1 Perhaps in De Fin., 2, 16, § 52: " Oeulorum, inquit Plato, est in nobis sensus acerrimus, quibus sapientiam non cernimus. Quain ilia ardentes amores excitaret sui, si videretur," where, however, the discourse is concerned with the particular virtue of wisdom, rather than with virtue in general. The pas sage of Plato referred to is in the Phasdrus, 250 D. Cf. also, De Off., 2, 37: " Quis non admiretur splendorem pulchritudinemque virtutis "; and De Off., 1, 5: " Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti vides; qu?e si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores excitaret sapientirc." — TR.
2 Cf. Spinoza, Ethica, Part V., Props., 32, 33, sq.; translation by R. H. M. Elwes, The, Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, Vol. 2, pp. 2<>3 sq. (Bonn's Philos. Library), London: George Bell & Sons, 1884. The best edition of Spinoza's Works is that of Van Vloten and Land, The Hague, 1882-1883.— TR.
CH. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 193 the future, and execute them rigorously, tearing himself away from those causes able to corrupt him, either brusquely or gradually, according to the nature of the circumstances. A journey expressly undertaken will cure a lover; a retreat will draw us from the companions who support us in some bad in clination. Francis of Borgia, General of the Jesuits, who has at last been canonized, being wont to drink largely when he was a man in high life, reduced himself little by little upon a small scale, when he thought of retiring (from the world) by causing a drop of wax to fall daily into the bottle which he was wont to empty. To dangerous sensibilities we shall op pose some other innocent sensibility, as agriculture, garden ing; we shall shun idleness; we shall collect curiosities of nature and art; we shall make experiments and researches; we shall engage in some indispensable occupation, if we have none, or in conversation, or useful and agreeable reading. In a word, we must profit from good impulses as from the voice of God which summons us to make effective resolutions. And as we cannot always analyze the notions of true goods and true evils until we perceive the pleasure and pain they in clude, we must once for all make this law in order to be moved by them: to attend to and follow henceforth the conclusions of reason once for all understood, although perceived after ward and ordinarily only by thoughts surd1 merely, and desti tute of sense attractions; and this in order to put yourselves finally in possession of control over the passions as well as of the insensible inclinations or uneasinesses, by acquiring this habit of acting according to reason, which makes virtue pleasant, and as it were natural. But it is not our business here to give and teach the precepts of morality, or the spiritual directions and address for the exercise of true piety; it is enough that in considering the procedure of our soul, we see the source of our weaknesses, the knowledge of which gives, at the same time, that of their remedies.]
§ 36. Ph. The present uneasiness which presses us, works only upon the will, and naturally determines it in view of that happiness to which we all aim in all our actions; because every one regards pain and uneasiness (i.e. the restlessness, or rather inconvenience, which prevents us from being at our ease) as 1 Cf. p. 191, near the beginning of Th., and note. — TR. O 194 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n incompatible with happiness. A little pain suffices to corrupt all the pleasures we enjoy. Consequently that which deter mines incessantly the choice of our will to the succeeding action will always be the removing of pain, as long as we feel any touch of it; this removal being the first step towards happiness.
Th. If you take your uneasiness or inquietude as a veritable displeasure, in this sense I do not admit that it is the sole in centive. Most frequently these are the little insensible per ceptions which might be called imperceptible pains if the notion of pain did not include apperception. These little im pulsions consist in delivering themselves continually from little obstacles towards which our nature works without think ing of them. This uneasiness consists in truth in this, that we feel without knowing it, which fact makes us act in passion as well as when we appear most tranquil; for we are never without some action and motion, which arises only from the fact that nature always labors to put herself more at her ease. And this it is which determines also before all consultation in the cases which appear to us the most indifferent, because we are never perfectly in suspense and we cannot be exactly equally divided between two cases. Now if these elements of pain (which degenerate into veritable pain or displeasure sometimes when they overgrow) were true pains, we should always be miserable in pursuing the good that we seek with uneasiness and spirit. But it is wholly the contrary; and as I have already said above (§ 6 of the preceding chapter), the mass of these continual little successes of nature, which puts it more and more at ease in reaching for the good and enjoying its image, or lessening the feeling of pain, is already a consider able pleasure, and often worth more than the enjoyment even of the good; and very far from being obliged to regard this un easiness as incompatible with happiness, I find that uneasiness is essential to the happiness of created beings which never con sists in complete possession,1 — this makes them insensible, and 1 Cf. the famous passage of Lessing, 1729-1781, regarding the ' search after truth, rather than its possession,' in the Theolorj. Streitschriften, Eine Duplik, 1778, 1. ad fin., Werke, Bd.10, s. 19, Stuttgart, 1869: " Nicht die Wahrheit, in deren Besitz irgend ein Mensch ist, oder zu sein vermeint, sondern die auf- richtige Miihe, die er angewandt hat, hinter die Wahrheit zukommen, inacht den Werth des Meuscheu. Deuu iiicht durch den Besitz, sondern durch die en. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 195 as it were stupid, — but in a progress continuous and uninter rupted towards the greatest good, which cannot fail to be ac companied by a desire, or at least, a continual uneasiness, but which, as I have just explained, does not go so far as to incon venience, but limits itself to those elements or rudiments of pain, partly unconscious, which do not cease to be sufficient to serve as an incentive and to arouse the will; as does appetite in a man who is well when it does not go to that inconvenience which makes us impatient and torments us by a too great at tachment to the idea of what we lack. These appetitions, small or great, are what are called in the schools motus primo primi, and are truly the first steps which nature makes its take not so much towards happiness as towards joy, for they relate only to the present; but experience and reason teach us to rule these appetitions and to control them so that they may con duce to happiness. I have already spoken to this effect (Book I., chap. 2, § 3). The appetitions are like the natural ten dency of the stone, which goes the most direct, but not always the best path towards the centre of the earth, not being able to see beforehand that it will meet rocks upon which it will break in pieces, whilst it would approach its end more directly if it had mind and the means of turning aside from them. Thus it is that going straight towards present pleasure we sometimes fall over the precipice of misery. Hence, reason opposes thereto images of the greatest good or evil to come, and a firm resolution and habit of thinking before acting, and then of following what shall have been recognized as the best, Nachforschung der Wahrheit erweitern sich seine Kriifte, worm allein seine immer wachsende Vollkommenheit besteht. Der Besitz maclit ruhig, triige, stolz..."; i.e. " Not the truth, in possession of which at any time a man is, or thinks he is, but the genuine effort lie has made to discover the truth, con stitutes the worth of the man. For not through possession, but through the search after the truth, are his powers expanded, wherein alone consists his ever growing perfection. Possession makes (him) quiet, lazy, proud..."
The real significance of this famous passage in relation to the problem of knowledge is not that knowledge is impossible, i.e. Agnosticism, for this is strictly the meaning of the term; but rather that the attainment of truth is possible, and that the human mind, having in its very constitution infinite elements and a capacity for an infinite ideal, can never rest satisfied with any present attainment or form of expression as final, but must continue to vstrive after the perfect truth as embodied in the infinite. Cf. an article by the translator, entitled " Revelation, Inspiration, and Authority," in " The Andover Review," April, 1891. — TR.
190 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. u even when the sensible reasons of our conclusions are no longer present in the mind, and consist of scarcely more than feeble impressions or even of surd thoughts, which give words or signs destitute of an actual explanation, so that all consists in the: Consider it well, and in the: Be mindful; the first in order to the making of laws, the second for their following, even when you do not think of the reason which has called them into existence. It is, however, well to think of them as much as possible, in order that the soul may be filled with a rational joy and a pleasure accompanied with light.]
§ 37. Ph. These precautions are doubtless so much the more necessary as the idea of an absent good can counter balance the feeling of some uneasiness or displeasure by which we are at present tormented, only so far as this good arouses any desire in us. How many men there are to whose minds the unspeakable joys of paradise are represented by lively pictures which they recognize as possible and probable, who nevertheless would willingly content themselves with the hap piness which they enjoy in this world. It is the uneasiness of their present desire getting the better of them and bearing them rapidly towards the pleasures of this life which deter mines their wills to seek them: and during all this time, they are wholly insensible to the goods of the other life.
Tli. [This arises in part from the fact that men very often are but little persuaded; and, although they say they are, a hidden unbelief reigns in the depths of their souls; for they have never understood the excellent reasons which verify this immortality of souls, worthy of the justice of God, which is the foundation of true religion, or rather they no longer re member that they understood them, one or the other of which conditions however is necessary in order to conviction. Few men indeed think that the future life, as true religion and indeed true reason teaches it, is possible, and they are still farther from thinking it probable, not to say certain. All that they do think about it is but a psittacism, or gross and vain images after the Mahometan fashion, in which they them selves see little likelihood. For they are very far from being moved by them, as (according to report) were the soldiers of the Prince of the Assassins, the Old Man of the Moun- CH. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 197 tain,1 who were carried away when fast asleep into a place full of delights, where, believing themselves in the paradise of Ma homet, they were imbued by the angels or counterfeit saints with such opinions as this prince. desired, and whence after having been stupefied anew they were carried to the place whence they had been taken; this emboldened them afterwards to undertake everything, even attempts upon the lives of princes, enemies of their chief. I do not know whether this Lord2 or Old Man of the Mountain was injured; for not a few great princes may be named whom he had caused to be assassinated, although you may see in the English historians the letter, attributed to him, exon erating King Bichard I. of the assassination of a Count or Prince of Palestine,3 whom this Old Man of the Mountain ad mitted he had had killed because he had been insulted by him.
1 The usual translation of " Shcikh-al Jebal," the title of the supreme ruler of the Assassins, a secret society whose distinguishing feature was the employ ment of secret assassination against all enemies; a practice introduced by Hassan Beu Sabbah, the first chief of the sect. Otherwise the principles of the society were the same as those of the Ismaelites, viz. 1. No fixed rules of religion or morality, all actions indifferent, internal disposition alone of value. 2. Belief that the Immams of Ismael's line were now invisible, hence implicit obedience on part of true believers due to their vicegerents on earth. 3. Allegorical interpretation of the Koran, defending or rejecting any doctrine at pleasure, as occasion required.
The society was made up of seven ranks or orders: 1. The Sheikh; 2. the Daial-Kirbal, or grand-priors; 3. the Dais, or priors; 4. Rrfiks, associates not initiated, as were the former, into all the secret doctrines; 5. the Fedais, "devoted ones," a band of youths uninitiated and blindly obedient to the chief; (i. Lusiks, or novices; 7. common people, laborers, and mechanics. On these was enjoined the most rigid observance of the Koran. The initiated regarded all positive religion and morality as worthless. The Fedais were the assassins proper. Whenever the chief wished for their service he had them intoxicated with haxhixh, or the hemp-plant, and transported into his splendid gardens, where they were surrounded with every sensual pleasure, and by this foretaste of Paradise which the chief alone could grant led to obey his slightest command implicitly, even to the surrender of their own lives. From this cir cumstance they were called Hashishin, or hemp-eaters. This word the Euro peans changed into Assassins, and thus it was transplanted into the Western languages with the signification of murderers. See Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, 1818; Midland, Histoire des Croisades, 2, pp. 465-484; F. Walpole, The Ansayrii, or Assassins, 3 vols., 1851; Gayard, Fragments relatifs a la Doctrine des Ismaelis, 1874; De Sacy, Memoires de I' Institut, 4, 1818, discusses the etymology fully. — TR.
2 Gerhardt reads: " Seigneur on Senior (Vieux) de la Montague." — TR.
8 The Margrave Conrad of Montferrat, one of Saladin's brave adversaries. Cf. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Milman's ed., chap. 59, and note 74, also Milman's note; Weil, Gesch. d. Chalifen, Vol. 3, p. 423; Wilken, Gesch. d. Kreuzziiye, 198 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n Although that may be so, it was perhaps because of his great zeal for his religion that this Prince of the Assassins wished to give his people a favorable idea of paradise which should always accompany their thoughts of it and prevent them from being surd; without claiming on that account that they should believe that they had been in paradise itself. But supposing he had made this claim, it would not necessarily be astonishing if these pious frauds had been more efficacious than the truth badly managed. Yet nothing would be stronger than truth if we devoted ourselves to its complete knowledge and cultivation; and we should have in it without doubt the means of strongly influencing men. When I consider how much ambition or avarice can accomplish in all those who once place themselves in this course of life, almost destitute of sen sible and present attractions, I despair of nothing, and I hold that virtue would be infinitely more effective accompanied as it is by so many solid goods, if some happy revolution of the human race brought it for a day 'into demand and made it as it were fashionable. It is very -certain that we could accustom the youth to find their greatest pleasure in the practice of vir tue. And even grown up men could make themselves laws and a habit of conforming to them, which would influence them as strongly and with as much uneasiness if they were turned aside from them, as a drunken man would feel when he is prevented from going to the ale-house. I am very happy to add these considerations upon the possibility and even upon the ease of the remedies for our evils, in order not to assist in dis couraging men from the pursuit of true goods by the mere exposition of our weaknesses.]
§ 39. Ph. [Xearly everything consists in making constant the desire for true good.] And it rarely happens that any voluntary action is produced in us unless some desire accom panies it; this is why will and desire are so often confounded. ]>ut we must not regard the uneasiness which makes a part of, or which at least accompanies most of the other passions, as < ntirely excluded in this case. For hatred, fear, anger, envy, shame, have each their uneasiness, and thereby influence the will. I doubt if any one of these passions exists entirely alone. I believe indeed that it Avould be difficult to find any passion unaccompanied by desire. I am sure, however, that wherever CH. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 199 there is uneasiness there is desire. And as our eternity does not depend on the present moment, we look beyond the present, whatever be the pleasures which we actually enjoy, and desire, accompanying these glances anticipative of the future, always impels the will to follow; so that even in the midst of joy that which maintains the action upon which the present pleas ure depends, is the desire to continue it, and the fear of being deprived of it, and whenever a greater uneasiness than that takes possession of the mind it immediately determines the mind to a new action and the present pleasure is neglected.
Th. [Many perceptions and inclinations concur in perfect volition, Avhich is the result of their conflict. There are some imperceptible by themselves, whose mass makes an un easiness which impels us without our seeing the cause; there are many joined together which tend to some object or which remove it, and then it is desire or fear accompanied also by an uneasiness, but which does not always go so far as pleasure or displeasure.1 Finally, there are impulses really accompanied by pleasure and by pain, and all these perceptions are either new sensations or ideas resting upon some past sensation (accompanied or not by memory), which renewing the attrac tions these same images had in the preceding sensations, renew also the former impulses in proportion to the vividness of the idea. From all these impulses results at last the prevailing effort which makes the will complete. But the desires and tendencies Avhich are perceived are often also called voli tions though less complete, whether they prevail and influence or not. It is thus easy to believe that volition can have but little force without desire and without aversion (fuite); for such I believe we may call the opposite of desire. Uneasi ness exists not only in the troublesome passions, as hatred, fear, anger, envy, shame, but further in their opposites, as love, hope, favor, and glory. We may say that whenever there is desire, there will be uneasiness; but the contrary is not always true, because often one is in a state of uneasiness without knowing what he wants, and then there is no full- grown desire.]
§ 40. Ph. Ordinarily the most pressing of the uneasinesses 1 Gerhardt adds: " ou deplaisir." — TB.
200 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n which are judged capable of being removed at that time deter mines the will to action.
Th. As the result of the balance makes the final deter mination, I should think it may happen that the most press ing uneasiness does not prevail; for though it might prevail over each of the opposed tendencies taken by themselves, the others united may overcome it. The mind can indeed use skilfully the dichotomies in order to cause sometimes the one, sometimes the others, to prevail, as in an assembly we can cause one party to prevail by plurality of votes, according as we shape the order of the question. It is true the mind ought to look far into the future; for in the moment of struggle there is no time to use these artifices. All that then makes an impression, bears hard upon the balance, and helps to form a compound direction almost like that in mechanics, and which without some prompt diversion we cannot stop.
Fertur equis auriga nee audit currus habenas.1 § 41. Ph. If you ask further what it is that arouses desire, I reply, happiness and nothing else. Happiness and misery are the names of two extremes of whose utmost bounds we are ignorant. It is what "eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and the heart of man hath never conceived." 2 But both make in us lively impressions by means of different kinds of satisfaction and joy, of torment and sorrow, which for brevity's sake I comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain, both of which happen to the mind as well as to the body, or, to speak more accurately, pertain only to the mind, although sometimes they originate in the mind upon the occasion of certain thoughts, and sometimes in the body from certain modifications of motion. § 42. Thus happiness, taken in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure of which we are capable, as misery, taken in the same way, is the greatest pain we can feel. And the lowest degree of what can be called happiness is that state, in which delivered from all pain, we enjoy such measure of present pleasure that we can not be content with less. We call that a good which is adapted to produce in us pleasure, and we call that an evil which is adapted to produce in us pain. But it often happens en. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 201 that we do not so name it when one or another of these goods or of these evils is found in competition with a greater good or a greater evil.
Tli. [I do not know whether the greatest pleasure is possi ble. I should think rather that it can grow infinitely; for we know not how far our knowledge and our organs may be carried in all that eternity which awaits us. I should think then that happiness is a lasting pleasure; which can not exist without a continual progression to new pleasures. Thus of two, one of whom will advance incomparably more rapidly and by greater pleasures than the other, each will be happy in himself although their happiness will be unequal. Happiness is then so to speak a road through pleasures, and pleasure is only a step and an advance towards happiness, the shortest that can be made according to present impressions, but not always the best, as I said towards the end of § 36. One may miss the true road, in desiring to follow the short est, as the stone going straight may meet too soon obstacles which prevent it from advancing directly towards the centre of the earth. Thus we know that it is the reason and the will which lead us towards happiness, but that feeling and appetite carry us only towards pleasure. Now although pleasure cannot receive a nominal l definition, any more than light or color, it can nevertheless receive like them a causal,1 and I believe that at bottom, pleasure is a feeling of perfec tion and pain a feeling of imperfection, provided it be marked enough to make us capable of perceiving it: for the little insensible perceptions of a perfection or imperfection, which are like the elements of pleasure and pain, and of which I have spoken so many times, form the inclinations and propensities, but not yet the passions themselves. Thus there are insensi ble inclinations and these we do not perceive; there are sensi ble ones whose existence and object we know, but whose formation we do not feel, and there are confused inclinations which we attribute to the body, although there is always something corresponding in the mind; finally, there are dis tinct inclinations, which reason gives us, whose force and formation we feel; and the pleasures of this kind which are found in the knowledge and production of order and harmony 1 Cf. New Essays, Bk. III., chap. 3, § 18. — TR.
202 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n are the most estimable. You are right in saying that in general all these inclinations, passions, pleasures and pains belong only to the mind or soul; I will add, indeed, that their origin is in the soul itself, taking things in a certain meta physical strictness, but that, nevertheless, you are right in say ing that confused thoughts come from the body, because thereupon the consideration of the body — and not that of the soul — furnishes something distinct and explicable. The good is that which conduces or contributes to pleasure, as the evil is that which contributes to pain. But in collision with a greater good, the good of which we should be deprived would become in truth an evil, in so far as it should contribute to the pain which would spring from it.
§ 47. Ph. The soul has the power of suspending the accom plishment of some of these desires, and is consequently at lib erty to consider one after another and to compare them. In this consists the freedom of man, and what we call, though in my view improperly, free-will; and it is from the bad use we make of it that all this variety of mistakes, errors, and faults proceeds, into which we rush when we determine our will too promptly or too late.