214 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [inc. n casuists who have written on probability have not even under stood its nature, founding it with Aristotle,1 upon authority, instead of founding it as they ought upon likelihood (vraisem- blance), authority being only one of the reasons which pro duce likelihood.]
§ 67. Ph. Here are some of the ordinary causes of this false judgment. First, ignorance, second, inattention, when a man does not reflect upon that of which he is aware. This is an affected and present ignorance which misleads the judg ment as well as the will.
Th. [It is always present, but not always affected; for we do not always take it into our heads to think, when it is necessary, of what we know and the memory of which we should recall if we were master of it. Affected ignorance is always mixed with some attention at the time it is affected; in the future, it is true, it may ordinarily include somewhat of in attention. The art of thinking in time of need of what we know would be one of the most important if it were found; but I do not see that men up to the present time have even thought of forming the elements of it, for the art of memory2 of which so many authors have written is wholly another thing.]
Ph. If then they bring together in confusion and hastily the reasons from one side and allow through neglect several sums which ought to enter into the reckoning to escape, this York, 1881; F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Loc/ic, Bk. I., chap. 7, §§ 32 sq., pp. 201 sq., Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., London, 1883; J. Venn, The Logic of Chance, 3d ed., Macmillan and Co., London, 1888; W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, 3d ed., Macmillan aiid Co., London, 1889. — TR.
1 For Aristotle's definition of probability, cf. Anal. Prior., II., 27, 70a3: " The probable is a generally admitted proposition. For what is known for the most part as thus happening or not happening, or being or not being, this is probable "; cf. also Wallace, Outlines, § 21, who quotes the Greek of the passage. R/iet. I., 2, 1357*34: " For the probable is that which for the most part happens." Aristotle accordingly rests much more upon experience than upon authority, and Leibnitz has not given his definition accurately. " The probable conclusion," says Schaarschmidt, is for Aristotle, " an incom plete induction, whose problematic character he well understood, but did not determine more closely. Later Greek philosophers of a sceptical creed began to speak of grades of probability, but the moderns have been the first to fall upon the fruitful thoughts of a mathematical estimate of probability."
2 Mnemonics, the invention of which was ascribed to the poet Simonides, of Ceos, 556-469 B.C., perhaps because he was famous for the strength of his own memory. Cf. Cicero, DC Oratorc, Bk. II., chap. 82. — TR.
cir. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 216 haste produces no less false judgments than if it were perfect ignorance.
Th. [In reality many things must be taken into account, as should be the case, when the balance of reasons is discussed; and the process is almost like that in the account-books of merchants. For no sum must be neglected, each must be properly estimated by itself, they must be properly arranged, and finally an exact collection must be made of them. But we neglect many weighty points either by its not occurring to us to think of them or by passing lightly over them; and we do not give each its proper value, like the book-keeper, who was careful properly to calculate the columns of each page, but who calculated very badly the particular sums of each line or posting, before putting them in the columns; this causes the examiners to be deceived, who look principally at what is in the columns. Finally, after having carefully noted all, they may be deceived in the collection of the sums of the columns "and even of the final collection, in which is the sum of the sums. Thus we should still need the art of thinking and that of estimating probabilities, and besides the knowl edge of the value of goods and evils in order properly to employ the art of consequences; and furthermore, attention and patience would be necessary after all that, in order to push to the conclusion. Finally, a firm and constant resolu tion to execute the conclusion arrived at is necessary; and address, method, particular laws, and habits entirely formed in order to maintain the course in the future, when the con siderations, which have caused it to be taken, are no longer present to the mind. It is true, thank God, that in what is of the greatest importance and which concerns the summam rerum, happiness and misery, there is no need of so much knowledge, aid, and address, as it would be necessary to have in order properly to judge in a council of state or of war, in a tribunal of justice, in a medical consultation, in some theo logical or historical controversy, or in some point of mathe matics or mechanics; but as a recompense more firmness and habit is necessary, in what concerns this great point of fe licity and virtue, in order always to adopt good resolutions and to follow them. In a word, for true happiness less knowledge suffices with more good will; so that the greatest 216 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. H idiot may attain it as easily as the most learned and most skil ful.]
Ph. You see then that without liberty the understanding would be of no use, and that liberty without understanding would signify nothing. If a man could see what may do him good or evil without being able to move a step in advance towards the one or in removal from the other, would he be the better for the sight? He would be indeed more miserable for this reason, for he would uselessly pine after the good and would fear the evil, that he sees is inevitable; and he who is at liberty to run here and there in the midst of perfect dark ness, in what respect is he better than if he were tossed about at the pleasure of the wind?
Th. [His caprice would be a little better satisfied, but he would be in no better condition to meet good or to shun evil.]
§ 68. Ph. Another source of false judgment. Content with the first pleasure which comes to hand or which custom has rendered agreeable, we do not look farther. This then is also an occasion for men to judge wrongly when they do not regard as essential to their happiness that which really is so.
Th. [It seems to me that this false judgment is comprised under the preceding kind where one is mistaken as to the consequences.]
§ 69. Ph. The inquiry remains whether a man has the power to change the pleasure or displeasure which accom panies any particular action. In many cases he can. Men may, and ought to, correct their palates and make them acquire a taste. They can change also the taste of the soul. A due consideration, practice, application, custom will bring about this result. Thus it is that men accustom themselves to tobacco, which usage or custom at last makes them find agree able. It is the same as regards virtue. Habits have powerful charms and we cannot depart from them without iineasiness. You will, perhaps, regard it as a paradox that men can make things or actions more or less agreeable to themselves, so much do they neglect this duty.
Th. [I have already made this statement above, § 37, towards the end, and § 47, also towards the end. AVe can make ourselves will anything and form our taste.]
§ 70. Ph. Morality, established upon true foundations, can cir. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 217 only determine to virtue: it suffices that infinite happiness and misery after this life are possible. We must admit that a good life, joined with the expectation of possible eternal felicity, is preferable to a bad life, accompanied by the fear of terrible misery, or, at least, of the terrible and uncertain hope of annihilation. All this is in the highest degree self-evident, although virtuous men should have only evil to endure in this world, and the wicked should taste therein perpetual pleas ure, which is ordinarily quite otherwise. For rightly consid ering all things, I believe they have the worst part even in this life.
Th. [Thus were there no life be}Tond the grave an epicurean life would not be the most reasonable. And I rejoice, sir, that you rectify what you said to the contrary above, § 55.]
Ph. Who could be so foolish, as to resolve (if he had his senses) to expose himself to a possible danger of being infin itely unhappy so that he has nothing to gain therefrom for himself but pure annihilation; instead of putting himself in the condition of the good man who has nothing to fear but annihilation, and who has eternal felicity to hope for? I have forborne to speak of the certainty or probability of the future state, because I have no other design in this place than to show the false judgment of which each should acknowledge himself guilty on his own principles.
Th. [The wicked are very prone to believe that the other life is impossible. But they have no reason for their belief other than that which compels them to limit themselves to what they learn by their senses, and that no one to their knowledge has come back from the other world. There was a time when upon the same principle we could reject the anti podes, when we were unwilling to unite mathematics and the popular notions;• and we could do so with as much reason as we can now have in rejecting the other life, when we are unwilling to unite true metaphysics and the notions of the imagination. For there are three degrees of notions or ideas, viz.: popular, mathematical, metaphysical. The first do not suffice to make us believe in the antipodes; the first and the second do not yet suffice to make us believe in the other world. It is true they furnish already favorable conjectures; but if the second established certainly the antipodes before 218 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n the experience we now have of it (I speak not of the inhabi tants, but of the place at least which the knowledge of the roundness of the earth gave them among geographers and astronomers), the last give no less certitude of another life from this time, and before you have gone to see.]
§ 72. Ph. Let us now return to power which is properly the subject of this chapter, liberty being only one form of it, but the most important. In order to have more distinct ideas of power, it will be neither beside the purpose nor useless to obtain a more exact knowledge of what is called action. I said at the beginning of our discourse on power that there are two kinds of actions, of which we have some idea, viz.: motion and thought.1 Tli. [I thought you could avail yourself of a more general term than that of thought, viz.: that of perception, attributing thought only to minds, while perception belongs to all the entelechies. But I do not wish, however, to contest with any one the liberty to take the term thought in the same general way. And for myself indeed I shall perhaps do so some time without being aware of it.]
Ph. Now, although we give to those two things the name of action, we shall find however that it does not always suit them perfectly, and that there are some examples which we shall recognize rather as passicms. For in these examples sub stance, in which we find movement or thought, receives purely from without the impression through which action is com municated to it, and acts only by the sole capacity it has of receiving this impression, which is only a passive power. Sometimes substance or the agent puts itself in action by its own power, and it is there properly an active power.
Tli. I have already said that, taking action in metaphysical strictness as that which takes place in substance spontaneously and from its own depths, that alone is, properly speaking, a substance which is active,2 for all arises for it from itself after God; it being impossible for one created substance to have 1 Locke has: "thinking," Philos. Works, Vol. l,p.413 (Bohn'sed.).— TR.
2 C'f. De ipsa natura, etc., 1(598, § 9 ad fin.; Gerliardt, 4, 509; Erdmann, 157; Jacques, 1, 461 (in French); J. H. v. Kirchmann, Die klein. philos. wicht. Schrift. v. G. W. Leibniz (Philos. Bibliothck, Bd. 81), p. 121 (in Ger man), Erick Koschny, Leipzig, 1879; also Kuno Fischer, Gesch. d. ncucrn Philos., Vol. 2 (G. W. Leibniz), p. 334, 3d ed., Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1889. — TR.
CH. xxi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 219 influence upon another. But taking action as an exercise of perception and passion as its contrary, there is action in true substance only when their perception (for I grant it to all) is developed and becomes more distinct, as there is passion only when it becomes more confused; so that in substances capable of pleasure and of pain, all action is a step towards pleasure and all passion a step towards pain. As for motion, it is only a real phenomenon, because matter and mass to which motion belongs is not properly speaking a substance. But there is an image of action in motion as there is an image of substance in mass; and in this respect we can say that the body acts (agit) when there is spontaneity in its change and that it is passive (patif) when it is urged on or hindered by another; as in the veritable action or passion of a veritable substance we may take as its action, and attribute to itself, the change by which it tends to its perfection. And in the same manner we can take as passion and attribute to a foreign cause the change by which the contrary happens to it; although this cause is not immediate, because, in the first case, the substance itself, and in the second the foreign things serve to explain this change in an intelligible way. I allow bodies only an image of substance and action, because that which is composed of parts cannot pass, to speak accurately, as one substance, any more than a flock; but we can say that there is therein something substantial, of which the unity, that which makes it as it were one being, comes from thought.]
Ph. I have thought that the power to receive ideas or thoughts by the operation of some foreign substance was called power of thought, although at bottom it is only a pas sive power or a simple capacity making abstraction from the reflections and internal changes which always accompany the received image, for the expression,1 which is in the soul is, as it should be, that of a living mirror; but the power which we have of recalling absent ideas at our choice, and of comparing together those that we think to the purpose, is truly an active power.
Th. [This also agrees with the notions I have just pre sented, for there is in this a passage to a more perfect state.
1 Gerhardt and Erdmann read: " 1'expression "; Jacques: " 1'impres- sion." — TK.
220 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [inc. n But I should suppose that there is also action in sensations so far as they give us more distinct perceptions and consequently the opportunity of making remarks and so to speak of devel oping ourselves.]
§ 73. Ph. Now I think it appears that we can reduce the primitive and original ideas to this small number: extension, solidity, mobility (i.e. passive power, or rather capacity of being moved), which come to us in the mind by way of reflec tion, and finally, existence, duration, and number, which come to us by the two ways of sensation and reflection; for by these ideas we could explain, if I am not mistaken, the nature of colors, sounds, tastes, odors, and all the other ideas we have, if our faculties were subtile enough to perceive the dif ferent motions of the minute bodies which produce these sen sations.
Th. To speak the truth, I believe that these ideas, which you here call original and primitive, are for the most part not wholly so, being susceptible in my view of further resolution; but I do not blame you at all, sir, for having limited yourself and for not having pushed the analysis farther. Moreover,1 I believe that if their number can be diminished by this means, it can be increased by adding other ideas more original or as much so. As to the question concerning their arrangement, I. should consider, following the order of the analysis, exist ence anterior to the others, number to extension, duration to motivity or mobility; although this analytic order is not ordinarily that of the occasions which make us think of them. The senses furnish us the material for reflection and we should not even think of thought, if we did not think of something else, i.e. of the particular things which the senses furnish. And I am persuaded that created souls and minds are never without organs and never without sensations, as they cannot reason without characters. Those who have desired to main tain a complete separation and mode of thinking in the sepa rated soul, inexplicable by all that we know, and separated 1 Gerhardt reads: "D'aillcurs je crois que si le nombre en pourroit estre diminue par ce moyen, il pourroit estre augmente'," etc.; Erdmann and Jacques read: " D'ailleurs si c'est vrai, que le nombre en pourroit etre diminue' par ce inoyen, je crois qu'il pourroit etre augumente en y ajoutant d'autres Idees plus originales ou autaut." — TR.
en. xxn] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 221 not only from our present experiences, but, what is much more, from the general order of things, have given too much influence to so-called strong minds, and have made the finest and the grandest truths objects of suspicion to many people, having indeed deprived themselves thereby of some excellent means of proving them, which this order furnishes us.]
CHAPTER XXII OF MIXED MODES § 1. Ph. Pass we on to the mixed modes. I distinguish them from the more simple modes, which are composed only of simple ideas of the same kind. Moreover, the mixed modes are certain combinations of simple ideas which are not re garded as characteristic marks of any real being, which has a fixed existence, but as scattered and independent ideas which the mind joins together; and they are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances.
Th. [Troperiyto understand these we must recall our for mer divisions. According to you ideas are simple or complex. The complex are either substances, modes, or relations. Modes are either simple (composed of simple ideas of the same kind) or mixed. Thus, in your view, there are simple ideas, ideas of modes, both simple and mixed, ideas of substances and ideas of relations. We could, perhaps, divide the terms or the objects of ideas into abstract and concrete; the abstract into absolute and into those which express relations; the absolute into attributes and into modifications; both into simple and composite; the concrete into substances and into substantial things, made up of or the resultants of true and simple sxibstances.]
§ 2. Ph. The mind is purely passive, respecting its simple ideas, which it receives as sensation and reflection present them to it. But it often acts by itself, indeed, in reference to the mixed modes, for it can combine the simple ideas in making complex ideas without considering whether they so exist united in nature. This is why we give to these kinds of ideas the name of notion.
222 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n Th. [But reflection which makes us think of simple ideas is often voluntary also, and, moreover, the combinations, which nature has not made, can produce themselves in us, as it were in dreams and reveries by means of memory alone, without the mind's acting more than in the simple ideas. As for the term notion, many apply it to all sorts of ideas or conceptions, to the original as well as to the derived.]
§ 4. Ph. The mark of several ideas combined in one alone is the name.
Th. [That means, if they can be combined, in which respect they are often lacking.]
Ph. The crime of killing an old man, not having a name like parricide, is not at first regarded as a complex idea.
Tli. [The reason why the murder of an old man has no name is that, the laws not having attached thereto a particular pun ishment, this name would be useless; but ideas do not depend on names. An ethical author who should invent one for the crime and treat in a special chapter of Gerontophony, showing what is due to old men and how it is a barbarous act not to spare them, would not on that account present us with a new idea.]
§ 6. Ph. It is always true that the manners and usages of a nation, making combinations familiar to it, cause each language to have particular terms, which cannot always be translated word for word. Thus ostracism among the Greeks and proscriptfo among the Romans were Avords which other languages cannot express by equivalent words. Therefore, change of customs makes also new words.
Th. [Chance also plays its part, for the French do not use horses as much as other neighboring peoples; but having abandoned their old word, which corresponded to the cavalcar of the Italians, they are forced to say by paraphrase: aller a cheval — to go on horse-back.]
§ 9. Ph. We acquire ideas of mixed modes by observation, as when we see two men wrestling; we acquire them also by invention (or a voluntary union of simple ideas), thus, he who invented printing had the idea of it before this art existed. We acquire them finally by explaining terms, affecting actions which we have never seen.
Th. [We can further acquire them while dreaming or in a en. xxn] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 223 state of revery without the combinations being voluntary, for example, when we see in a dream a golden palace without having thought of it before.]
§ 10. Ph. The simple ideas which have been most modified are those of thought, motion, and power, whence actions are conceived to flow; for the great business of mankind consists in action; all actions are thoughts or motions. The power or aptitude to do anything which is found in man constitutes the idea which we call habit, when this power has been acquired by often doing the same thing; and when we can force it to action upon each occasion that presents itself, we call it disposition. Thus, tenderness is a disposition to friend ship or love.
Th. [By tenderness you understand here, I presume, the tender heart, but elsewhere you seem to me to regard tender ness as a quality which one has, as a lover, which renders him very sensible to the good and evil of the object loved. This it is to which it seems to me the chart of affection is moving in the excellent romance Cldie.1 And, as charitable persons love their neighbor with some degree of tenderness, they are sensi ble to the good and evil of another, and generally those who have the tender heart have some disposition to love with ten derness.]
Ph. Boldness is the power to do or say before others what you wish without being put out of countenance, a self-confi dence, which, in relation to this last part which concerns dis course, had a particular name among the Greeks.
Th. [It would be well to seek a word for this notion, which is here attributed to that of boldness, but which is often em ployed wholly otherwise, as when we say Charles the Bold. Not to be put out of countenance is a strength of mind, but one which bad men abuse when they have become impudent; as shame is a weakness, but excusable and even praiseworthy in certain circumstances. As for parrhesia,3 which you per haps understand by the Greek word, it is still attributed to writers who speak the truth without fear, although, then not 1 Clelic, Histoire Romaine, a romance by Mile. Scude'ry, 1607-1701. The scene is laid early in Roman history; the heroine is Cloelia, who escaped from Porsena by swiiniuir.g the Tiber. — TR.
2 Tra-rja-ia. — TK.
224 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n speaking in the presence of people, they are not liable to be discountenanced. ] § 11. Ph. As power is the source whence proceed all actions, the name of cause is given to the substances in which these powers reside, when they reduce their power to act; and they call effects the substances produced by this means, or rather the simple ideas (i.e. the objects of simple ideas), which, by the exercise of power are introduced into a subject. Thus the efficacy by which a new substance or idea (quality) is pro duced, is called action in the subject exercising this power and passion in the subject in which some simple idea (qualit}T) is altered or produced.
Tli. [If power is taken as the source of action, it means something more than an aptitude or facility, by which power was explained in the preceding chapter; for it includes, be sides, tendency as I have already more than once remarked. This is why in this sense I have been wont to appropriate to it the term entelechy, which is either primitive and answers to the soul taken as an abstract thing, or derivative as it is con ceived in conation (le conatus) and in vigor and impetuosity. The term cause is here understood only as efficient cause; but it is also understood as final or the motive, not to speak here of matter and form which are also called causes in the schools. I do not know whether we can say that the same being is called action in the agent and passion in the patient, and is thus found in two subjects at once like relation, and, whether it is not better to say that there are two beings, one in the agent, the other in the patient.]
Ph. Many words which seem to express some action signify only the cause and the effect; as creation and annihilation contain no idea of action or of the manner, but simply of the cause and the thing which is produced.
Th. [I admit that in thinking of creation, we do not con ceive a mode of acting, capable of any detail, which cannot indeed there be expedient; but, since we express something besides God and the world, for we think that God is the cause and the world the effect, or else that God has produced the world, it is manifest that we think still of action.]1 1 Leibnitz regards the concept of creation in the sense of the origination of substances as incapable of further explanation because we can form no idea CH. xxin] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 225 CHAPTER XXIII OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES § 1. Ph. The mind notices that a certain number of simple ideas constantly go together, which, presumed to belong to one thing only, are called by one name when thus united ^jn_&Q£ subject. Whence it comes that, althougTTTinTs IsTn truth a nlaSs"of many ideas joined together, we are afterwards led by inadvertence to speak of them as a single, simple idea.
Th. [I see nothing in the accepted expressions which de serves to be taxed with inadvertence; and although we recog nize only one subject and one idea, we do not recognize only one sirnpleldea.j Ph. Not being able to imagine how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we are accustomed to assume something which sustains them (substratum), in which they subsist or whence they result, to which for this effect we give the name . of substance.~\ Th.1 [I believe that there is reason in thus thinking, and we have only to accustom ourselves to it or to assume it, since, at first, we conceive several predicates in one and the same subject, and these metaphorical words, support (soutieii) or sub stratum mean only this; so that I do not see why it should cause any difficulty. On the contrary, it is rather the concretum, as wise, warm, shining, which arises in our mind, than the abstract ions_ or (Dualities (for these and not the ideas are in th\T substantial object), as knowledge, heat, light, etc., which are much more difficult to comprehend. W7e may even doubt whether these accidents are veritable existences, as in fact they are very often onlyrelations. We know also that it is these abstractions which cause the greatest difficulties to spring up when we wish to examine them minutely, as those