1 Erdmann and Jacques read: "grand Seigneur." — TK.
3 Erdmann and Jacques read: "curieux"; Gerhardt reads: "observatif."
260 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. u sanguinity between themselves if husband and wife were taken as one and the same person.
§ 3. Ph. The foundation of a relation is sometimes a moral right, as the relation of a general of an army or of a citizen. These relations depending upon the agreements men have made between themselves are voluntary or by institution, and may be distinguished from the natural. Sometimes the two correlatives have each its name, as patron and client, general and soldier. But it is not so always; as, for example, it is not so in the case of those who are related to the chancellor.
Til. [There are sometimes natural relations which men have invested and enriched with certain moral relations, as, for example, children have the right to claim the legitimate por tion of the estate of their fathers or mothers; young persons are under certain restraints and the aged have certain immu nities. But it also happens that some relations are taken as natural which are not so; as when the laws say that the father is he who married the mother within the time which makes it possible for the child to be attributed to him; and this substitution of the instituted in the place of the natural is sometimes only presumption, that is to say, a judgment which causes that to pass as true which perhaps is not so, whilst its falsity is not at all proved. Thus it is that the maxim: pater est quern nuptioe, demonstrant is understood in Roman law and among the most of the peoples where it is received. But they tell me that in England it avails nothing in proving his alibi; provided he has been in one of the three kingdoms, so that the presumption in that case changes into fiction or into what some doctors call prcesumtio juris et de jure.']
§ 4. Ph. A moral relation is the conformity or disagreement which is found between the voluntary acts of men and a rule which makes us judge whether they are morally good or bad. § 5. And moral good or moral evil is the conformity or the opposition which is found between voluntary acts and a cer tain law which brings upon us good or evil (physical) by the will and power of the lawgiver (or of him who wills to main tain the law) and it is this we call reivard and punishment.
Th. [Authors, as clever as he whose views you, sir, repre sent, are allowed to adapt their terms as they think proper. But it -is also true that according to this notion one and the CH. xxvin] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 201 same act would be morally good and morally bad at the same time under different legislators, entirely as our clever author understood virtue above as that which is praised, and conse quently the same act would be virtuous or not according to the opinions of men. Now that not being the ordinary sense that is given to morally good and virtuous acts, I prefer for myself, to take as the measure of moral good and of virtue the invariable rule of reason which God is charged with main taining. We can also be assured that by his mediation all moral good becomes physical,1 or as the ancients say, every thing virtuous is useful2; while in order to express the notion of the author, it would be necessary to say that moral good or evil is an imposed or instituted good or evil, which he who has the power tries to make us follow or shun by punishments and rewards. The good is that which by the general institu tion of God is conformed to nature or to reason.]
§ 7. Ph. There are three sorts of laws: the divine laiv, the civil law, and the law of opinion or reputation. The first is the rule of sins or duties, the second of actions criminal or innocent, the third of virtues or vices.
Th. [According to the ordinary sense of terms virtues and vices differ from duties and sins only as habits differ from 1 What does Leibnitz here mean by " physical "? Possibly " physical" is here equivalent to " real," i.e. actual, concrete, objectively realized as distin guished from that which is purely subjective and abstract, and exists in idea only (<;f. Bk. II., chap. 27, § 9, Th. propefin., ante, p. 247, line 7, where the two terms are united in one phrase " real and physical," and seem to be mutually interpretative and emphatic). Or, possibly, "physical" is here used in the sense of "natural," the meaning of the passage being that moral good is realized by the mediation of God through the natural forces and in accord with the natural laws of the universe, which with Leibnitz have their ultimate source and ground in the nature of God and his choice of " the best and most perfect," as the universal principle of creation. The true view of the world is, according to Leibnitz, both physico-mechanical and moral-teleological, the two finding a higher unity in this principle of "the best and most perfect," the moral-teleological prevailing in case of collision, because of this princi ple and because the physical is in its last analysis and ground spiritual and possessed of a?i inner teleological character which is realized by means of mechanism while resting upon the principle of the divine choice of the best. Cf. Discours de Mctaphyxique, § 19 sq., Gerhardt, 4, 444 sq.; letter to Bayle, 2 Cf. Cicero, De Officiis, Bk. III., chaps. 3 and 7, who shows on the author ity of Panaetius and others that the virtuous and the useful — honestum and utile — are identical, a chief point of the Stoic philosophy. Cf. also Zeller, Die r kilos, d. Griech., III., 1 [Vol. 5], p. 212, 3d ed. 1880. — TR.
262 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n actions, and virtue and vice are not understood as something dependent upon opinion.1 A great sin is called a crime, and the innocent is not opposed to the criminal but to the blame worthy. The divine law 2 is of two sorts, natural and positive. Civil law is positive. The law of reputation deserves the name of law only improperly, or is comprised under the natural law, as though I said, the law of health, the law of the family, when actions naturally attract some good or evil, as the approbation of another, health, gain.]
§ 10. Ph. The claim is in fact everywhere made that the terms virtue and vice signify actions good and bad in their nature, and so far as they are really applied in this sense, vir tue agrees perfectly with the divine (natural) law. But what ever the claims of men, it is evident3 that these names, con sidered in their particular applications, are constantly and solely attributed to such or such actions as in each country or in each society are reputed honorable or shameful: otherwise men ivould condemn themselves. Thus the measure of what is called virtue and vice is this approbation or this contempt, this esteem or this blame, which is formed by a secret or tacit consent. 'For although men united in political societies have resigned into the hands of the public the disposition of all their forces, so that they cannot employ them against their fellow-citizens beyond what the law permits, they nevertheless always retain the power of thinking well or ill, of approval or disapproval.
Tli. [If the clever author, who thus explains himself, should declare with you, sir, that it has pleased him to assign this present arbitrary nominal definition to the terms virtue and vice, we could only say that it is allowed him in theory for the 1 Leibnitz maintains, as against Locke's theory of relativity, the absolute and objective character of Moral Law. It is objective and universal, not sub jective and particular; not dependent upon the opinions of men, but grounded in "the general institution of God," and ultimately in his infinitely perfect moral nature, and is thus valid for and binding upon all moral beings as such. This is Moral Law absolute and ideal which changes not; it is progressively and approximately attained or realized in the history of the individual and the race according to men's apprehension of its nature and requirements and their strength of purpose and effort in its pursuit. — TR.
2 Cf. the discussion of Moral Law, in Principles and Practice of Morality, pp. T.)sq., by E. G. Robinson, D.D., LL.D., Ex-President of Brown University. Boston: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1888. — Tit.
3 Locke has: " visible," Philos. Works, Vol. 1, p. 488 (Bohu's etl.). — TR.
CH. xxvin] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 203 convenience of expression for want perhaps of other terms; but we shall be obliged to add that this meaning is not conformed to usage, nor indeed useful for edification, and that it would sound ill in the ears of many people, if any one should intro duce it into practical life and conversation, as this author seems himself to admit in his preface. But it is (for us) to go on farther here, and although you admit that men claim to speak of that which is naturally virtuous or vicious according to immutable laws, you maintain that in fact they mean to speak only of that which depends on opinion. But it seems to me that by the same reasoning you could further maintain that truth and reason and all that could be named as most real, depends upon opinion, because men are mistaken when they judge of it. Is it not better then 011 all accounts to say, that men understand by virtue as by truth, that which is conformed to nature, but that they are mistaken often in its application; besides they are mistaken less than they think, for what they praise ordinarily deserves it in certain respects. The virtue of drinking, i.e. of well carrying wine, is an advantage, which served Bonosus, in conciliating the Barbarians and in drawing from them their secrets.1 The nocturnal powers of Hercules, in which the same Bonosus claimed to resemble him, were no less a perfection. The craft of thieves was praised among the Spartans, and it is not the skill, but the unseasonable use which has been made of it, which is blamable, and those whom we harass in (time of) complete peace may serve sometimes as excellent partisans in time of war. Thus all depends upon the application and the good or bad use of the advantages you pos sess. It is also very often true and should not be taken as a very strange thing, that men condemn themselves, as when they do what they blame in others, and there is often a contradiction between actions and words which scandalizes the public, when what a magistrate or preacher does and defends leaps to the eyes of the whole world.]
§ II.2 Ph. Everywhere that which passes as virtue is that which is thought worthy of praise. Virtue and praise are often designated by the same name. Sunt hie etiam sua prcemia laudi, says Vergil (Aen. I. 461) and Cicero, Nihil habet natura 1 Cf. Vopiscus, Script, hist. Avc/ust., Vol. 2, pp. 213, 214, ed. Peter. — TR.
2 Gerhardt and Locke; Erdmann and Jacques have § 11>. — Tu.
264 LEIBNITZ'S ClilTlQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n praestantius quam honestatem, quam laudem, quam dignitatem, quam decus.1 (Qucest. Tuscul. Bk. 2. chap. 20) and lie adds a little after: Hisce ego pluribus nominibus unam rem declarari volo.1 Th. [It is true that the ancients have designated virtue by the name honesty (Vhonneste), as when they have praised in- coctum generoso pectus honesto.2 It is true also that honesty (Vhonneste) has its name of honor or of praise. But this means not that virtue is that which is praised but that it is that which is worthy of praise and which depends upon truth, and not upon opinion.]
Ph. Many do not think at all seriously of the law of God, or hope that they will one day be reconciled with its author, and as regards the law of the state they flatter themselves with im punity. But they do not think that he who does anything contrary to the opinions of those with whom he associates, and to whom he wishes to commend himself, can avoid the pain of their censure and of their disdain. No one who retains any consciousness of his own nature can live in society constantly despised; this is the force of the law of reputation.
Th. [I have already said that it is not so much the pain of a law, as a natural pain which the act draws upon itself. It is, however, true that many people are but little concerned about it, because ordinarily, if they are despised by some on account of some blameworthy act, they find accomplices or at least partisans, who do not despise them, if they are ever so little commendable in some other respect. They forget even acts the most infamous, and it often suffices to be bold and im pudent like that Phonnio of Terence in order that all may be overlooked. If excommunication produced a truly constant and general contempt, it would have the force of this law of which our author speaks: and it had in fact this force with the first Christians and for them took the place of the right, which they lacked, to punish the guilty; nearly as artisans maintain certain customs among themselves in spite of the laws, through 1 The quotation is not exact. Cf. op. cit., ed. Klotz, Lipsiae, B. G. Teub- ner, 1870, where the text reads thus: " Nihil enim habet prastantius, nihil quod magis expetat quam honestatem, quam laudem, quam dignitatem, quam decus. Hisce ego pluribus nominibus unam rem declarari volo, sed utor, ut quam maxime significem, pluribus." — TB.
en. xxix] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 265 the contempt which they show for those who do not observe them. And it is this which has also maintained duels con trary to the ordinances. It would be desirable for the public to agree with itself and with reason in its praise and blame; and that the great above all do not encourage the bad by laugh ing at their bad actions, in which it oftenest seems that not he who lias done them, but he who has suffered them is punished by contempt and ridiculed. We shall see also generally that men despise not so much vice as weakness and misfortune. Thus the law of reputation would need to be greatly reformed, and also to be better observed.]
§ 19. Ph. Before leaving the consideration of relations, I would remark that we usually have a notion as clear or clearer of the relation than of its ground. If I believed that Sempronia took Titus from beneath a cabbage, as they used to tell little children, and that afterwards she had had Caius in the same manner, I should have as clear a notion of the relation of brother between Titus and Caius, as if I had all the knowledge of the midwives.
Th. But when they once said to a child, that his little brother, who had just been born, had been drawn from a well (a reply which they make use of in Germany to satisfy the' curiosity of children upon this subject) the child replied that he wondered that they did not throw him back again into the same well when he cried so much and disturbed his mother. The fact is this explanation did not make him know any rea son for the love his mother showed for the child. We can say then that those who do not know the ground of relations have only concerning them what I call thoughts, surd in part and insufficient, although these thoughts may suffice in certain respects and upon certain occasions.]
CHAPTER XXIX OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS § 2. Ph. We come now to some differences of ideas. Our simple ideas are dear when they are such as the objects them selves, from whence they are received, represent or may 266 LEIBNITZ'S CTCITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n represent them with all the circumstances requisite to a well- ordered sensation or perception. While the memory retains them in this way, they are in this case clear ideas, and so far as they lack this original exactness or have lost anything so to speak of their first freshness, and are, as it were, tarnished or faded by time, so far are they obscure. Complex ideas are dear, when the simple ideas which compose them are clear and the number and order of these simple ideas are fixed.
Th. [In a brief discourse on ideas,1 true or false, clear or obscure, distinct or confused, inserted in the " Leipsic Acts " of the year 1684, I have given a definition of clear ideas, common to the simple and complex and which gives the rea son of what you say here. I said then that an idea is clear when it suffices to recognize and distinguish the thing: as when I have a very clear idea of a color, I shall not take another instead of that which I ask for, and if I have a clear idea of a plant, I shall distinguish it among other neighboring ones; without this the idea is obscure. I believe that we have but few perfectly clear ideas of sensible things. There are colors which approach each other in such a way that we can not distinguish them by memory, and yet we will sometimes distinguish them by placing one near the other. And when we think we have fully described a plant, we can bring one from the Indies which will have all we have put into our description and which will not cease making itself known as a different species: thus we can never perfectly determine species infamce, or the lowest species.]
§ 4. Ph. As a clear idea is that whereof the mind has such a full and evident perception as it receives from an external object operating duly upon a well-disposed organ; so a distinct idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference, which distinguishes it from every other idea; and a confused idea is that which cannot be sufficiently distinguished from another from which it should be different.
Th. [According to this notion which you give of the dis tinct idea, I do not see how you distinguish it from the clear idea. This is why I have been wont to follow here the lan guage of Descartes, with whom an idea may be clear and con- 1 Meditationes de Coc/nitionc, Veritate et Idcis. Cf. ante, p. 14, note 2; en. xxix] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 267 fused at the same time; and such are the ideas of sensible qualities, appropriate to the organs, such as color or heat. They are clear, for they are easily recognized and distinguished the one from the other, but they are not distinct, because they are not distinguished by what they include. Thus we cannot give a definition of them. We make them known only by examples, and for the rest we must say it is an indefinite somewhat, until we can decipher its contexture. Thus althoiTgh in our view distinct ideas distinguish one object from another; nevertheless, as the ideas clear, but confused in themselves, do so also, we call distinct not all those which are very discrimi nating or which distinguish objects, but those which are well distinguished, i.e. which are distinct in themselves and dis tinguish in the object the marks which make it known, which an analysis or definition of it gives; otherwise we call them confused. And in this sense the confusion which reigns in ideas can be exempt from blame, being an imperfection of our nature; for we cannot discern the causes, for example, of odors and tastes, nor the content of these qualities. This confusion can, however, be blameworthy, when it is important and within my power to have distinct ideas, as, for example, if I took adulterated gold as the true, for want of making the necessary assays which contain the marks of good gold.
§ 5. Ph. But you will say that there is no idea confused (or rather according to your view, obscure) in itself1 for it can be only such as it is perceived by the mind, and that distin guishes it sufficiently from all others. § 6. And in order to remove this difficulty it is needful to know that the defect of ideas is related to names, and what renders it faulty is the fact that it can as well be designated by another name as the one which we use to express it.
Th. [It seems to me that we ought not to make this depend upon names. Alexander the Great had seen (they say) in a dream a plant able to cure Lysimachus, which has since been called Lysimachia, because it effectually cured this friend of the king. When Alexander had a quantity of plants brought, among which he recognized that which he had seen in his dream, if unfortunately he had not had a sufficient idea of it to recognize it and had needed as Nebuchadnezzar a 1 Erdmann and Jacques omit: " eu clle menie." — TB.
268 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n Daniel to enable him to recall his dream, it is plain that the idea he would have had of it would have been obscure and imperfect (for it is thus I should prefer to call it rather than confused), not for want of appositeness in a certain name, for there was none, but for want of application to the thing, i.e. to the plant which was to heal. In this case Alexander would be reminded of certain circumstances, but he would have been in doubt about others; and the name serving us to designate anything makes us, when we fail in the application to names, fail ordinarily in regard to the thing which is promised by this name.]
§ 7. Ph. As complex ideas are the most subject to this imperfection, it may arise from the fact that the idea is composed of too small a number of simple ideas, as is, for example, the idea of an animal which has the skin spotted, (a term) which is too general, and which does not suffice to dis tinguish the lynx, the leopard, or the panther, which are besides distinguished by particular names.
Th. [If we were in the condition Adam was in before he had given names to the animals, this defect would not cease to have place. For supposing we knew that among the spotted animals there is one which has extraordinarily pene trating sight, but that we did not know whether it is a tiger or a lynx, or some other species; it is an imperfection not to be able to distinguish it. Thus the question is not so much about the name as about that which may give occa sion for it, and which renders the animal worthy of a particu lar name. It thereby appears also that the idea of a spotted animal is good in itself, and without confusion and obscurity, when it is to serve only the genus; but when joined with some other idea which is not sufficiently remembered it is to designate the species, the complex idea is obscure and imperfect.]
§ 8. Ph. There is an opposite defect when the simple ideas which make up the complex idea are sufficient in number, but too confused and involved, like some pictures, which appear so confused that they must be only the representation of the sky covered with clouds, in which case also we could not say that there is confusion any more than if it were another pic ture made to imitate that one; but when we say that this en. xxix] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 269 picture should make us see a portrait, we shall have reason to say that it is confused because we cannot say whether it is that of a man, or of a monkey, or of a fish, but it may be that when we look at it in a cylindrical mirror, the confusion will disappear, and that we shall see that it is a Julius Caesar. Thus some mental paintings (if I may so express myself) can not be called confused from any way in which the parts are joined together; for whatever these paintings are, they can obviously be distinguished from every other, until they are ranked under some ordinary name, to which we cannot see that they belong any more than to some other name of a different signification.
Th. [This picture whose parts we see distinctly, without noticing the result to which they in a certain way point, resembles the idea of a heap of stones, which is truly confused not only in your sense, but also in mine, so far as we have distinctly conceived their number and other properties. If there were thirty-six of them (for example), we would not know, looking at them heaped together without arrangement, that they may produce a triangle or indeed a square, as in fact they can, because thirty-six is a square as well as a tri angular number. Thus it is that, in looking at a figure of a thousand sides, we shall have only a confused idea of it, until we know the number of the sides which is the cube of ten. The question, then, is not of names but of the distinct proper ties which are to be found in the idea when we have cleared up its confusion. And it is sometimes difficult to find the key, or the manner of looking at it from a certain point, either by the intervention of a certain mirror or glass in order to see the purpose of him who has caused the thing.]
§ 9. Ph. It cannot be denied that there is yet a third defect in ideas, which depends in truth upon the bad use of names; it is when our ideas are uncertain or undetermined. Thus we may see every day men who, making no difficulty of availing themselves of the ordinary words of their mother tongue, before they have learned their precise meaning, change the idea which they attach to them almost as often as they use them in their discourse. § 10. Thus we see how much names contribute to this denomination of ideas distinct and confused, and, without the consideration of distinct names 270 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n understood as signs of distinct things, it will be very difficult to say what a confused idea is.
Tli. [I have, however, just explained it without considering the names, whether in the case where the confusion is under stood with you as what I call obscurity, or in that where it is understood in my sense as the defect in the analysis of the notion we have. And I have also shown that every obscure idea is in fact indeterminate or uncertain, as in the example of the spotted animal we have seen, where we know that some thing further must be added to this general notion, without clearly remembering it; so that the first and third defect which you have specified come to the same thing. It is, how ever, very true that the abuse of words is a great source of errors, for a kind of error in calculating occurs therefrom, as if in calculating we did not notice carefully the place of the counter, or if we wrote the figures so badly that we could not distinguish a 2 from a 7, or if we omitted or changed them through inadvertence. This abuse of words consists either in not connecting ideas with the whole or in connecting them with an imperfect one, of which a part is empty and abides so to speak in blank; and in these two cases there is a certain void and surd in the thought which is filled only by the name. Or, finally, the defect is in attaching to the word different ideas, whether we are uncertain which should be chosen, which makes the idea obscure as well as when a part of it is surd; or whether we select them by turns, and avail ourselves sometimes of one, sometimes of the other as the sense of the same word in one and the same course of reasoning in a way capable of causing error, without consider ing that the ideas do not agree. Thus the uncertain thought is either void and without idea, or fluctuates between several ideas. This does harm whether1 we wish to designate some definite thing or whether we wish to give a word a certain sense corresponding either to that of which we have already availed ourselves, or to that which others have used, above all in ordinary language, common to all, or to the artisans. And from this arise an infinite number of vague and vain dis putes in conversation, in lecture-rooms, and in books, which we