of the process. For some other expressions concerning it, cf. La Monado- lor/ie, § 47, Gerhardt, fi, 614; Erdmann, 708, b.; Letter to Bayle, Gerhardt, 3, 58; Erdmann, 191. Gerhardt, 3, (51. and note, says the original is without date; Erdmann gives it 1702. Cf. also Dillmann, Eine neue Darstg. d. Leib niz. Monadenlehre, p. 451 sq.- — TR.
1 Erdmann has " Ph.," a typographical error. — TR. Q 226 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n know who are familiar with the subtilties of the scholastics, ~ the most intricate of which falls at once if we will banish abstract existence and resolve to speak ordinarily only by concretes and admit no other terms in scientific demonstra tions but those which represent substantial subjects. Thus it is nodum quaerere in scirpo,1 if I may so speak, and reversing-^ things to take the qualities or other abstract terms as the 1 easier and the concrete as something very difficult.] — 1 § 2. Ph. We have no other notion at all of pure substance in general, than of an indescribable subject, which is to us altogether unknown and which is supposed to be the support of qualities. We speak like children to one who has no sooner asked them what a certain thing unknown to them is, than they make this reply very satisfactory to their taste that it is something, but, which employed in this way, means that they do not know what it is.
Th. [In distinguishing two things in substance, the attri butes or predicates, and the common subject of these predi cates, it is no wonder that we can conceive nothing particular in this subject. It must be so, indeed, since we have already separated from it all the attributes in which we could conceive any detail. Thus to demand something more in this pure subject in general than what is necessary in order to conceive that it is the same thing (for example, which understands and wills, which imagines and reasons), is to demand the impossible, and to act contrary to our own supposition, which has been made in making abstraction and conceiving separately the subject and its qualities or accidents. We could apply the" same pretended difficulty to the notion of being and to all that is clearer and more primitive; for we could demand of the philosophers what they conceive when conceiving pure being in general; for all detail be^g excluded by that means there will also be little to say, when we are asked what is pure sub-~! stance in general. Thus I believe that the philosophers do not deserve to be laughed at, as is here done, in comparing them with an Indian philosopher, who, being asked upon what the earth rested, replied, upon a great elephant; and then when asked what sustained the elephant, replied, a great tor- 1 To seek a knot in a bulrush, to find a difficulty when there is none. Cf. Plaut. Men. 2, 1, 22; Ter. And. 5, 4, 38. — TR.
CH. xxin] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 227 toise; and, at last, when pressed to say upon what the tortoise rested, was compelled to say something, I know not what. But this consideration of substance,1 entirely slender as it appears, is not so empty and sterile as you think. It gives rise to many consequences of greatest importance in philosophy, and which are capable of giving it a new aspect.]
§ 4. Ph. We have no clear idea of substance in general, and § 5, we have as clear an idea of mind as of body; for the idea of corporeal substance in matter is as far from our con ceptions as that of spiritual substance. It is almost as the promoter said to this young doctor of law, who cried to him in the solemnity, to say utriusque: You are right, sir, for you know as much in the one case as the other.
Tli. [As for myself, I believe that this opinion of our igno rance arises from that which demands a kind of knowledge of which the object does not admit. The true mark of a clear and distinct notion of an object is the means we have of knowing therein many truths by a priori 2 proofs, as I have shown in a discourse on truths and ideas,3 published in the " Actes de Leipzig " of the year 1G84.
§ 12. Ph. If our senses were sufficiently penetrating, the sensible qualities, for example, the yellow color of gold, would disappear, and instead of that we should see a certain admir able contexture of parts. This appears evident by means of microscopes. This present knowledge is suitable to the state in which we find ourselves. A perfect knowledge of things 1 In Leibnitz's philosophy substance is a unitary, individual, spontane ously.active being, as opposed to the " empty and sterile " conception of Aris totelian scholasticism; cf. ante, p. 154 and note. Locke's criticism concerns the scholastic conception only. — TR.
2 Cf. Neiv Essays, Bk. IV., chap. 17, § 1, Th.; Theodicee, I., § 44, Gerhardt, 6, 127; Erdmann, 515, b. For a brief critical history of the concepts of the « priori and the a posteriori, cf. Rudolph Eucken, The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought, pp. 81-91, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1880; and for Leibnitz's use of the terms, op. cit., p. 82, with the note contain ing references to the places where a priori occurs in Erdmann's and Foucher de Careil's editions of his works. — -TR.
3 Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Tdeis, in the " Acta Eruditorum," Nov., 1684. Gerhardt, 4, 422 sq.; Erdmann, 70 sq. The passage referred to is found in Gerhardt, 425;' Erdmann, 80 b.; translation, Duncan, Pinion. Works of Leibnitz, 30. The piece has been translated into German, with notes, by J. H. v. Kirchmann in his Philos. Bibliothek, Bd. 81, Die klcin. philos. ivicht. Schriften v. G. W. Leibniz; Bd. 82, Erliiuterunyen. — TR.
228 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n which surround us, is, perhaps, beyond tha capacity of every finite being. Our faculties suffice to make us know the Crea tor, and to instruct us as to our duties. Should our senses become more acute, such change would be incompatible with our nature.
Th. [All that is true; and I have said something to the same effect above. But the color yellow does not cease to be a reality like the rainbow, and we are apparently destined to a state far beyond the present, and can even go on to the infinite, for there are no elements in the corporeal nature. If there were atoms, as the author appeared to believe in another place, perfect knowledge of the body could not be beyond every finite being. For the rest, if some colors or qualities should disappear from our eyes better armed or become more penetrating, others would apparently spring into being, and it would require a new growth of our perspicacity to make these also disappear, and this could go on to infinity, as the actual division of matter effectively proceeds.]
§ 13. Ph. I do not know but that one of the great advan tages which some spirits have over us consists in the fact that they can assume to themselves organs of sensation which are precisely suited to their present design.
Th. [We do this indeed in making for ourselves micro scopes; but other creatures can go much farther. And, if we** could transform our eyes themselves, which we do effectively to some extent according as we wish to see near at hand or at a distance, we should be obliged to have something1 belonging more exclusively to us than they in order to shape them by its means, for it is necessary, at least, that all be done mechan ically, because the mind cannot operate immediately upon the body. For the rest, I am also of the opinion that genii per ceive things in a manner which is somewhat related to ours, even if they should have the agreeable advantage which the imaginative Cyrano2 attributes to some animated natures in 1 I.e. the soul to make use of the capacity of the eyes for accommodation.
2 Cyrano de Bergerac, c. 1020 — 1655, in his philosophical romance, Histoire comique des etats et empires du soleil. He was author also of the Histoire comique des etats et empires de la lune, or, as the title is sometimes given, Voyage dans la lune. — TR.
en. xxin] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 229 the sun, composed of an infinite number of little winged crea tures, which, by transporting themselves according to the command of the ruling soul, form all kinds of bodies. There is nothing so marvellous that the mechanism of nature cannot produce it; and I believe that the learned fathers of the Church were right in attributing bodies to the angels.1] § 15. Ph. The ideas of thinking and of moving a body, which we find in that of the mind, can be conceived as clearly and distinctly as those of extension, solidity, and mobility, which we find in matter.
Th. [As regards the idea of thought I agree. But I am not of this opinion as regards the idea of moving bodies, for, according to my system of Pre-established Harmony, bodies are so made that being once put in motion, they continue therein, according as the actions of the mind require. This hypothesis is intelligible; the other is not.]
Ph. Each act of sensation gives us an equal view of things corporeal and spiritual; for while sight and hearing give me the knowledge that there is some corporeal being without me, I know in a way still more certain that there is within me a spiritual being which sees and hears.
Th. [It is very well said and very true that the existence of the spirit is more certain than that of sensible objects.2] § 19. Ph. Spirits as well as bodies can operate only where they are and in different times and places; thus I can only attribute change of place to all finite spirits.
Th. [I believe that is reasonable, place being only an order of coexistences.]
Ph. It is only necessary to reflect upon the separation of the soul and the body by death to be convinced of the move ment of the soul.
Th. [The soul might cease to operate in this visible body; and if it could cease thinking all at once, as the author has maintained above, it might be separated from the body with out being united to another; thus its separation would be without movement. But for myself, I believe that it thinks 1 Cf. Letters to Des Bosses, Sept. 20, Oct. 4, 1706, Gerhardt, 2, 316, 319; Erdmann, 43!). Also Descartes' letters, passim. — TR.
2 Cf. Descartes, Meditations, especially II. and VI. Veitch's translation, 8th ed., pp. 104 sq., 151 sq. — TR.
230 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n and feels always, that it is always united to some body, and, indeed, that it never leaves entirely and all at once the body to which it is united.]
§ 21. Ph. If anyone says that spirits are not in loco sed in aliqno ubi I do not suppose that now we would rely much upon this method of speaking. But if anyone thinks that it can receive a reasonable sense, I pray him to express it in language generally intelligible, and to draw therefrom after wards a reason showing that spirits are not capable of motion.
Th. [The schools have three kinds of Ubeity, or modes of existing somewhere. The first is called circumscriptive, which they attribute to bodies in space which are there punctatim, in such wise that they are measures according to which we can assign the points of the thing placed corresponding to the points of space. The second is the definitive, when we can define, i.e. determine, that the situated thing is in such a space, without being able to assign the precise points or the peculiar places exclusive of what is there. Thus it has been con sidered that the soul is in the body, not supposing it possible to assign a precise point at which the soul or some portion of the soul is, without its being also at some other point. More over, many learned men have thus viewed the matter. It is true that Descartes desired to place narrower limits to the soul by locating it properly in the pineal gland.1 Neverthe less he did not dare to say that it is exclusively at a certain point in this gland; and this not being so he gains nothing, and it is in this respect precisely as if he gave it the entire body as its prison or place. I believe that nearly the same statement as that made regarding souls, must be made in respect to the angels, whom the great doctor, a native of Aquino, believed to be in a place only by operation2 which in my view is not immediate and reduces itself to pre-established harmony. The third ubeity is the repletive, which is attrib uted to God, who fills all the universe in a still more eminent degree than the disembodied spirits, for he works immediately 1 Cf. Descartes, Dioptrira, IV., 1 sq.; P<(ssionp.i Animsg, I., 31 sq.; also Prin. Philos., IV., 189, 196, 197, although here the point of contact in the brain of the soul and body is not designated by name. — TR.
2 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, 1225 or 1227-1274, Summa Theoloqica, Pt. I. Quest. 52, Article, 2; also Quest. 53. — TR.
CH. xxi 1 1] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 231 upon all creatures by continually producing them, while finite spirits cannot exercise any immediate influence or operation. I do not know whether this doctrine of the schools deserves to be ridiculed, as it seems some try to do. But we can always attribute a kind of movement to souls at least in rela tion to the bodies with which they are united, or in relation to their mode of perception.]
§ 23. Ph. If any one says he knows not how he thinks, I reply that he knows no more how the solid particles of the body are united to make an extended whole.
Th. [It is difficult enough to explain cohesion; but this cohesion of parts does not appear necessary to make an extended whole, since we can say that matter perfectly subtile and fluid constitutes an extension, without the particles being united the one to the other. But, to speak the truth, I believe that perfect fluidity belongs only to the primary matter,1 i.e. matter in the abstract, and, as an original quality, just as repose; but not to secondary matter, such as is actually found, invested with its derivative qualities; for, I believe that there is no mass, which is of the utmost subtil- ity; and that there is more or less connection everywhere, which arises from movements so far as they are conspirant and would be disturbed by separation, which cannot take place without some violence and resistance. For the rest, the nature of perception and thus of thought furnishes a notion of the most original conditions. I believe, further, that the doctrine of substantial unities or monads will throw much light upon it.]
Ph. As for cohesion, many explain it by means of the sur faces by which two bodies touch, which an ambient fluid 2 (for example, the air) presses one against another. It is very true that the pressure § 24 of an ambient fluid can hinder the avulsion of two polished surfaces from one another in a line perpendicular to them; but it cannot hinder them from separafc ing by a movement parallel to these surfaces. This is why, if there were no other cause of the cohesion of bodies, it would be easy to separate all their parts, by making them thus 1 Cf. ante, p. 131 and note. — TR.
232 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n slide laterally, taking therefor any plane you wish which intersects any mass of matter.
Th. [Yes, no doubt if all the smooth particles applied to each other were in one and the same plane or in parallel planes; but that not being so nor capable of so being, it is manifest that in trying to make the one slide, you will act altogether differently upon an infinite number of others, whose plane will make an angle with the first; for you must know that it is difficult to separate two congruent surfaces, not only when the direction of the movement of separation is perpen dicular, but further when it is oblique to the surfaces. Thus it may be conceived that there are leaves applied to one another in every direction in the polyhedral bodies that nature forms in ores and elsewhere. But I admit that the pressure of the ambient fluid upon smooth surfaces applied to each other does not suffice to explain the basis of all cohesion, for it is tacitly assumed that the tables applied the one against the other already have cohesion.]
§ 27. Ph. I have always supposed that the extension of a body was something else than the cohesion of solid particles.
Th. [That does not appear to me to agree with your own preceding explanations. It seems to me that a body in which there are internal movements or whose particles are in the act of detaching themselves one from, another (as I believe hap pens always) cannot be extended. Thus the notion of exten sion appears to me wholly different from that of cohesion.]
§ 28. Ph. Another idea we have of body is the power of communicating motion by impulse; and another we have of the soul is the power of producing motion by thought. Experience clearly furnishes us each day these two ideas; but if we wish to investigate further how this is done, we find ourselves equally in the dark. For, as regards the communication of motion, wherein one body loses as much motion as another receives, which is the most ordinary case, we conceive there nothing else than a motion which passes from one body into another; which is, I think, as obscure and as inconceivable as the manner in which our mind moves or stops our bodies by thought. It is still more difficult to explain the increase of motion by means of impulse, which is observed or believed to happen in certain cases.
CH. xxni] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 233 Th. [I am not astonished that you find insurmountable dif ficulties where you seem to assume a thing so inconceivable as the passage of an accident from one subject to another; but I see nothing which compels us to an assumption which is no less strange than that of the scholastics of accidents with out a subject, which they have taken care however to attribute only to the miraculous action of the divine omnipotence, while here this passage would be merely an ordinary one. I have already said something about it above (chap. 21, §4*), where I also remarked that it is not true that a body loses as much motion as it gives to another; which they seem to conceive as if motion were a substantial thing and resembled salt dissolved in water, which comparison is actually the one M. Rohaut,2 if I mistake not, has used. I add here that this is not even the most usual case, for I have elsewhere demonstrated that the same quantity of motion is maintained only when the two bodies which come into collision proceed in one and the same direction before the collision and still proceed in one and the same direction after the collision. It is true that the veritable laws of motion are derived from a cause superior to matter.
As for the power of producing motion by thought, I do not think we have any idea of it, as we have no experience of it. The Cartesians themselves admit that souls cannot give a new force to matter, but they pretend that they give it a new determination or direction of the force it has already. For myself, I maintain that souls change nothing in the force nor in the direction of bodies; that the one would be as incon ceivable and unreasonable as the other, and that you must avail yourself of the pre-established harmony in order to explain the union of the soul and the body.]
Ph. It is worth our consideration whether active power is not the proper attribute of spirits and passive power of bodies? Whence we might conjecture that created spirits, 2 James Rohaut or Rohault, 1020-1G75, a French physicist, a follower of Descartes. His chief work, the Physics, was written in French, and trans lated into Latin, with valuable notes, by Dr. Samuel Clarke, 1(575-1729, and into English by his brother Dr. John Clarke. It was a text-book in the Uni versity of Cambridge, until supplanted by the treatises of Sir Isaac Newton. The original work first appeared in 1671, and enlarged, in two vols., in 1682. Clarke's Latin version, 8vo., in 1697; the 4th and best edition, Jacobi Rohaulti Physica, 8vo., 1718. —TR.
234 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n being active and passive, are not totally separate from simply passive matter; and that these other beings, which are active and passive at the same time, partake of both.
Tli. [These thoughts greatly please me and entirely express my conviction, provided you explain the word spirit so gener ally that it comprises all souls, or rather (to speak still more generally) all the entelechies or substantial unities, which are analogous to spirits.]
§ 31. Ph. I much wish that you would show me in the notion we have of spirit anything more confused l or nearer a contradiction than what the very notion of body includes. I mean infinite divisibility.
Tli. [What you here say further in order to make evident that we understand the nature of the spirit as well or better than that of the body is very true; and Fromondus,2 who has published a book, De compositions continui, was right in enti tling it Labyrinth. But the question arises from a false idea you have of the nature of body as well as of space.]
§ 33. Ph. The idea of God indeed comes to us as others do, the complex idea of God we have being composed of the simple ideas which we receive from reflection and which we extend by the idea we have of the infinite.
Th. [Upon that question I refer to what I have already said in several places in order to make evident that all these ideas, and particularly that of God, are in us originally, and that we only make ourselves take notice of them, and that above all, the idea of the infinite is not formed by an extension of finite ideas.3] § 37. Ph. The majority of the simple ideas which compose our complex ideas of substances are, properly considered, only powers, whatever our inclination to take them as positive quali ties.
1 Locke's word is "perplexed," Philos. Works, Vol. 1, p. 443 (Bolin's ed.).
2 Libert Froidmontor Fromont — Latin, Fromondus — 1587-1053, a Flemish theologian, Professor of Philosophy 'and Theology in the University of Lou- vain. His theological, philological, and scientific knowledge was very exten sive. Descartes esteemed highly both his knowledge and his person. Cf. Descartes' letters. His book, Ldbyrinihus sive de compositione contimii, ap peared at Antwerp in 1631. — TR.
CH. xxv] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 235 Tli. [I think that the powers, which are not essential to substance and which include not only an aptitude, but also a certain tendency, are properly what is or ought to be under stood by real qualities.]
CHAPTER XXIV OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES § 1. Ph. After simple substances we come to the aggregates. Is it not true that the idea of this mass of men composing an army, is as much a single idea as that of one man?
Th. [You are right in saying that this aggregate (ens per aggregatiojiem, to use the language of the school), makes one single idea, although, properly speaking, this mass of sub stances does not form in truth one substance. This is a result to which the soul by its perception and its thought gives its last achievement of xinity. You may, however, say in a sense that it is something substantial, i.e. comprising substances.]
CHAPTER XXV OF RELATION § 1. Ph. It remains to consider the ideas of relations which are the poorest in reality. When the mind regards one thing in comparison with another, this is a relation or respect,1 and the denominations or relative terms, which are produced, are like so many marks which serve to lead our thoughts beyond the subject to something distinct from it, and these two are called subjects of the relation (relata).
Th. [Relations and orders have something of the essence of reason, although they have their foundation in things; for we can say that their reality, like that of eternal truths and possi bilities, comes from the supreme reason.]
§ H. l*h. There may, however, be a change of relation with out any change happening in the subject. Titius, whom to- i Locke's word, Philon. Works, Vol. 1, p. 449 (Bohn's ed.).— TR.
236 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n day I consider as a father, ceases to be such to-morrow without any change being made in himself, by the sole fact of his son's death.
Th. [That statement may very well be made in view of things which are perceived; although in metaphysical strict ness it is true that there is no entirely exterior denomination (denominatio pure extrinseca) because of the real connection of all things.]
§ 6. Ph. [I think that relation is only between two things.]
Th. [There are, however, examples of relation between sev eral things at once, as that of order or that of a genealogical tree, which expresses the rank and connection of all the terms or members, and even a figure like that of a polygon includes the relation of all the sides.]
§ 8. Ph. It is well to consider also that the ideas of rela tions are often clearer than those of the things which are the subjects of the relation. Thus the relation of father is clearer than that of man.
Th. [That is because this relation is so general that it may also suit other substances. Moreover, as a subject may have clearness and obscurity, the relation might be grounded in the clear. But if the form itself of the relation involved the knowledge of that which is obscure in the subject, it would participate in this obscurity.]
§ 10. Ph. The terms which necessarily lead the mind to other ideas than those which are supposed really to exist in the thing to which the term or word is applied are relative; the others are absolute.
Th. [You have well added this " necessarily " and you might add " expressly " or " at first," for you can think of black, for example, without thinking of its cause; but it is by remaining within the limits of a knowledge which presents itself at first and which is confused or very distinct, but incomplete; the one when there is no resolution of the idea, the other when you limit it. Otherwise there is no term so absolute or so loose as not to include relations and the perfect analysis of which does not lead to other things and even to all others; so that you can say that relative terms indicate expressly the rela tion they contain. I here oppose the absolute to the relative, aiid it is in another sense that I have opposed it above to the limited.']
en. xxvi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 237 CHAPTER XXVI OF CAUSE AND EFFECT AND SOME OTHER RELATIONS §§ 1, 2. Ph. Cause is that which produces a simple or in- complex idea; effect is that which is produced.
Th. [I see, sir, that you often understand by idea the objec tive reality of the idea or the quality which it represents. You define only efficient cause, as I have already remarked above. You must admit that, in saying that efficient cause is that which produces and effect that which is produced, you make use only of synonyms. It is true that I have heard you say a little more distinctly, that cause is that which makes another thing commence to exist, though this word "makes" passes over also the principal difficulty entirely. But that will be explained better elsewhere.]