the assimilation of food. This function of the archseus became prominent in medicine. Van Helmont calls it the doorkeeper of the stomach (janitor stomachi). There are further divarications of meaning. Also spelled Archeus." " As for the many pretended intricacies in the instance of the efformation of Wasps out of the Carcase of a Horse, I say, the Archei that formed them are no parts of the Horse's Soul that is dead, but several distinct Archei that do as naturally joyn with the matter of his body, so putrified and prepared, as the Crowes come to eat his flesh." — Dr. H. More, Antidote against Atheism, app. xi. Cf. Leibnitz: Considerations snr le Principe de Vie et sur les Natures Plas- 68 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [ek. i ing that immaterial substances altered if not the force, at least the direction or determination, of the motions of bodies, whereas the soul and the body retain perfectly each its own laws, according to the new system, and yet one obeys the other as much as is necessary. In fine, it is since I have med- itated upon this system that I have found out how the souls of beasts and their sensations are in no sense prejudicial to the immortality of human souls, or, rather, how nothing is more suited to establish our natural immortality than to con- ceive that all souls are imperishable (morte carent animce), without, however, the fear of metempsychoses, since not only the souls, but further, the animals endure and will endure liv- ing, feeling, acting ; it is everywhere as here, and always and everywhere as with us, according to what I have already said to you, except that the conditions of animals are more or less perfect and developed, without there ever being a need of souls wholly separate, while we nevertheless have always spirits as pure as possible, notwithstanding our (physical) organs, which cannot disturb by any influence the laws of our (spiritual) spontaneity. I find the vacuum and atoms excluded in quite another way than by the sophism of the Cartesians, grounded in the pretended coincidence of the idea of body and extension. I see all things determined and adorned beyond anything hitherto conceived; matter everywhere organic, no sterile, neglected vacuum, nothing too uniform, everything varied, but with order; and, what passes imagination, the entire universe in epitome, but with a different aspect in each of its parts, and likewise in each of its unities of substance. Besides this new analysis of things, I have a better compre- hension of that of notions or ideas, and of truths. I under- stand what a true, clear, distinct, adequate idea is, if I dare adopt this word. I understand what are primitive truths, and true axioms, the distinction between necessary truths and tiquespar VAuteur de VHarmonie Pree'tablie, published in the "Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans," May, 1705, Gerhardt, Vol. 6, pp. 539-546; Erdmann, pp. 429-432 ; translation, Duncan, Philos. Works of Leibnitz, pp. 163-169. See also Erdmann, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Philos. 3d ed., Vol. 1, § 241, 7, Vol. 2, § 290, 12, or the English translation of the same. Slight additional information may be found in the JEncyclopsedia Britannica, 9th ed., under the article, "Medicine," in the part giving an account of Paracelsus and Van Hel- mont. — Tr. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDEESTANDING 69 truths of fact, between the reasoning of men and the consecu- tions of animals, which are a shadow of the reasoning of men. In short, you will be surprised to hear all that I have to say to you, and, above all, to understand how much the knowledge of the grandeur and of the perfection of God is therein exalted. For I cannot conceal from you, from whom I have had nothing concealed, how I have been thrilled now with admiration and (if we may dare to make use of the term) with love for this sovereign source of things and of beauty, having found that what this system discovers surpasses everything one has hith- erto conceived. You know that I had gone a little too far formerly, and that I began to lean toward the side of the Spinozists, 1 who allow God only infinite power, without recog- nizing either perfection or wisdom in his case, and regarding with contempt the search for final causes, derive everything from brute necessity. But these new lights have cured me of this ; and since then I sometimes take the name of Theophilus. I have read the book of this celebrated Englishman of whom you have just spoken. I value it highly, and I have found in it some good things. But it seems to me necessary to go much farther, and necessary even to turn aside from his views, since he has adopted some which limit us more than is neces- sary, and lower a little not only the condition of man, but, besides, that of the universe. Ph. You astonish me in fact with all the marvels which you have recited to me in a manner a little too favorable for an easy credence of them on my part. However, I will hope that there will be something solid among so many novelties with which you desire to regale me. In this case you will find me very docile. You know that it was always my disposition to surrender myself to reason, and that I sometimes took the name of Philalethes. This is why, if you please, we will now make use of these two names which are so congruous with our mental constitution and methods. There are means of pro- ceeding to the trial, for — since you have read the book of the 1 On the relation of Leibnitz to Spinoza, see Leibniz u. Spinoza. Ein Beitrag zur Entwickhmgsgeschichte der Leibnizischen Philosophie. Von Prof. Dr. Luchvig Stein. Mit neunzehn Ineditis aus dem Nachlass von Leibniz. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1890. pp. xvii., 362. Also " Mind," No. 62, p. 298 ; No. 63, pp. 443 sq., the latter an extended note on Stein's book by Prof. George Croora Robertson, the late editor of " Mind." — Tr. 70 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE * [bk. i celebrated Englishman, which gives me so much satisfaction and which treats a good part of the subjects of which you were just speaking, and above all, the analysis of our ideas and knowledge — it will be the shortest way to follow the thread of this work, and to see what you will have to say. Th. I approve your proposition. Here is the book. § 1. Ph. [I have read this book so thoroughly that I have retained even its expressions, which I shall be careful to fol- low. Thus I shall not need to recur to the book, except at certain junctures where we shall judge it necessary. We shall speak first of the origin of ideas or notions (Book I.), then of the different kinds of ideas (Book II.), and of the words that serve to express them (Book III.), lastly of the knowl- edge and truths which therefrom result (Book IV.) ; and it is this last part which will occupy us the most. As for the ori- gin of ideas, I believe, with this author and a multitude of clever persons, that there are no innate ideas nor innate prin- ciples.] And, in order to refute the error of those who admit them, it is sufficient to show, as it appears eventually, that there is no need of them, and that men can acquire all their knowledge without the aid of any innate impression Th. [You know, Philalethes, that I have been for a long time of another opinion ; that I have always held, as I still hold, to the innate idea of God, which Descartes maintained, and as a consequence to the other innate ideas, which cannot come to us from the senses. Now, I go still farther in con- formity to the new system, and I believe even that all the thoughts and acts of our soul come from its own depths, with impossibility of their being given to it by the senses, as you shall see in the sequel. But at present I will put this investi- gation aside, and, accommodating myself to the received ex- pressions, since in fact they are good and tenable, and one can say in a certain sense that the external senses are in part causes of our thoughts, I shall consider how in my opinion one must say even in the common system (speaking of the action of bodies upon the soul, as the Copernicans speak with other men of the movement of the sun, and with cause), that there are some ideas and some principles which do not come to us from the senses, and which we find in ourselves without form- ing them, although the senses give us occasion to perceive them. en. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 71 I imagine that your clever author has remarked that under the name of innate principles one often maintains his prejudices, and wishes to free himself from the trouble of discussion, and that this abuse doubtless has stirred up his zeal against this supposition. He desired, no doubt, to combat the indolence and the superficial manner of thinking of those who, under the specious pretext of innate ideas and of truths naturally en- graved upon the mind, to which we readily give our consent, care nothing about investigating or considering the sources, the relations, and the certainty of this knowledge. In that I am entirely agreed with him, and I go even farther. I would that our analysis should not be limited, that definitions should be given of all the terms which are capable of definition, and that one should demonstrate, or give the means of demonstrat- ing, all the axioms which are not primitive, without distin- guishing the opinions which men have of them, and without caring whether they give their consent or not. There would be more profit in this than one thinks. But it seems that the author has been carried too far on the other side by his zeal, otherwise very praiseworthy. He has not sufficiently distin- guished^ in my opinion, the origin of the necessary truths, whose source is in the understanding, from that of the truths of fact drawn from the experience of the senses, and even from those confused perceptions which are in us. You see, then, that I do not agree with what you lay down as fact — that we can acquire all our knowledge without the need of innate impressions. And the sequel will show which of us is right.] § 2. Ph. We shall see it indeed. I grant you, my dear The- ophilus, that there is no opinion more commonly received than that which establishes the existence of certain principles of truth in which men generally agree ; this is why they are called general notions, kolvol evvoiat ; whence it is inferred that these principles must be so many impressions which our minds receive with their existence. § 3. But though it were certain that there are some principles in which the entire human race is agreed, this universal consent would not prove that they are innate if one can show, as I believe he can, an- other way through which men have been able to reach this aniformity of opinion. § 4. But, what is much worse, this 72 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i universal consent is nowhere found, not even with regard to these two celebrated speculative principles (for we shall speak about the practical ones later), that whatever is, is; and that it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. For there is a large part of the human race to which these two propositions, which will pass doubtless for neces- sary truths and for axioms with you, are not even known. Th. [I do not ground the certainty of innate principles upon universal consent, for I have already told you, Philalethes, that my opinion is that we ought to labor to be able to demon- strate all the axioms which are not primitive. I grant you also that a consent very general, but which is not universal, may come from a tradition diffused throughout the human race, as the practice of smoking tobacco has been received by nearly all nations in less than a century, although some island- ers have been found who, not being acquainted with fire even, were unable to smoke. Thus some clever people, even among theologians, but of the party of Arminius, 1 have believed that the knowledge of the Deity came from a very ancient and very general tradition ; and I believe indeed that instruction has confirmed and rectified this knowledge. It appears, however, that nature has contributed to its attainment without learning ; the marvels of the universe have made us think of a superior power. A child born deaf and dumb has been seen to show veneration for the full moon, and nations have been found, who seemed not to have learned anything of other peoples, fearing invisible powers. I grant you, my dear Philalethes, that this is not yet the idea of God that we have and ask for ; but this idea itself does not cease to be in the depths of our souls, without being put there, as we shall see, and the eternal laws of God are in part engraved thereon in a manner still more legible and by a species of instinct. But they are practical principles of which we shall also have occasion to speak. It must be admitted, however, that the inclination we have to recognize the idea of God is in human nature. And, even if the first instruction therein should be attributed to revelation, the readiness which men have always shown to receive this doctrine comes from the nature of their souls. 2 But we will 1 James Arminius, 1560-1609, a distinguished Dutch theologian. — Te. 2 From this point on Gerhardt, whose edition, it will be remembered, is the en. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 73 suppose that these ideas which are innate comprehend incom- patible notions. § 19. Ph. Although you maintain that these particular and self-evident propositions, whose truth is recognized as soon as one hears them stated (as that green is not red), are received as consequences of these other more general propositions, which are regarded as so many innate principles, it seems that you do not at all consider that these particular propositions are received as indubitable truths by those who have no knowl- edge of these more general maxims. Th. I have already replied to that above. We build on these general maxims as we build upon the majors, which are sup- pressed when we reason by enthymemes ; for, although very often we do not think distinctly of what we do in reasoning any more than of what we do in walking and leaping, it is always true that the force of the conclusion consists in part in that which is suppressed and could not elsewhere arise, as you will find should you wish to prove it. § 20. Ph. But it seems that general and abstract ideas are more foreign to our mind [than notions and particular truths ; consequently particular truths will be more natural to the mind than the principle of contradiction, of which you admit they are only the application]. Th. It is true that we commence sooner to perceive particu- basis of the present translation, transposes the text as given by Erclmann and Jacques as follows : "Mais nous jugerons que ces idees qui sont innees, ren- ferment des notions incompatibles," the first three words of which will be found in Erdmann, p. 207, b., about two-thirds down the page, Jacques, Vol. 1, p. 29, about two-thirds down, the remainder in Erdmann, p. 211, a., at the middle of the page, Jacques, p. 36, first third, just preceding § 19 in each case, whence the three texts go on in agreement until § 26, G., p. 72, E., p. 212, b., J., p. 39. Here the Gerhard t text has the following : " S'ily a des verites innees, ne faut il pas qu'il y ait dans la suite, que la doctrine externe ne fait qu'exciter icy ce que est en nous " : taking up with the words " dans la suite," the text as given by E., p. 207, b., J., p. 29, where it previously left it, the three texts continuing again in agreement until the words " des qu'on s'appercoit," G., p. 79, last third, E., 211, a., at the middle, J., 36, first third, whence G. completes his sentence with the last three words of the first sentence of § 26, as given by E., 212, b., J., 39, from which point again the three texts substantially agree to the end of Chap. 1. It may be added that the texts of Erdmann, Jacques, and Janet follow the order of Locke's Essay. Why Gerhardt has transposed the text in his edition, I do not know, as he has not alluded to the matter. From his statement that " the present impression has been newly compared with the original, so far as it is still extant " (Introduction, p. 10), I presume that the transposition is clue to his fidelity to this original. — Tr. 74 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i lar truths when we commence with ideas more complex and gross ; but that does not prevent the order of nature from com- mencing with the most simple, and the proof of the more par- ticular truths from depending upon the more general, of which they are only examples. And when we wish to consider what is in us virtually and before all apperception, we are right in commencing with the most simple. For the general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them. The mind leans upon these principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to rep- resent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. Have not the Chinese like ourselves articulate sounds ? and yet being attached to another manner of writing, they have not yet thought of making an alphabet of these sounds. Thus it is that one possesses many things without knowing it. § 21. Ph. If the mind acquiesces so promptly in certain truths, cannot that acquiescence come from the consideration itself of the nature of things, which does not allow it to judge of them otherwise, rather than from the consideration that these propositions are engraved by nature in the mind ? Th. Both are true. The nature of things and the nature of mind agree. And since you oppose the consideration of the thing to the apperception of that which is engraven in the mind, this objection itself shows, sir, that those whose side you take understand by innate truths only those which would be approved naturally as by instinct, and even without knowing it, unless confusedly. There are some of this nature, and we shall have occasion to speak of them. But what is called nat- ural light supposes a distinct knowledge, and very often the consideration of the nature of things is nothing else than the knowledge of the nature of our mind, and of these innate ideas which we have no need to seek outside. Thus I call innate the truths which need only this consideration for their verifi- cation. I have already replied (§ 5) to the objection (§ 22) which claimed that when it is said that innate notions are implicitly in the mind, the statement must mean simply that ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDEESTANDING 75 it has the faculty of knowing them ; for I have pointed out that besides this it has the faculty of finding them in itself, and the disposition to approve them when it thinks of them as it should. § 23. Ph. It seems, then, that you claim that those to whom these general maxims are proposed for the first time learn nothing which is entirely new to them. But it is clear that they learn first the names, then the truths, and even the ideas upon which these truths rest. Th. The question here is not of names, which are in some sense arbitrary, while ideas and truths are natural. But, with respect to these ideas and truths, you attribute to us, sir, a doctrine which we have strongly repudiated ; for I agree that we learn ideas and innate truths either in considering their source, or in verifying them through experience. Thus I do not make the supposition which you aver, as if, in the case of which you speak, we learned nothing new. And I cannot admit this proposition : all that one learns is not innate. The truths of numbers are in us, and we are not left to learn them, either by drawing them from their source when we learn them through demonstrative proof (which shows that they are in- nate), or by testing them in examples, as do ordinary arithme- ticians, who, in default of a knowledge of the proofs, learn their rules only by tradition, and, at most, before teaching them, justify them by experience, which they continue as far as they think expedient. And sometimes even a very skilful mathematician, not knowing the source of another's discovery, is obliged to content himself with this method of induction in examining it ; as did a celebrated writer at Paris, when I was there, who continued a tolerably long time the examination of my arithmetical tetragonism, comparing it with the numbers of Ludolphe, 1 believing he had found therein some error ; and he had reason to doubt until some one communicated to him the demonstration, which for us dispenses with these tests, which could always continue without ever being perfectly certain. And it is this very thing, namely, the imperfection of inductions, which may yet be verified by instances of expe- rience. For there are progressions in which one can go very 1 John Job Ludolphe, 1649-1711: his Tetragonometria Tabularia, Frank- fort, 1690.— Tr. 76 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE [bk. i far before noticing the changes and the laws that are found there. Ph. But is it not possible that not only the terms or words which we use, but even the ideas, come to us from without ? Th. It would then be necessary that we should be ourselves outside of ourselves, for the intellectual or reflective ideas are derived from our mind ; and I should much like to know how we could have the idea of being if we were not beings our- selves, and did not thus find being in ourselves. Ph. But what do you say, sir, to this challenge of one of my friends ? If any one, says he, can find a proposition whose ideas are innate, that he can name to me, he would do me a very great favor. Th. I would name the propositions of arithmetic and geome- try, which are all of this nature ; and, as regards necessary truths, no others could be found. § 25. Ph. That will appear strange to most people. Can it be said that the most difficult and the most profound sciences are innate ? Th. Their actual knowledge is not, but much that may be called virtual knowledge is innate, as the figure traced by the veins of the marble is in the marble, before one discovers them in working. Ph. But is it possible that children, while receiving notions that come to them from without, and giving them their con- sent, may have no knowledge of those which you suppose to be inborn with them, and to make, as it were, a part of their mind, in which they are, you say, imprinted in ineffaceable characters in order to serve as a foundation ? If that were so, nature would have taken trouble for nothing, or, at least, she would have badly engraved their characters, since they cannot be perceived by the eyes which see very well other things. Tli. The apperception of that which is in us depends upon attention and order. ISTow, not only is it possible, but it is also proper, that children give more attention to the ideas of the senses, because the attention is regulated by the need. The outcome, however, shows in the sequel that nature has not uselessly given herself the trouble of impressing upon us in- nate knowledge, since without it there would be no means of attaining actual knowledge of the truths necessary in the ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 77 demonstrative sciences, and the reasons of facts ; and we should possess nothing above the beasts. § 26. Ph. If there are innate truths, does it not necessarily follow that the external doctrine only stirs up here what is in us ? I conclude that a consent sufficiently general among men is an indication, and not a demonstration, of an innate princi- ple ; but that the exact and decisive proof of these principles consists in showing that their certitude comes only from what is in us. To reply further to what you say against the general approbation which is given to the two great speculative prin- ciples, which are, nevertheless, the best established, I may say to you that even if they were not known they would not cease to be innate, because they are recognized as soon as heard ; but I will add further that at bottom everybody knows them, and makes use at every moment of the principle of contradic- tion (for example) without considering it distinctly ; and there is no barbarian who, in an affair of any moment, is not offended by the conduct of a liar who contradicts himself. Thus, these maxims are employed without an express consid- eration of them. And in nearly the same way we have virtu- ally in the mind the propositions suppressed in enthymemes, which are set aside not only externally, but further in our . thought. § 5. Ph. [What you say of this virtual knowledge and of these internal suppressions surprises me] ; for to say that there are truths imprinted upon the soul which it does not perceive is, it seems to me, a veritable contradiction. Th. [If you are thus prejudiced, I am not astonished that you reject innate knowledge. But I am astonished that the thought has not occurred to you that we have an infinite amount of knowledge of which we are not always conscious, not even when we need it. It is for the memory to preserve this, and for the reminiscence to represent it to us, as it often, but not always, does at need. That is very well called remembrance (subvenire), for reminiscence needs some aid. And it must certainly be that in this multiplicity of our knowledge we are determined by something to renew one part rather than another, since it is impossible to think distinctly and at once of every- thing we know.] Ph. In that I believe you are right ; and this too general 78 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i affirmation, that we always perceive all the truths which are in our soul, escaped me without my having given it sufficient attention. But you will have a little more trouble in reply- ing to what I am going to show you. That is, that if you can say of some particular proposition that it is innate, you could maintain by the same reasoning that all propositions which are reasonable, and which the mind could always regard as such, are already impressed upon the soul. Th. I agree with you in regard to pure ideas, which I oppose to the phantoms of the senses, and in regard to necessary truths, or those of the reason, which I oppose to truths of fact. In this sense it must be said that all arithmetic and all geometry are innate, and are in us virtually, so that we can find them there if we consider attentively and set in order what we already have in the mind, without making use of any truth learned through experience or through the tradition of another, as Plato has shown in a dialogue l in which he intro- duces Socrates leading a child to abstract truths by questions alone without giving him any information. We can then make for ourselves these sciences in our study, and even with closed eyes, without learning through sight or even through touch the truths which we need; although it is true that we would not consider the ideas in question if we had never seen or touched anything. For through an admirable economy of nature we cannot have abstract thoughts which have no need whatever of anything sensible, when that would only be of such a character as are the forms of the letters and the sounds, although there is no necessary connection between such arbi- trary characters and such thoughts. And if the sensible out- lines were not requisite, the pre-established harmony between soul and body, of which I shall have occasion to speak more fully, would have no place. But that does not prevent the mind from taking necessary ideas from itself. You see also sometimes how it can go far without any aid, by a logic and arithmetic purely natural, as that Swedish youth who, in culti- vating his own (mind), went so far as to make great calcula- tions immediately in his head without having learned the common method of computation, or even to read and write, if I remember correctly what has been told me of him. It is 1 Meno, 82 sq. — Tk. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 79 true that he cannot Avork out intricate problems, such as those which demand the extraction of roots. But that does not at all prevent him from being able still to draw them from its depths by some new turn of mind. Thus that proves only that there are degrees in the difficulty of perceiving what is in us. There are innate principles which are common and very easy to all ; there are theorems which are discovered likewise at once, and which compose the natural sciences, which are more understood in one case than in another. Finally, in a larger sense, which it is well to employ in order to have notions more comprehensive and more determinate, all truths which can be drawn from primitive innate knowledge can still be called innate, because the mind can draw them from its own depths, although often it would not be an easy thing so to do. But, if any one gives another meaning to the terms, I do not wish to dispute about words. Ph. [I have agreed with you that we can have in the soul what we do not perceive there, for we do not always remem- ber at once all that we know, but it must be always what we have learned or have known in former times expressly. Thus] if we can say that a thing is in the soul, although the soul has not yet known it, this can only be because it has the capacity or faculty of knowing it. vT7i. [Why could not this have still another cause, such as the soul's being able to have this thing within it without its being perceived ? for since an acquired knowledge can be con- cealed therein by the memory, as you admit, why could not nature have also concealed therein some original knowledge ? Must everything that is natural to a substance which knows itself be known by it actually at once ? Cannot and must not this substance (such as our soul) have many properties and affections which it is impossible to consider all at once and all together ? It was the opinion of the Plafconists that all our knowledge was reminiscence, and that thus the truths which the soul has brought with the birth of the man, and which are called innate, must be the remains of an express anterior knowledge. But this opinion has no foundation ; and it is easy to believe that the soul must already Have innate knowl- edge in the precedent state (if there were any pre-existence), however -remote it might be, entirely as here : it would then 80 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE" [bk. i have to come also from another precedent state, or 1 it would be finally innate, or at least concreate ; or else it would be needful to go to infinity and to make souls eternal, in which case this knowledge would be innate in fact, because it would never have commenced in the soul ; and if any one claimed that each anterior state has had something from another more anterior, which it has not left to the succeeding, the reply will be made that it is manifest that certain evident truths must have been in all these states ; and in whatever manner it may be taken, it is always clear in all states of the soul that neces- sary truths are innate, and are proved by what is within, it not being possible to establish them through experience, as we establish truths of fact. Why should it be necessary also that we could have no possession in the soul of which we had never made use ? And is it the same thing to have a thing without using it as to have only the faculty of acquiring it ? If that were so, we should never possess anything but the things which we enjoy ; instead of which, we know that, be- sides the faculty and the object, some disposition in the fac- ulty or in the object, or in both, is often necessary, that the faculty may exercise itself upon the object.] Ph. Taking it in that way, we could say that there are truths written in the soul which the soul has, however, never known, and which, indeed, it will never know. This appears to me strange. Th. [I see there no absurdity, although in that case you could not be assured that there are such truths. For things more exalted than those which we can know in this present course of life may be developed some time in our souls, when they are in another state.] Ph. But suppose there are truths which could be imprinted upon the understanding without its perceiving them ; I do not see how, in relation to their origin, they could differ from the truths which it is only capable of knowing. Th. The mind is not only capable of knowing them, but further of finding them in itself ; and, if it had only the sim- ple capacity of receiving knowledge, or the passive power there- for, as indeterminate as that which the wax has for receiving figures and the blank tablet for receiving letters, it would not 1 The reading of Gerhardt and Erdmann ; Jacques has " oh," where. — Tr. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 81 be the source of necessary truths, as I have just shown that it is ; for it is incontestable that the senses do not suffice to show their necessity, and that thus the mind has a disposition (active as well as passive) to draw them itself from its own depths ; although the senses are necessary to give it the occa- sion and attention for this, and to carry it to some rather than to others. You see, then, sir, that these elsewhere very clever persons who are of another opinion appear not to have thought enough upon the consequences of the difference which there is between necessary or eternal truths and the truths of experi- ence, as I have already observed, and as all our discussion shows. The original proof of the necessary truths comes from the understanding alone, and the other truths come from experience or from the observation of the senses. Our mind is capable. of knowing both; but it is the source of the former, and, whatever number of particular experiences we may have of a universal truth, we could not be assured of it forever by induction without knowing its necessity through the reason. Ph. But is it not true that if the words, to be in the under- standing, involve something positive, they signify to be per- ceived and comprehended by the understanding ? Th. They signify to us wholly another thing. It is enough that what is in the understanding can be found there, and that the sources or original proofs of the truths which are in ques- tion are only in the understanding; the senses can hint at, justify, and confirm these truths, but cannot demonstrate their infallible and perpetual certainty. § 11. Ph. Nevertheless, all those who will take the trouble to reflect with a little attention upon the operations of the understanding will find that this consent, which the mind gives without difficulty to certain truths, depends upon the faculty of the human mind. Th. Very well. But it is this particular relation of the human mind to these truths which renders the exercise of the faculty easy and natural in respect to them, and which causes them to be called innate. It is not, then, a naked faculty which consists in the mere possibility of understanding them ; it is a disposition, an aptitude, a preformation, which determines our soul and which makes it possible for them to be derived from it. Just as there is the difference between the figures G 82 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE [bk. i which are given to the stone or the marble- indifferently, and between those which its veins already indicate, or are disposed to indicate, if the workman profits by them. Ph. But is it not true that the truths are subsequent to the ideas of which they are born ? Now, the ideas come from the senses. Th. The intellectual ideas, which are the source of neces- sary truths, do not come from the senses ; and you admit that there are some ideas which are due to the reflection of the mind upon itself. For the rest, it is true that the express knowledge of truths is subsequent {tempore vel natura) to the express knowledge of ideas ; as the nature of truths depends upon the nature of ideas, before we expressly form one or the other, and the truths, into which enter ideas which come from the senses, depend upon the senses, at least in part. But the ideas which come from the senses are confused, and the truths which depend upon them are likewise confused, at least in part; while the intellectual ideas, and the truths dependent upon them, are distinct, and neither the one nor the other have their origin in the senses, although it may be true that we would never think of them without the senses. Ph. But, in your view, numbers are intellectual ideas, and yet it is found that the difficulty therein depends upon the express formation of the ideas ; for example, a man knows that 18 and 19 equal 37 with the same evidence that he knows that 1 and 2 equal 3 ; but a child does not know the first propo- sition so soon as the second, a condition arising from the fact that he has not formed the ideas as soon as the words. Th. I can agree with you that often the difficulty in the express formation of truths depends upon that in the express formation of ideas. Yet I believe that in your example the question concerns the use of ideas already formed. For those who have learned to count as far as 10, and the method of passing farther on by a certain repetition of tens, understand without difficulty what are 18, 19, 37 ; viz., 1, 2, or 3 times 10 with 8, or 9, or 7 ; but, in order to draw from it that 18 plus 19 make 37, more attention is necessary than to know that 2 plus 1 are 3, which at bottom is only the definition of 3. § 18. Ph. Furnishing propositions in which you infallibly acquiesce as soon as you hear them is not a privilege attached cit. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 83 to the numbers or to the ideas, which you call intellectual. You meet these in physics and in all the other sciences, and the senses even furnish them. For example, this proposition : two bodies cannot be in the same place at the same time, is a truth of which you are not otherwise convinced than of the following maxims : It is impossible for a thing to be and not to be in the same time ; white is not red ; the square is not a circle; yellowness is not sweetness. Th. There is a difference between these propositions. The first, which declares the impenetrability of bodies, needs proof. All those who believe in true and strictly formed condensa- tion and rarefaction, as the Peripatetics and the late Chevalier Digby, 1 reject it, in fact ; without speaking of the Christians who believe, for the most part, that the contrary view — namely, the penetration of space — is possible to God. But the other propositions are identical, or very nearly so, and identi- cal or immediate propositions do not admit of proof. Those who look upon the senses as furnishing them, as that one who says that yellowness is not sweetness, have not applied the general identical maxim to particular cases. Ph. Every proposition composed of two different ideas, of which one is the denial of the other — for example, that the square is not a circle, that to be yellow is not to be sweet — will be as certainly received as indubitable, as soon as its terms are understood, as this general maxim : It is impossible for a thing to be and not to be in the same time. Th. That is, the one (namely, the general maxim) is the principle, and the other (that is to say, the negation of one idea by another opposed to it) is its application. Ph. It seems to me rather that the maxim depends upon this negation, which is its ground; and that it is, besides, much easier to understand that what is the same thing is not different, than the maxim which rejects the contradictions. Now, according to this statement, it will be necessary for you to admit as innate truths an infinite number of propositions of this kind which deny one idea by another without speaking 1 Sir Kenelm Digby, 1603-1665, an eminent English physical philosopher, who lived for a time in France, where he enjoyed the friendship of Descartes and other learned men, and wrote his Treatise on the Nature of Bodies and other works. — Tr. 84 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i of other truths. Add to this, that a proposition cannot be innate unless the ideas of which it is composed are innate ; it will be necessary to suppose that all the ideas which we have of colors, sounds, tastes, figures, etc., are innate. Th. I do not well see how this : what is the same thing is not different, is the origin of the principle of contradiction, and easier ; for it appears to me that you give yourself more freedom in advancing that A is not B than in saying that A is not non-A. And the reason that prevents A from being B is that B includes non-A. For the rest this proposition : the sweet is not the bitter, is not innate, according to the sense which we have given to the term innate truth. For the sen- sations of sweet and bitter come from the external senses. Thus it is a mixed conclusion (Jiybrida conclusio), where the axiom is applied to a sensible truth. But as regards this proposition : the square is not a circle, you can affirm that it is innate, for, in considering it, you make a subsumption or application of the principle of contradiction to what the un- derstanding itself furnishes as soon as you are conscious of innate thoughts. Th. Not at all, for the thoughts are acts, and the knowledge or the truths, in so far as they are within us, even when we do not think of them, are habitudes or dispositions ; and we are well acquainted with things of which we think but little. Ph. It is very difficult to conceive that a truth may be in the mind if the mind has never thought of that truth. Th. It is as if some one said it is difficult to conceive that there are veins in the marble before we have discovered them. This objection seems also to approach a little too much the begging of the question. 1 All those who admit innate truths, without grounding them in the Platonic reminiscence, admit some of which they have not yet thought. Besides, this reasoning proves too much; for, if truths are thoughts, we shall be deprived not only of the truths of which we have never thought, but also of those of which we have thought, and of which we no longer actually think ; and if truths are not thoughts, but habits and aptitudes, natural or acquired, nothing prevents there being in tis some of which we have never thought, nor will ever think. 1 Petitio principii. — Tr. ch. n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 85 § 27. Ph. If general maxims were innate, they would appear more vividly in the mind of certain persons where, however, we see no trace of them ; I may mention children, idiots, and savages, 1 for of all men these are they who have the mind less altered and corrupted by custom and by the impress of extraneous opinions. Th. I believe we must reason here very differently. Innate maxims appear only through the attention which is given to them ; but these persons have little of it, or have it for entirely different things. Their thoughts are mostly confined to the needs of the body ; and it is reasonable that pure and detached thoughts be the reward of cares more noble. It is true that children and savages have the mind less altered by customs, but they also have it exalted by the teaching which gives attention. It would not be very just that the brightest lights should shine better in minds which less deserve them, and which are enveloped in thicker clouds. I would not then have one give too much honor to ignorance and barbarism when one is as learned and as clever as you are, Philalethes, as well as your excellent author ; that would be lowering the gifts of God. Some one will say that the more ignorant we are, the more we approach the advantage of a block of marble or of a piece of wood, which are infallible and sinless. But, unfortunately, it is not by ignorance that we approach this advantage ; and, as far as we are capable of knowledge, we sin in neglecting to acquire it, and we shall fail so much the more easily as we are less instructed. CHAPTER II NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES § 1. Ph. Ethics is a demonstrative science, and yet it has no innate principles. And, indeed, it would be very difficult to produce a rule of ethics of a nature to be settled by an assent as general and as prompt as this maxim : Wliatev er is, is. 1 For an excellent exposition of the content of the term savage, cf. Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1, p. 31, and note; also chap. 3, pp. 46 sq., London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1887. — Tr. 86 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i Th. It is absolutely impossible that there be truths of reason as evident as those which are identical or immediate. And, although you can truly say that ethics has principles which are not demonstrable, and that one of the first and most practical is, that we ought to pursue joy and avoid sorrow, it is needful to add that this is not a truth which is known purely by reason, since it is based upon internal experience, or upon confused knowledge, for we do not feel what joy or sadness is. Ph. It is only through processes of reasoning, through lan- guage, and through some mental application, that you can be assured of practical truths. Th. Though that were so, they would not be less innate. However, the maxim I just adduced appears of another na- ture j it is not known by the reason, but, so to speak, by an instinct. It is an innate principle, but it does not form a part of the natural light, for it is not known luminously. But this principle admitted, you can draw from it scientific con- sequences, and I commend most heartily what you just said of ethics as a demonstrative science. Let us note also that it teaches truths so evident that thieves, pirates, and bandits are forced to observe them among themselves. § 2. Ph. But bandits keep the rules of justice among them- selves without considering them as innate principles. Tit. What matters it ? Does the world concern itself about questions of theory ? Ph. They observe the maxims of justice only as convenient rules, the practice of which is absolutely necessary to the con- servation of their society. Th. [Very well. You could say nothing better in general in respect to all men. And thus it is that these laws are written in the soul, namely, as the consequences of our preservation and of our true welfare. Do you imagine that we suppose that truths are in the understanding as independent the one of the other as the edicts of the praetor were on his placard or album ? I put aside here the instinct which prompts man to love man, of which I shall presently speak, for now I wish to speak only of truths in so far as they are known by the reason. I admit, also, that certain rules of justice cannot be demon- strated, in all their extent and perfection, without supposing ch. nj ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING S7 the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and these, where the instinct of humanity does not impel us, are written in the soul only as other derivative truths.] Those, however, who base justice only upon the necessities of this life and upon the need they have of it, rather than upon the pleas- ure they ought to take in it, which is the greatest when God is its ground, are liable to resemble a little the society of bandits. Sit spes fallencli, miscebunt sacra profanis. 1 § 3. Ph. I agree with you that nature has put in all men the desire for happiness and a strong aversion to misery. These are the truly innate practical principles, and principles which, according to the purpose of every practical principle, have a continual influence upon all our actions. But they are inclinations of the soul toward the good, and not impressions 2 of some truth which is written in our understanding. Th. [I am delighted, sir, to see that you admit in effect innate truths, as I shall presently say. This principle agrees sufficiently with that which I just indicated, which prompts us to seek joy and shun sorrow. For felicity is only a last- ing joy. Our inclination, however, does not tend to felicity proper, but to joy — that is to say, to the present ; it is the reason which prompts to future and enduring welfare. Now, the inclination, expressed by the understanding, passes into a precept or practical truth ; and if the inclination is innate, the truth is innate also, there being nothing in the soul which may not be expressed in the understanding, but not always by a consideration actually distinct, as I have sufficiently shown. The instincts also are not always practical ; there are some which contain theoretical truths, and such are the internal principles of the sciences and of reasoning, when, without rec- ognizing the reason in them, we employ them by a natural instinct. And in this sense you cannot dispense with the recognition of innate principles, even though you might be willing to deny that derivative truths are innate. But this would be a question of name merely after the explanation I 1 Of. Hor. Epist., 1, 16, 54. Horace has "rniscebis." — Tr. 2 Erdmann and Jacques read, " des imperfections de quelque verite." Ger- hardt reads, "des impressions cle quelque verite." Locke has, "impressions of truth." Book I., chap. 3, § 3. Vol. 1, p. 158, line 5, Bohn's edition.— Tr. 88 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i have given of what I call innate. And if any one desires to , give this appellation only to the truths which are received at first by instinct, I shall not contest the point with him.] Ph. That is well. But if there were in our soul certain characters imprinted there by nature, like so many principles of knowledge, we could only perceive them acting in us, as we feel the influence of the two principles which are constantly active in us — namely, the desire of happiness and the fear of misery. Th. [There are principles of knowledge which influence us as constantly in our reasoning processes as these practical prin- ciples influence us in our volitions ; for example, everybody employs the rules of deduction by a natural logic without being aware of it. § 4. Ph. The rules of Morality need to be proved ; they are then not innate, like that rule which is the source of the vir- tues which concern society : Do to another only what you would have him do to yourself. Th. You always make me the objection which I have al- ready refuted. I agree with you that there are moral rules which are not innate principles ; but that does not prevent them from being innate truths, for a derivative truth will be innate, supposing that we can draw it from our mind. But there are innate truths, which we find in us in two ways — by insight and by instinct. Those which I have just indicated, show by our ideas what natural insight accomplishes. But there are conclusions of natural light which are principles in relation to instinct. It is thus that we are prompted to acts of human- ity, by instinct because it pleases us, and by reason because it is just. There are then in us truths of instinct, which are innate principles, which we feel and approve, although we have not the proof of them which we obtain, however, when we give a reason for this instinct. It is thus that we make use of the laws of deduction conformably to a confused knowledge, and as by instinct, but logicians show the reason of them, as mathematicians also give a reason for what they do without thinking in walking and leaping. As for the rule which states that we ought to do to others only what we would have them do to us, it needs not only proof, but also to be proclaimed. We should wish too much for ourselves if we could have our own ch. ii] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 89 way ; shall we say then that we also owe too much to others ? 1 You will tell me that the rule means only a just will. But thus this rule, very far from being adequate to serve as a measure, would itself need one. The true sense of the rule is, that the place of another is the true point of view for equi- table judgment when we attempt it.] § 9. Ph. Bad acts are often committed without any remorse of conscience ; for example, when cities are carried by storm, the soldiers commit, without scruple, the worst acts ; some civilized nations have exposed their children, some Caribbees castrate theirs in order to fatten and eat them. Garcilasso de la Vega 2 reports that certain peoples of Peru took prisoners in order to make concubines of them, and supported the children up to the age of thirteen, after which they ate them, and treated in the same manner the mothers so soon as they no longer bore children. In the travels of Baumgarten 3 it is re- lated that there was a Santon 4 in Egypt who passed for a holy man, eo quod non foeminarum unquam esset ac puerorum, sed -tantum asellarum concubitor atque mularum. Th. Moral science (over and above the instincts like that which makes us seek joy and shun sadness) is not otherwise innate than is arithmetic, for it depends likewise upon demon- strations which internal light furnishes. And as the dem- onstrations do not at once leap into sight, it is no great wonder, if men do not perceive always and at once all that they pos- sess in themselves, and do not read quite readily the characters of the natural laiv, which God, according to St. Paul, 5 has writ- ten in their minds. As morality, however, is more important than arithmetic, God has given to man instincts which prompt 1 This sentence is found in the texts of Erdmann and Gerhardt ; it is "want- ing in that of Jacques. — Tr. 2 Garcilasso de la Vega, 1540-1616, the son of an Inca princess, and a Span- ish conqueror, a companion of Pizarro. His Commentaries reales was pub- lished in two parts, the first at Lisbon, 1609, giving an account of the native traditions, customs, and history previous to the Spanish conquest ; the second under the separate title of Historic, General del Peru, Cordova, 1617, treating of the Spanish conquest. The earlier and more important part of the work has been translated, with "learned and ingenious notes," by Clements R. Markham, and published in the collection of the Hakluyt Society, 2 vols., London : 1869, 1871. — Tr. 3 Martin Baumgarten, 1473-1535, Travels through Egypt, Arabia, etc. In Churchill, O. and J. Col., Vol. 1, 1744. — Tr. 4 Mahometan monk. — Tr. 5 Rom. 2 : 15 ; cf. 1 : 19. — Tr. 90 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. at once and without reasoning to some portion of that which reason ordains ; just as we walk in obedience to the laws of mechanics without thinking of these laws, and as we eat, not only because eating is necessary for us, but further and much more because it gives us pleasure. But these instincts do not prompt to action in an invincible way ; the passions may resist them, prejudices may obscure them, and contrary customs alter them. Nevertheless, we agree most frequently with these instincts of conscience, and we follow them also when stronger impressions do not overcome them. The great- est and most healthy part of the human race bears them wit- ness. The Orientals, the Greeks and Eomans, the Bible and the Koran agree in respect to them; the Mahometan police are wont to punish the thing Baumgarten tells of, and it would be needful to be as brutalized as the American savage in order to approve their customs, full of a cruelty which sur- passes even that of the beasts. Yet these same savages per- ceive clearly what justice is on other occasions ; l and although there is no bad practice, perhaps, which may not be authorized in some respects and upon some occasions, there are few of them, however, which are not condemned very frequently and by the larger part of mankind. That which has not been at- tained without reason, and was not attained by reasoning alone, should be referred in part to the natural instincts. Custom, tradition, discipline, are mingled therein, but it is due to in- stinct (le naturel) that custom is turned more generally to the good side of these duties. In the same way, 2 the tradition of God's existence is due to instinct (le naturel). Now nature i Of. J. G. Schurman, The Ethical Import of Darwinism, pp. 256-260, New York': Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887. He states that " some gropings amid the general darkness incline me, at least tentatively, to the belief that, apart from the domestic virtues, there is no such great difference between the morals of Christians and the morals of savages" (p. 256). This statement is modified further on, pp. 258, 259, and finally takes the following form : "The fighting men, actual and potential, in every uncivilized community recognize the same rights, obligations, and duties toward one another as constitute the essence of civilized morality. You never find a man without a moral nature, a nature essentially like our own ; but the objects he includes within the scope of its outgoings vary" (p. 259). For the real significance of such facts, cf. Ex- Pres. E. G. Robinson, of Brown University, Principles and Practice of Moral- ity, p. 43, Boston: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1888. — Tk. 2 Gerhardt reads, "C'est comme le naturel," etc.; Erdmann and Jacques, " Le naturel," etc. — Tr. en. ii] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 91 gives to man and also to most of the animals affectionate and tender feeling for those of their species. The tiger even par- cit cognatis masculis; 1 whence comes this bon mot of a Soman jurisconsult, Quia inter omnes homines natura cognationem constituit, unde hominum homini insicliari nefas esse. Spiders form almost the only exception, and these eat one another to this extent that the female devours the male after having enjoyed him. Besides this general instinct of society, which may be called philanthropy in man, there are some more par- ticular forms of it, as the affection between the male and the female, the love which father and mother bear toward the chil- dren, which the Greeks call aropyy, 2 and other similar inclina- tions which make this natural law, or this image of law rather, which, according to Roman jurisconsults, nature has taught the animals. But in man in particular there is found a certain regard for dignity, for propriety, which leads him to conceal the things which lower us, to be sparing of shame, to have repugnance for incests, to bury dead bodies, not to eat men at all, nor living animals. One is led further to be careful of his reputation, even beyond need, and of life ; to be subject to remorse of conscience, and to feel these laniatus et ictus, these tortures and torments of which Tacitus, following Plato, speaks ; 3 besides the fear of a future and of a supreme power which arises, moreover,, naturally enough. There is reality in all that ; but at bottom these natural impressions, whatever they may be, are only aids to the reason and indices of the plan of nature. Custom, education, tradition, reason, contrib- ute much, but human nature ceases not to participate therein. It is true that without the reason these aids would not suffice to give a complete certitude to morals. Finally, will you -deny that man is naturally led, for example, to withdraw from vile things, under a pretext that races are found who like to speak only of filth, that there are some, indeed, whose mode of life obliges them to handle excrements, and that there are people of Boutan, where those of the king pass as an aromatic ? I think that you are of my opinion at bottom in regard to these natural instincts which tend toward what is right and decent ; i Jut. Sat., 15, 159-160. — Tr. 2 The reading (nom. cnopy-q) of Erdmann and Jacques. Gerhardt's reading, bpy'w, is evidently an error. — Tr. 3 Gorgias, 524 E ; Ann. 6, 6. — Tr. 92 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE [bk. i although you will say, perhaps, as you have said with regard to the instinct which prompts to joy and felicity, that these impressions are not innate truths. But I have already replied that every feeling is the perception of a truth, and that the natural feeling is the (perception) of an innate truth, but very often confused, as are the experiences of the external senses ; thus you can distinguish the innate truths from the natural light (which contains only the distinctly knowable), as the genus must be distinguished from its species, since the innate truths comprehend both the instincts and the natural light.'] § 11. Ph. A person who knew the natural limits of justice and injustice, and (who) would not cease confusing them with each other, could only be regarded as the declared enemy of the repose and the welfare of the society of which he is a mem- ber. But men confuse them every moment, consequently they do not know them. Th. [That is taking things a little too theoretically. It happens every day that men act contrary to their knowledge in concealing these (limits) from themselves when they turn the mind elsewhere, in order to follow their passions ; otherwise, we should not see people eating and drinking what they know must cause them sickness and even death. They would not neglect their business ; they would not do what entire nations have done in certain respects. The future and reason rarely make so strong an impression as the present and the senses. That Italian knew this well, who, before being put to torture, proposed to have the gallows continually in sight during the torments in order to resist them, and they heard him say some- times, " Io ti vedo," which he explained afterward when he had escaped. Unless you firmly resolve to look upon the true good and the true evil with the purpose of following or shunning them, you find yourself carried away, and it happens, with re- gard to the most important needs of this life, as it happens with regard to paradise and hell in the case of those, indeed, who believe in them the most : — Cantantur hsec, laudantur hsec, Dicuntur, audiuntur. Scribuntur haec, leguntur hsec, Et lecta negliguntur.] ch. ii] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 93 Ph. Every principle which you suppose innate can only be known by each one as just and advantageous. Th. [You always return to this supposition, which I have refuted so many times, that every innate truth is known always and by all.] § 12. Ph. But a public permission to violate the law proves that this law is uot innate ; for example, the law requiring the love and* preservation of children was violated among the ancients when they permitted their exposure. Th. [This violation supposed, it follows only that you have not well read these characters of nature written in our soul, but sometimes obscure enough by reason of our excesses, not to mention that, in order to have a perfectly clear perception of the necessity of duties, men must see the demonstration of them — a condition that is rarely fulfilled. If geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate it but little less, notwith- standing all the demonstrations of Euclid 1 and of Archimedes, 1 which you would call dreams and believe full of paralogisms ; and Joseph Scaliger, Hobbes, 2 and others, who have written against Euclid and Archimedes, would not find themselves in such a small company as at present. It was only the passion for glory, which these authors believed they found in the quad- rature of the circle and other difficult problems, which could 1 Euclid, not to be confounded with Euclid of Megara, a pupil of Socrates, founder of the Megarian school, the fundamental principle of whose philosophy- was the union of the Eleatic idea of being with the Socratic idea of the good. The date of neither his birth nor death is known. Proclus, the Neo-Platonist, 410-485 a.d., says that Euclid lived in the time of Ptolemy I., king of Egypt, who reigned from 323-285 b.c, and that he was younger than Plato's associates, but older than Eratosthenes, "276-2—196-2 B.C.," "the celebrated scholar whose chronological dates were adopted for the history of philosophy " (Zeller, Outlines, §§ 3, 66), and Archimedes, 287-212 b.c. Proclus preserves Euclid's reply to King Ptolemy, who asked him if there were no easier way to learn geometry than by studying his elements. "There is no royal road to geom- etry."— Tr, 2 Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679. The statement of his geometrical principles in opposition to those of Euclid is found in the Appendix to the English trans- lation of the Be Gorpore, which appeared about the middle of 1656, entitled Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, one of Geometry, the other of Astronomy, in the University of Oxford, English Works, Vol. 7, pp. 181-356. For an account of the controversy in which these appeared, cf. George Croom Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 167-178 (Philosophical Classics). Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1886. —Tr. 91 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i blind to such a point persons of so great merit. And if others had the same interest, they would make use of it in much the same manner.] Ph. Every duty carries the idea of law, and a law cannot be known or supposed without a legislator who has prescribed it, or without reward and without punishment. Th. [There can be natural rewards and penalties without a legislator ; intemperance, for example, is punished by disease. As this, however, does not injure all at first, I admit that there are few precepts to which you would necessarily be bound if there were not a God who leaves no crime without chastise- ment, no good act without reward.] Ph. The ideas of a God and of a life to come must then also be innate. Th. [I am agreed in the sense in which I have explained myself.] Ph. But these ideas are so far from being written by nature in the minds of all men, that they even do not appear very clear and very distinct in the minds of many students, who also pro- fess to examine things with some accuracy ; so far are they from being known by every human being. TJi. You return again to the same proposition, which main- tains that what is not known is not innate, which I have, how- ever, refuted so many times. What is innate is not at first known clearly and distinctly as such; often much attention and method is necessary in order to its perception, the student- class do not always adduce it, still less every human being. § 13. Ph. But if men can be ignorant of or call in question that which is innate, it is in vain for you to speak to us of in- nate principles, and to claim to show us their necessity ; very far from their being able to serve as our instructors in the truth and certitude of things, as is maintained, we shall find our- selves, with these principles, in the same state of uncertainty as if they were not in us. Th. You cannot call in question all the innate principles. You were agreed in regard to identical propositions or the principle of contradiction, admitting that there are incontest- able principles, although you would not then recognize them as innate ; but it does not at all follow that everything which ch. n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 95 is innate and necessarily connected with these innate princi- ples, is also at first indubitably evident. Ph. No one that I know of has yet undertaken to give us an exact catalogue of these principles. Th. But has any one hitherto given us a full and exact catalogue of the axioms of geometry ? § 15. Ph. My Lord Herbert 1 has been pleased to point out some of these principles, which are : 1. There is a supreme God. 2. He ought to be served. 3. Virtue united with piety is the best worship. 4. Eepentance for sin is necessary. 5. There are penalties and rewards after this life. I agree that these are evident truths and of such a nature that when well explained a reasonable person can scarcely avoid giving them his consent. But our friends say that they are very far from being so many innate impressions, and if these five propositions are common notions written in our souls by the finger of God, there are many others which we ought also to put into this class. Th. I agree with you, sir, for I take all the necessary truths as innate, and I connect with them also the instincts. But, I agree with you, that these five propositions are not innate prin- ciples ; for I hold that they can and ought to be proved. § 18. .Ph. In the third proposition, that virtue is the wor- ship most agreeable to God, it is not clear what- is meant by virtue. If you understand it in the sense most commonly given to the term, I mean that which passes as praiseworthy according to the different opinions which prevail in different countries, this proposition is so far from being evident that it is not even true. If you call virtue 2 the acts which are con- formed to the will of God, this will be almost idem per idem, and the proposition will teach us nothing of importance ; for it would mean only that God is pleased with that which is con- formed to his will. It is the same with the notion of sin in the fourth proposition. i Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, 1581-1648. His T)e Veritate, Paris, 1624, has had considerable influence on English philosophical and religious thought, and is of some importance in the interxDretation of the polemic of Locke's Essay. — Tr. 2 For an excellent but brief statement and discussion of the main theories of virtue, cf. E. G. Robinson: Principles and Practice of Morality, pp. 140- 180.— Tk. 96 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OE LOCKE [bk.i Th. I do not remember to have remarked that virtue is commonly taken as something which depends upon opinion; at least, the philosophers do not make it that. It is true that the name of virtue depends upon the opinion of those who give it to different habits or actions, according as they deem them good or bad and use their reason ; but all are sufficiently agreed as to the notion of virtue in general, although they dif- fer in its application. According to Aristotle 1 and several others, virtue is a habit of restraining the passions by the rea- son, and still more, simply a habit of acting according to rea- son. And that cannot fail to be agreeable to him who is the supreme and final reason of things, to whom nothing is indif- ferent, and the acts of rational creatures less than all others. § 20. Ph. You are wont to say that the custom, the educa- tion, and the general opinions of those with whom you con- verse may obscure these principles of morality which you suppose innate. But if this reply is a good one, it annihilates the proof which you pretend to draw from universal consent. The reasoning of many men reduces to this : The principles which men of right reason admit are innate ; we and those of our mind are men of right reason ; consequently our princi- ples are innate. A pleasant method of reasoning, which goes straight on to infallibility ! Th. For myself, I make use of universal consent, not as a principal proof, but as a confirmatory one ; for innate truths taken as the natural light of reason bear their marks with them as does geometry, for they are wrapped up in the im- mediate principles which you yourselves admit as incontesta- ble. But I grant that it is more difficult to distinguish the instincts and some other natural habits from custom, although it may very often be possible so to do. For the rest, it appears to me that people who have cultivated their minds have some ground for attributing the use of right reason to themselves rather than to the barbarians, since in subduing them almost as easily as they do animals they show sufficiently their supe- 1 Eth. Nic. II. 6, ad init. Of. Zeller : Outlines of the Hist, of Greek Philos., § 61 ; and E. Wallace : Outlines of the Philos. of Aristotle, 3d ed., § 59, pp. 97- 99. Cambridge : University Press, 1883. In connection with each section of his brief English statement and exposition, Wallace gives the Greek text of " the more important passages in Aristotle's writings," with references to the Berlin Academy edition of Aristotle. — Tr. ch. n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 97 riority. But if they cannot always succeed in this, it is be- cause just like the animals they conceal themselves in the thick forests, where it is difficult to hunt them down and the game is not worth the candle. It is doubtless an advantage to have cultivated the mind, and if we may speak for barbarism as against culture, we shall also have the right to attack rea- son in favor of the animals, and to take seriously the witty sallies of M. Despreaux, 1 in one of his satires, where, in order to contest with man his prerogative over the animals, he asks, whether, The bear is afraid of the passer-by, or the passer-by of the bear ; And if, by decree of the shepherds of Libya, The lions would vacate the parks of Numidia, etc. We must, however, admit that there are some points in which the barbarians surpass us, especially as regards vigor of body ; and as regards the soul even we may say that in certain respects their practical morality is better than ours, because they have not the avarice of hoarding nor the ambition of ruling. And we may even add that association with Christians has made them worse in many respects. 2 They have taught them drunkenness (when carrying them the water of life), swearing, blasphemy, and other vices, which were little known to them. There is with us more of good and of evil than with them : a bad Euro- pean is worse than a savage — he refines upon evil. 3 Still, nothing should prevent men from uniting the advantages which nature gives to these peoples with those which reason gives us. 1 Nicolas Boileau-Despreanx, 1036-1711. The passage quoted is from Sat. 8, 62-64. The text as given by all the editions I have been able to consult, twelve, ranging from 1716-1873, reads thus : "L'ours a peur du passant, ou le passant de Tours; Et si, sur un e'dit des patres de Nubie, Les lions de Barca videraient la Lybie;" etc. Lines 63 and 64 of the text, as given by Leibnitz, editions of Gerhardt and Erdmann, Jacques modernizing the spelling and correcting the misplacement of " de " and " des " in line 63, read thus: "Et si par un e'dit de pastres des Lybie Les Lions vuideroient les pares de Numidie," etc. It seems evident that Leibnitz misquoted the lines. — Tr. 2 Compare J. G. Schurman : The Ethical Import of Darwinism, pp. 256-260 as above. — Tr. 3 The French is : " il rafine sur le mal." — Tr. 98 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i Ph. But what reply do you make, sir, to this dilemma of one of my friends ? I would be pleased, he says, to have the advocates of innate ideas tell me whether these principles can or cannot be effaced by education and custom. If they cannot be effaced we ought to find them in all men, and they should clearly appear in the mind of each particular man. If they can be altered by extraneous ideas, they ought to appear more distinctly and with more lustre the nearer they are to their source. I mean in children or illiterate people, upon whom extraneous opinions have made less impression. Let them take which side they please, they will clearly see, he says, that it is contradicted by indubitable facts and by continual expe- rience. Th. I am astonished that your clever friend has confounded obscurity with effacement, as some in your party confound non- being with no7i-ap}oearance. Innate ideas and truths cannot be effaced, but they are obscured in all men (as they are now) by their inclination toward the needs of the body, and oftener still by the occurrence of bad customs. These characteristics of the internal light would always be shining in the under- standing and would give fervor to the will, if the confused perceptions of sense did not engross our attention. It is the struggle of which Holy Scripture no less than ancient and modern philosophy speaks. Ph. Thus, then, we find ourselves in darkness as thick and in uncertainty as great as if there were no such light. Th. God forbid; we should have neither science nor law, nay, not even reason. § 21, 22, etc. Ph. I hope that you will at least admit the force of prejudice, which often causes that to pass as natural which has come from the bad instruction to which children have been exposed, and the bad customs which education and association have given them. Th. I admit that the excellent author whom you follow says some very fine things upon that subject, and which have their value if they are taken as they should be ; but I do not believe that they are opposed to the doctrine properly understood of nature or of innate truths. And I am confident that he will not extend his remarks too far ; for I am equally persuaded that a great many opinions pass for truths which are only the effects ch. n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 99 of custom and of credulity, and that there are many such opin- ions, too, which certain philosophers would fain account for as matters of prejudice, which are, however, grounded in right reason and in nature. There is as much or more ground for de- fending ourselves from those who through ambition oftenest make pretensions to innovation, than for challenging ancient im- pressions. And after having meditated sufficiently upon ancient and modern thought, I have found that the majority of the re- ceived doctrines may bear a good sense. So that I wish that sensible men would seek to satisfy their ambition by occupy- ing themselves rather in building and advancing than in retro- grading and destroying. And I desire them to resemble the Romans who constructed beautiful public works, rather than that Vandal king 1 whom his mother charged to seek the de- struction of these grand structures, since he could not hope for the glory of equalling them. Ph. The aim of the clever class who have contended against innate truths has been to prevent men from handing round their prejudices and seeking to cover their idleness beneath this fair name. Th. We are agreed upon this point, for, very far from ap- proving that doubtful principles be received, I would, for my- self, seek even the demonstration of the axioms of Euclid, as some ancients also have done. And when you ask the means of knowing and examining innate principles, I reply, following what I said above, that with the exception of the instincts whose reason is unknown, you must try to reduce them to first principles, that is to say, to axioms identical or immediate by means of definitions, which are nothing else than a distinct exposition of ideas. I do not doubt even but that your friends, who have hitherto been opposed to innate truths, would ap- prove this method, which appears consonant with their princi- pal aim. 1 Ckrocus, who with the Sueves and Alans is said to have passed over the Rhine near Mayence, and following the evil counsel of his mother, to have ravaged in the most frightful manner in Germany as in Gaul. The story is given in the Chronicle of Idatius, chap. 62. Cf. Bouquet, Eerum Gall, et Franc. Scriptores, Tom. 2, p. 464. — Tr. 100 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE CHAPTER III OTHER CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL § 3. Ph. You wish to reduce truths to first principles, and I grant you that if there is any such principle, it is without gainsaying this ; it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. It appears, however, difficult to maintain its innate character, since you must be convinced at the same time that the ideas of impossibility and identity are innate. Th. It is quite necessary that those who favor innate truths maintain and be convinced that these ideas are also innate, and I admit that I am of their opinion. The ideas of being, of possibility of identity, are so completely innate that they enter into all our thoughts and reasonings, and I regard them as essential to our mind ; but I have already said that we do not always pay them particular attention and that we discern them only with time. I have said hitherto that we are, so to speak, innate unto ourselves, and since we are beings, the being we is innate ; and the knowledge of being is wrapped up in that knowledge which we have of ourselves. There is some- thing similar in the case of other general notions. § 4. Ph. If the idea of identity is natural, and consequently so evident and so present to the mind that we ought to recog- nize it from the cradle, I would be pleased to have a child of seven years, and even a man of seventy, tell me whether a man who is a creature consisting of body and soul, is the same (man) when his body is changed, and whether, metempsychosis sup- posed, Euphorbus would be the same as Pythagoras. Th. I have stated sufficiently that what is natural to us is not known to us as such from the cradle; and even an idea may be known to us without our being able to decide at once all ques- tions which can be formed thereupon. It is as if some one main- tained that a child cannot have a knowledge of the square and its diagonal, because he will have difficulty in recognizing that the diagonal is incommensurable with the side of the square. As for the question itself, it appears to me demonstratively en. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 101 solved by the doctrine of Monads, which I have elsewhere 1 shown in its true light, and we shall speak more fully of this matter in the sequel. 1 Cf. the Essay, without title, Gerhardt, 4, 427 sq., written at the beginning of 1686, and referred to as " un petit discours de Metaphysique," in Leibnitz's letter, Feb. 1-11, 1686, to the Landgraf Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels, G. 2, 11. This ' Discours,' regarded by Leibnitz as the beginning of his philosophy, con- tains a summary, centring about the idea of the individual substance, of all his previous philosophical speculation. He gained this idea, and with it a seemingly satisfactory solution of the principal philosophical problem, at the end of 1685 or the beginning of 1686. For this idea, still in process of devel- opment, possessing the elements of force and individuality, but lacking those of continuity and perceptive activity evolved between 1686 and 1697, Leibnitz, in 1697, when the idea possessed all the elements essential to its completeness in his system, appropriated the term " monad." This term he borrowed, not from Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600, who used it in a similar though not precisely the same sense, but from Francois Mercure Van Helmout, 1618-1699. So far as known, the term "monad" is first mentioned in the letter to Fardella, Sept. 3-13, 1696, first published by Foucher de Careil, Nouv. lettr. et opusc. de Leibniz, p. 328, Paris, 1857. The doctrine in substauce till 1697, and thereafter in name, Leibnitz frequently set forth with increasing clearness and complete- ness in letters to his numerous correspondents, and in the " Acta Eruditorum " and the " Journal des Savans." Reference may be made, among others, to the following: Correspondence with Antoine Arnauld, 1612-1694, especially the letter dated Venice, Mar. 23, 1690, G. 2, 134; Erdmann, 107; Jacques, 1, 443; trans., Appendix, ; the two systematic elaborations of his system of the year 1695, the mathematical in the Specimen dynamicum p>ro admirandis naturse leyibus, etc., Gerhardt, Leibniz, math. Schrift., 6, 234 sq.; the meta- physical in the Systeme nouveau de la nature, etc., G. 4, 477; E. 124; trans., Appendix, ; De ipsa natura, etc., 1698, espec. §§ 11, 12, G. 4, 504 ; E. 154 ; J. 1, 455 (in French) ; trans., Appendix, ; Response (Replique, Erdmann) aux reflexions continues dans la seconde edition du Dictionnaire Critique de M. Bayle, etc., 1702, G. 4, 554; E. 183; trans., Appendix, ; Letters to Rud. Christ. Wagner De vi activa corporis, June 4, 1710, G. 7, 528; E. 465; trans., Duncan, Philos. Wks. of Leibnitz, 190; to Bierling, Aug. 12, 1711, G. 7, 500; E. 677; Principes de la nature, etc., c. 1714, G. 6, 598; E. 714; trans., Duncan, 209; La Monadoloc/ie, 1714, G. 6, 607; E. 705; trans., Duncan, 218, F. H. Hedge, "Jour. Spec. Philos.," Vol. 1, p. 129; Letters to Des Bosses, G. 2, 285 sq., passim, which present most penetrating discussions of Leibnitz's metaphysic and form the most ample commentary on the Monadoloc/ie ; to De Voider, 1643-1709, G. 2, 139 sq., passim, proving the intimate connection of Leibnitz's dynamic and metaphysic; to Bour°uet, Dec. 1714, G. 3, 575; E. 720; to Remond (de Montmort, E. 724), Feb. 11, 1715, §§ 3, 4, G. 3, 635; to Dangi- court, Sept. 1716, Dutens, Leibnit. opera omnia, 3, 499; E. 745. Of the pieces cited the most important are : The Letter to Arnauld, Mar. 23, 1690, the Systeme nouveau, the De ipsa natura, the Principes de la nature, and the Monado- logie. As Leibnitz was occupied, more or less as circumstances permitted, with the composition and revision of his ' New Essays,' from 1700, when Coste's translation of Locke's 'Essay' appeared, to 1709 and perhaps later (vid. ante, p. 9 and note), possibly even as late as 1714 or 1716, the relative date of com- position of the several pieces here cited to that of the ' New Essays ' can easily 102 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i § 6. Ph. [I see very well that to you I should object in vain that the axiom which declares that the whole is greater than its part is not innate, nnder pretext that the ideas of whole and part are relative, dependent upon those of number and exten- sion ; since you would apparently maintain that there are ideas conditionally innate, and that those of number and extension are to such a degree innate. 1 ] Th. You are right, and indeed I rather believe that the idea of extension is posterior to that of whole and part. § 7. Ph. [What say you of the truth that God should be worshipped ; is it innate ?] Th. I believe that the duty of worshipping God declares that on occasion you ought to show that you honor him beyond every other object, and that this is a necessary consequence of the idea of him and of his existence ; which signifies with me that this truth is innate. § 8. Ph. But the atheists seem to prove by their example that the idea of God is not innate. And without speaking of those whom the ancients have mentioned, have not entire nations been discovered, who have no idea of God nor of the terms which denote God and the soul, as at the bay of Soldania, in Brazil, in the Caribbee Islands, in Paraguay ? Th. [The late Mr. Fabricius, 2 a celebrated theologian of Heidelberg, has made an apology for the human race in order be approximated. On the whole subject, cf. L. Stein, Leibniz u. Spinoza, chap. 6, pp. 111-219, Berlin : G. Reimer, 1890, who traces the history of the rise of the monad-doctrine from 1680 till all the elements of the complete conception were present in 1697 ; E. Dillmann, E. neue Darstg. d. Leibniz. Monadenlehre auf Grund d. Quellen, Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1891, whose monograph is an elab- orate discussion of the entire subject with references to or quotations from all the sources. — Tr. 1 The French text is : " puisque vous soutiendre's apparemment, qu'il y a des idees innees respectives, et que celles des nombres et de l'e'tendue sont innees aussi." — Tr. 2 John Lewis Fabricius, 1632-1697. Professor, first of Greek, then of Philos- ophy and Theology, at Heidelberg. In 1664 he received the title of " Conseiller ecclesiastique de l'electeur palatin." Some years after, when Heidelberg was burning, he saved the archives of the church and the university, carrying them first to Eberbach, then to Frankfort, where he died. The title of the work referred to in the text (vid. ante, p. 21 also, where the name is given Fabritius, in accord with his own signature in the letter of Feb. 16, 1673, to Spinoza, offering him the professorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg) is: Apol- ogia generis humani contra calumniam atheismi. It appeared in 1662. His collected works, with a life, were published by J. H. Heidegger, Zurich, 1698, in 4to. — Tr. ch. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 103 to clear it of the imputation of atheism. He was an author of great accuracy, and decidedly above much prejudice; I do not, however, pretend to enter into this discussion of facts. I grant that entire peoples have never thought of the supreme sub- stance, nor of the nature of the soul. And I remember, that when you wished at my request, countenanced by the illus- trious Mr. Witsen, to obtain for me in Holland a translation of the Lord's Prayer into the language of Barantola, you were stopped at this point : hallowed be thy name, because you could not make the Barantoli understand what hallowed meant. I remember also that in the creed made for the Hot- tentots you were obliged to express Holy Spirit by words of the country which signify a pleasant and agreeable wind. 1 This was not unreasonable, for our Greek and Latin words Trvev/xa. anima, spiritus, mean ordinarily only the air or wind we breathe, as one of the most subtile things which we know through the senses ; and we begin through the senses to lead men little by little to what is beyond the senses. All this diffi- culty, however, which you find in attaining abstract knowledge effects nothing against innate knowledge. There are peoples who have no word corresponding to the word being ; does any one doubt their knowledge of what being is, although they seldom think of it in the abstract ? Besides I find what I have read in our excellent author on the idea of God (Essay on Understanding, Book I., chap. 3, 2 § 9) so beautiful and so to my liking that I cannot refrain from quoting it. 3 Here it is : " Men can scarcely avoid having some kind of idea of things of which those with whom they converse often have occasion to speak under certain names, and if the thing is one which carries with it the idea of excellence, of grandeur, or of some extraordinary quality which interests in some point and which impresses itself upon the mind under the idea of an absolute and irresistible power which none can help fearing " (I add : and under the idea of a superlatively great goodness which none can help loving), "such an idea ought, according to all i Cf. Book III., chap. 1, § 5, Th. (2). — Tr. 2 Chap. 4, in Locke's treatise, Bohn's ed. — Tr. 3 The French translation of Locke's original, is, in my judgment, clearer in form of statement and style than Locke himself. Hence I have retranslated the French into English. If any reader prefers Locke's original, he can easily find it in the Philos. Works, Bohn's ed., Vol. 1, p. 188. — Tr. 104 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i appearances, to make the strongest impression and to spread farther than any other, especially if it is an idea which accords with the simplest insight of reason, and which flows naturally from every part of knowledge. Now such is the idea of God, for the brilliant marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that every rational creature who will reflect thereupon cannot fail to dis- cover the author of all these marvels ; and the impression that the discovery of such a Being must naturally make upon the souls of all those who have once heard him spoken of is so great, and carries with it thoughts of so great weight and so adapted to spread themselves in the world, that it appears to me wholly strange that an entire nation of men can be found upon the earth so stupid as to have no idea of God. This, I say, seems to me as surprising as to think of men who should have no idea of numbers or of fire." I would I might always be allowed to copy word for word a number of other excellent passages of our author, which we are obliged to pass by. I will only say here, that this author, in speaking of the simplest lights of reason, which agree with the idea of God, and of that which naturally proceeds from it, ap- pears to differ but little from my view of innate truths ; and, concerning this, that it appears to him as strange that there may be men without any idea of God, as it would be surprising to find men who had no idea of numbers or of fire, I will remark that the inhabitants of the Marian Islands, to which has been given the name of the Queen of Spain, who has protected mis- sions there, had no knowledge of fire when they were dis- covered, as appears from the narrative which Eev. Father Gobien, 1 a French Jesuit, charged with the care of distant missions, has given to the public and sent to me.] § 16. Ph. If you are right in concluding that the idea of God is innate, from the fact that all enlightened races have had this idea, virtue ought also to be innate because enlightened races have always had a true idea of it. Th. [Not virtue, but the idea of virtue, is innate, and per- haps you intend only that.] 1 Charles le Gobien, 1653-1708. Professor of Philosophy at Tours; secre- tary and procurator of Chinese missionaries; wrote and published a number of works on these missions in China ; his Histoire des Isles Mariannes, Parisi 1700, 12mo.— Tr. en. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 105 Ph. It is as certain that there is a God, as it is certain that the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are equal. And there has never been a rational creature who applied himself sincerely to the examination of the truth of these two propositions who has failed to give them his con- sent. Nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that there are many men who, having never turned their thoughts in this direction, are ignorant equally of these two truths. Th. [I admit it ; but that does not prevent them from being innate — that is to say, does not prevent you from being able to find them in yourself.] § 18. Ph. It would be more advantageous to have an innate idea of substance; but it turns out that we do not have it, either innate or acquired, since we have it neither through sensation nor reflection. Th, [I am of opinion that reflection suffices to discover the idea of substance within ourselves, who are substances. And this notion is one of the most important. But we shall speak of it, perhaps more fully, in the sequel of our con- ference.] § 20. 1 Ph. If there are innate ideas in the mind without the mind's being actually aware of their presence, they must at least be in the memory, whence they must be drawn by means of reminiscence — that is to say, be known, when memory re- calls them, as so many perceptions which have been in the mind before, unless reminiscence can subsist without reminis- cence. For this conviction, where it is an inwardly certain one, that a given idea has previously been in^our mind, is properly what distinguishes reminiscence from every other kind of thinking. Th. [In order that knowledge, ideas, or truths be in our mind, it is not necessary that we have ever actually thought of them ; they are only natural habitudes ; i.e. dispositions and aptitudes, active and passive, and more than a tabula rasa. It is true, however, that the Platonists believed that we have already actually thought of that which we recognize in our- selves ; and to refute them it is insufficient to say that we do not at all remember it, for it is certain that an infinite number 1 Gerhardt's reading. So also Locke, Philos. Works, Vol. 1, p. 197, Bolin's ed. — Tr. 106 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i of thoughts recur to us which we have forgotten that we had. It has happened that a man believed he had composed a new verse, which it turned out he read word for word a long time previous in some ancient poet. And often we have an extraordinary facility of conceiving certain things, because we formerly conceived them, without remembering them. It is possible that a child, having become blind, forgets ever having seen light and colors, as happened at the age of two and a half years from small-pox in the case of the celebrated Ulric Schoen- berg, a native of Weide, in the Upper Palatinate, who died at Konigsberg, in Prussia, in 1649, where he taught philosophy and mathematics to the admiration of every one. It may be that such a man has remaining effects of former impressions without remembering them. I believe that dreams often thus revive in us former thoughts. Julius Scaliger, 1 having cele- brated in verse the illustrious men of Verona, a certain self- styled Brugnolus, a Bavarian by birth, but afterward estab- lished at Verona., appeared to him in a dream and complained that he had been forgotten. Julius Scaliger, not remembering to have heard him spoken of before, did not allow himself to make elegiac verses in his honor in consequence of this dream. At length, the son, Joseph Scaliger, 2 travelling in Italy, learned more particularly that there had been formerly at Verona a celebrated grammarian or learned critic of this name, who had contributed to the re-establishment of polite literature in Italy. This story is found in the poems of Scaliger the father, to- gether with the elegy, and in the letters of the son. It is related also in the " Scaligerana," 3 which are culled from the 1 Julius Caesar Scaliger, 1484-1558. His Latin verse appeared in successive volumes in 1533, 1534, 1539, 1546, 1574. His tastes were, however, philosophi- cal and scientific rather than literary. His scientific works, in the form of commentaries, have only a historical interest. The Exotericarum exercitatio- num liber, Paris, 1557, 4to, a philosophical treatise on the Be Subtilitate, 1552, of Cardan (vicl. ante, p. 67, note 1), is the work which hest makes known Scaliger as a philosopher. It was a popular text-book until the final fall of Aristotle's physics. — Tr. 2 Joseph Justus Scaliger, 1540-1609, reputed the greatest scholar of modern times. He was the first to set forth and apply sound principles of textual criticism and emendation in his editions of some of the classical authors, and with him arose a new school of historical criticism. He reconstructed the lost Chronicle of Eusebius, a work of considerable importance in the study of ancient history. — Tr. 3 Two collections of anecdotes concerning Joseph Scaliger, numbered accord- ch. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 107 conversations of Joseph Scaliger. It is very likely that Julius Scaliger had known something of Brugnol which he no longer remembered, and that the dream was partly the revival of a former idea, although he may not have had that reminiscence, properly so called, which makes us know that we have already had this same idea ; at least, I see no necessity which obliges us to assert that there remains no trace of a perception when there is not enough of it to remind us that we have had it.] § 24. Ph. [I must admit that your reply is natural enough to the difficulties which we have framed against innate truths. Perhaps, also, our authors do not contest them in the sense in which you maintain them. Thus I return only to say to you, sir] that we have had some reason to fear that the view of innate truths serves as a pretext for laziness, for exempting ourselves from the trouble of research, and gives opportunity to masters and teachers to lay down as a principle of principles that principles must not be questioned. Th. [I have already said that if it is the aim of your friends to advise the search for the proofs of the truths which they can receive, without distinguishing whether or not they are innate, we are entirely agreed ; and the view of innate truths, of the manner in which I take them, should deter no one from such search, for, besides being well to seek the reason of the instincts, it is one of my great maxims that it is good to seek demonstrations of the axioms also, and I remember that at Paris, when the late Mr. Roberval, 1 already an old man, was ing to their date of composition. The first was written in Latin by Francois Vertunien, a friend of Scaliger, who took notes of his conversations with Scaliger, especially of all criticisms or anecdotes worthy of preservation, and afterwards wrote them out. An advocate, Francois de Sigogne, bought the MS. long after the author's death, and published it at Saurner in 1669. The second was written in French and Latin by two youths named Vassan, who, when students at Leyden, habitually conversed after supper with Scaliger, then Professor of Belles Lettres there, and on their return to their rooms wrote out all they could remember of his conversation. Their MS. was finally published at La Haye, 1666, by Isaac Vossius. The edition of the Scaligerana, accounted the best, is that of 1740, 12mo. The story is told at length, and the Elegy of the elder Scaliger cited, in the Cologne ed. of the Scaligerana, 1695, pp. 69- 71. — Tr. 1 Gilles Personne de Roberval, a French geometer, born 1602, at Roberval, a small village of Beauvais, died 1675 at Paris. He was Professor of Mathematics in the Royal College of France for many years. One of the conditions of the tenure of this chair was that its holder should propose mathematical questions for solution, and resign in favor of any one solving them better than himself. 108 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. i laughed at because he wished to demonstrate those of Euclid after the example of Apollonius l and Proclus, 2 1 illustrated the utility of this investigation. As for the principle of those who say that it is wholly unnecessary to argue against the one who denies principles, it has no authority whatever in regard to these principles which can admit neither doubt nor proof. It is true that, in order to avoid scandal and disturbance, regula- tions may be made regarding public disputations and some other lectures, in virtue of which the discussion of certain established truths may be prohibited. But this is rather a question of police than of philosophy.] Roberval kept the chair till his death. He is best known for his original method for the construction of tangents. — Tr. 1 Apollonius of Perga, born probably about 250 B.C., died in the reign of Ptolemy Philopater, 222-205 b.c. Next to Archimedes, he was the most noted of the Greek geometers. His fame has been transmitted to modern times chiefly by his treatise on the Conic Sections, the best edition of which, and the only one containing the Greek text that has yet appeared, is : Apollonii pergaei conicorum libri octo, etc., ed. Halley : Oxford, 1710, folio. He was the first to show that all three of the conic sections can be cut from the same cone •by changing the jiosition of the intersecting plane. — Tr. 2 Proclus Diadochus, 410-485, " the great schoolman of Neo-Platonism," the doctrines of which received at his hands the final form in which they have come down to us. He came to Athens in his twentieth year, and remained there teaching and writing till his death. Among his writings now extant are a Treatise on the Sphere, Commentaries on Euclid, and on several of Plato's dialogues, and the wholly independent works Stoix^Wk? ©coAc^ikt), or Institutes of Theology, and the six books ei? iV rUaTwi-o? ®eo\oyiav, or Platonic Theology. His philosophical work is found for the most part in the Commentaries on Plato. For his mathematical work, ef. In primum Euclidis Elementorum librum Commentarii, ex recognitione G. Friedlein : Lipsife, 1873 ; also George Johnston Allman, Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid, Dublin: University Press, 1889; and in " Hermathena," a series of papers on literature, science, and phi- losophy, by members of Trinity College, Dublin, Nos. 5, 7, 10-13, Dublin: 1878, 1881, 1884-1887. For his philosophy, cf Zeller, Die Philos. d. Griech., 3d ed., 1881, Vol. 3, pp. 774 sq., and Outlines, § 101 ; Hegel, Gesch. d. Philos., 2d ed., Vol. 3, pp. 61-79; Alfred William Benn, The Greek Philosophers, Vol.2, pp. 358-360, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1882. The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, etc., were translated by Thomas Taylor, London, 1792, 2 vols, in 1, 4to. — Tr. NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING Book II. — Ideas CHAPTER I WHICH TREATS OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND EXAMINES BY THE WAY WHETHER THE MIND OF MAN ALWAYS THINKS § 1. Ph. Having examined the question of innate ideas, let us consider their nature and their differences. Is it not true that the idea is the object of thought ? Th. [I admit it, provided you add that it is an immediate internal object, and that this object is an expression of the na- ture or the qualities of things. If the idea were the form of thought, it would spring up and cease with the actual thought to which it corresponds ; but being the object it may exist pre- vious to and after the thoughts. External sensible objects are only mediate because they cannot act immediately upon the soul. 1 God alone is the external immediate object. We might say that the soul itself is its own immediate internal object ; but it is this in so far as it contains ideas, or what corresponds to things. For the soul is a little world, 2 in which distinct ideas are a representation of God, and in which confused ideas are a representation of the universe.] § 2. Ph. We who suppose that at the beginning the soul is a tabula rasa, void of all characters and without an idea, ask how it comes to receive ideas, and by what means it acquires this 1 Cf. Book IV., chaps. 9 and 11. The opposition here set up between mediate and immediate knowledge corresponds to Kant's a posteriori and a priori knowledge. — Tr. 2 Microcosm. — Tr. 109 110 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. ii prodigious quantity of them ? To that question the reply in a word is : From experience. Th. [This tabula rasa, of which so much is said, is in my £- opinion only a fiction which nature does not admit, and which is based only upon the imperfect notions of philosophers, like the vacuum, atoms, and rest, absolute or relative, of two parts of a whole, or like the primary matter 1 which is con- ceived as without form. Uniform things and those which con- tain no variety are never anything but abstractions, like time, space, and the other entities of pure mathematics. There is no body whatever whose parts are at rest, and there is no sub- stance whatever that has nothing by which to distinguish it from every other. Human souls differ, not only from other souls, but also among themselves, although the difference is not at all of the kind called specific. And, according to the proofs which I believe we have, every substantial thing, be it soul or body, has its own characteristic relation to every other; and the one must always differ from the other by intrinsic connotations. Not to mention the fact that those who speak so frequently of this tabula rasa after having taken away the ideas cannot say what remains, like the scholastic philoso- phers, who leave nothing in their primary matter. 1 You may perhaps reply that this tabula rasa of the philosophers means that the soul has by nature and originally only bare fac- ulties. But faculties without some act, in a word the pure powers of the school, are also only fictions, which nature knows not, and which are obtained only by the process of ab- straction. For where in the world will you ever find a faculty which shuts itself up in the power alone without performing any act ? There is always a particular disposition to action, and to one action rather than to another. And besides the disposition there is a tendency to action, of which tendencies there is always an infinity in each subject at once ; and these tendencies are never without some effect. Experience is nec- essary, I admit, in order that the soul be determined to such or such thoughts, and in order that it take notice of the ideas ) which are in us ; but by what means can experience and the I senses give ideas ? Has the soul windows, does it resemble tablets, is it like wax ? It is plain that all who so regard the 1 Materia Prima. — Tb. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 111 soul, represent it as at bottom corporeal. You oppose to me this axiom received by the philosophers, that there is nothing in the soul which does not come from the senses. But you must except the soul itself and its affections. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, excipe : nisi ipse intellectus. Now the soul comprises being, substance, unity, identity, cause, perception, reason, and many other notions which the senses cannot give. This view sufficiently agrees with your author of the Essay, who seeks the source of a good part of ideas in the spirit's reflec- tion upon its own nature. Ph. [I hope, then, that you will agree with this skilful author that all ideas come through sensation or through re- flection, that is to say, from observations which we make either upon objects exterior and sensible or upon the inner workings of our soul. Th. [In order to avoid a discussion upon what has delayed us too long, I declare to you in advance, sir, that when you say that ideas come to us from one or the other of these causes, I understand the statement to mean their actual perception, for I think I have shown that they are in us before they are perceived so far as they have any distinct character. § 9. Ph. [In the next place let us inquire when we must say that the soul begins to perceive and actually to think of ideas. I well know that there is an opinion which states that the soul always thinks, and that actual thought is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is from the body. § 10. But I cannot conceive that it is any more necessary for the soul always to think than for the body always to be in motion, per- ception of ideas being to the soul what movement is to the body. That appears to me very reasonable at least, and I would gladly know your view, sir, thereupon. Th. You have stated it, sir. Action is no more connected with the soul than with the body, a state without thought in the soul and an absolute repose in the body appearing to me equally contrary to nature, and without example in the world. A substance once in action, will be so always, for all the im- pressions remain and are merely mingled with other new ones. Striking a body, we arouse therein or determine rather an infinite number of vortices as in a liquid, for at bottom every solid has a degree of liquidity and every liquid a degree of 112 LEIBNITZ'S CEITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. ii solidity, and there are no means of ever stopping entirely these internal vortices. Now we may believe that if the body is never at rest, the soul, which corresponds to it, will never be without perception either.] Ph. But it is, perhaps, a privilege of the author and conserver of all things, that being infinite in his perfections, he never slum- bers nor sleeps. This is not granted to any finite being, or at least not to such a being as is the soul of man. Th'. [It is certain that we slumber and sleep, and that God is exempt from both. But it does not follow that we have no perception while asleep. Bather just the contrary is found to be the case, if we consider it carefully.] Ph. There is something in us which has the power to think ; [but it does not thereby follow that it is always in action.] Th. [Real powers are never simple possibilities. They have always tendency and action. Ph. But this proposition — the soul always thinks — is not self-evident. Th. I do not say it is. A little attention and reasoning is necessary to discover it ; the common people perceive it as little as they do the pressure of the air or the roundness of the earth.] Ph. I doubt if I thought last night ; this is a question of fact, it must be decided by sensible experiences. Th. [It is decided as it is proved, that there are imperceptible bodies and invisible movements, although certain persons treat them as absurd. There are also numberless perceptions little noticed which are not sufficiently distinguished to be perceived or remembered, but they become known through certain conse- quences.] Ph. There was a certain author who raised the objection that we maintain that the soul ceases to exist, because we are not sensible of its existence during our sleep. But this objection can arise only from a strange prepossession, for we do not say that there is no soul in man because we are not sensible of its existence during our sleep, but only that man cannot think without being aware of it. Th. [I have not read the book which contains this objection, but it would not have been wrong merely to object to you that it does not follow because the thought is not perceived, that it ceases for that reason ; for otherwise it could be said for the ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 113 same reason that there is no soul during the time in which it is not perceived. And to refute this objection it is necessary to point out in particular the thought that it is essential to it that it be perceived.] § 11. Ph. It is not easy to conceive that a thing can think and not be conscious that it thinks. Th. There is, doubtless, the knot of the affair and the diffi- culty which has embarrassed able men. But here are the means of extricating ourselves therefrom. We must consider that we think of many things at a time, but we attend only to the thoughts which are most distinct, and the process cannot go on otherwise, for if we should attend to all, we would have to think attentively of an infinite number of things at the same time, all of which we feel and which make an impression upon our senses. I say even more : there remains something of all our past thoughts, and none can ever be wholly effaced. Now when we sleep without dreaming and when we are stunned by some blow, fall, symptom, or other accident, an infinite number of minute confused sensations take form within us, and death itself can produce no other effect upon the souls of animals, who ought, doubtless, sooner or later, to acquire distinct per- ceptions, for all goes on in an orderly way in nature. I admit, however, that in this state of confusion, the soul would be with- out pleasure and without pain, for these are noticeable percep- tions. § 12. Ph. Is it not true that those with whom we have at present to do, [i.e. the Cartesians, who believe that the soul always thinks,] grant life to all animals, differing from man, without giving them a soul which knows and thinks ; and that these same (Cartesians) find no difficulty in saying that the soul can think independently of a body ? Th. [For myself, I am of another opinion, for although I agree with the Cartesians in their affirmation that the soul thinks always, I am not agreed with them in the two other points. I believe that the beasts have imperishable souls and that human and all other souls are never without some body. I hold also that God alone, as being an actus purus, is wholly exempt therefrom.] Ph. If you had been of the opinion of the Cartesians, I should have inferred therefrom, that the bodies of Castor or Pollux 1U LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. ii could be sometimes with, sometimes without a soul, though being always alive, and the soul having the ability also to be sometimes in one body and sometimes elsewhere, we might suppose that Castor and Pollux had only a single soul, which was active alternately in the body of these two men sleeping and awake by turns ; thus it would be two persons as distinct as Castor and Pollux could be. Th. I, in my turn, will make you another supposition, which appears more real. Is it not true that we must always admit that after some interval or some great change, one may fall into a state of general forgetfulness ? Sleidan 1 (they say), before his death, forgot all he knew ; and there are many other examples of this sad event. Suppose that such a man became young again and learned all anew, will he be another man on that account ? It is not then memory which, properly speaking, makes the same man. Nevertheless, the fiction of a soul which animates different bodies in turn, without concern- ing itself in one of these bodies with that which happens to it in the other, is one of those fictions contrary to the nature of things which arise from the imperfect notions of philosophers, as space without body and body without motion, and which dis- appear when one penetrates a little deeper ; for you must know 1 John Sleidan, original name Philipsohn, c. 1506-1556, the annalist of the Reformation. He was secretary for five years from 1536 to Cardinal du Bellay, minister of Francis I. of France. He was wont to copy all documents bearing upon the Reformation to which he had access, and upon the suggestion of Bucer to Philip of Hesse, after some delay was appointed, with the consent of the heads of the Schmalkaldic League, historian of the Reformation, with a salary and access to all necessary documents. He finished the first volume of his great work in 1545. His work was then interrupted by a diplomatic mis- sion in a French embassy to Henry VIII. of England. While there he improved every opportunity to collect materials for his history. In 1551 he was a mem- ber of the Council of Trent for Strassburg. On his return he was made Pro- fessor of Law at Strassburg, a position which enabled him to devote his whole- attention to his great work. It was finished for the press in 1554, and published at Strassburg in 1555. It is entitled : Commentariorum de statu religionis et reipublicss Carolo Quinto, Csesare, libri XXVI. The ed. of 1555 contained only 25 books ; that of 1559 the 26th and an apology of Sleidan, written by himself. The best edition is that of Francfort, 1785-86, 3 vols., 8vo. The work is "the most valuable contemporary history of the times of the reformation, and contains the largest collection of important documents." It is especially noteworthy for its accuracy, impartiality, and purity of style. There are two English translations, by John Daws, 1560, and G. Bohum, 1689. There are also translations in other languages. Cf. H. Baumgarten, Ueber Sleidanus Leben und Briefwechsel, 1878 ; Sleidans Briefwechsel, 1S81. — Te. ch. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 115 that each soul preserves all its preceding impressions, and cannot divide itself equally in the manner just mentioned ; the future in each substance is perfectly united to the past ; this is what constitutes the identity of the individual. Memory, furthermore, is not necessary, nor even always possible, because of the multitude of present and past impressions which co-op- erate in our present thoughts, for I do not believe that there are in man thoughts of which there is not some effect at least confused or some remnant mixed with subsequent thoughts. We can forget many things, but we could also remember them long after if we would recall them as we ought. § 13. Ph. Those who chance to sleep without dreaming can never be convinced that their thoughts are active. Th. [One is feebly conscious in sleep, even when it is dream- less. The process of waking up itself shows this, and the easier you are awakened the more you are conscious of what goes on without, although this consciousness is not always strong enough to cause you to awake.] § 14. Ph. It appears very difficult to conceive that the soul is thinking at this moment in a sleeping man and the next in one awake, without remembering its thoughts. Th. [Not only is that easy to conceive, but also something like it is observed every day that we are awake ; for we always have objects which strike our eyes and ears, and, as a result, the soul is touched also, without our taking notice of it, because our attention is bent upon other objects, until this object becomes strong enough to draw it to itself, by redoubling its action or by some other means ; it is like a particular sleep with reference to that object, and this sleep becomes general when our atten- tion ceases to regard all objects together. Division of 'attention, in order to weaken it, is also a means of putting yourself to sleep.] Ph. I learned from a man, who in his youth had applied him- self to study and had a tolerably felicitous memory, that he never had a dream until he had had the fever, from which he had just recovered at the time he spoke with me, at the age of twenty-five or twenty-six years. Th. [I have also been told of a student, more advanced in years, who never had a dream. But it is not upon dreams alone that you must base the perpetuity of the soul's perception, since I have shown how, even while asleep, it has some perception of what goes on without.] 110 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [bk. n § 15. Ph. To think frequently and not to preserve a single moment the memory of your thought, is to think in a useless manner. Th. [All impressions have their effect, but all the effects are not always perceptible ; when I turn to one side rather than to the other, it is very often through a series of minute impressions of which I am not conscious, and which render one movement a little more uncomfortable than the other. All our unpre- meditated actions are the results of a concurrence of minute perceptions, and even our customs and passions, which influ- ence so much our deliberations, come therefrom; for these habits grow little by little, and, consequently, without the minute perceptions, we should not arrive at these noticeable dis- positions. I have already remarked that he who would deny these effects in the sphere of morals, would imitate the poorly taught class who deny insensible corpuscles in physics ; and yet I see that among those who speak of liberty are some who, taking no notice of these unperceived impressions, capable of inclining the balance, imagine an entire indifference in moral actions, like that of the ass of Buridan 1 equally divided between two meadows. Concerning this we shall speak more fully later. I admit, however, that these impressions incline with- out necessitating. Ph. Perhaps we might say that in the case of a man awake who thinks, his body counts for something and that memory is preserved by means of marks in the brain, but when he is asleep the soul thinks apart by itself. 1 John Buridan, a celebrated Nominalist of the 14th century, the date of whose birth and death is unknown. He studied at Paris under William of Occam (died 1347) and was for many years Professor of Philosophy in the University of Paris, and in 1327 its rector. In philosophy his only authority was reason. In the third book, first question, of his Qusestiones in decern libros ethicorum Aristotelis, 1489, he discussed in an "independent and interesting manner " the question of the freedom of the will, reaching conclusions similar to those of Locke. In his view the liberty possessed by the soul consists in " a certain power of suspending the deliberative process, and determining the direction of the intellect ; otherwise the will is entirely dependent on the view of the mind, the last result of examination." The story of the ass as an illus- tration of the indeterminism of the will " is not," as Sir William Hamilton says (Reid, 8th ed., Vol. 1, p. 238, note) he has ascertained, "to be found in his writings." On Buridan, cf. Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos., English transla- tion, Vol. 1, pp. 465-466 ; Prantl, Gesch.