1 The Barbary ape. — TR.
2 Cf. L'Homme dans la lunt>, ou le voyage chimerique fait era monde de. la lune, nouvellemcnt decouvert par Dominique Gonzales, avanturier Espaqnol, autrement dit le courier volant, mis en nostre lanc/ue par J. B. D. (Jean Bau- doin), Paris, 1648, 8vo, pp. 176; reprinted Paris, 1666, with illustrations, and also Paris, 17151, 12mo. Brunet states that this is the French translation of Franc. Godwin, The Man in the Moon, or a discourse of a voyage thither by Domingo Gonsales, London, 1638, also 1657, etc., 12mo; that it had some suc cess, and that it is supposed that Swift borrowed some passages from it for his Gulliver's Travels. Cf. E. A. Poe, Works, New York, 1867, Vol. 1, p. 49, who gives, in a note at the end of the story of " The unparalleled adventure of one Hans Pfaall," the full title of the French book, together with some account of its contents, including the machine of Gonzales. — Tit.
en. vi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 343 as a lunar being, and yet we might accord him indigineity and the rights of citizenship, with the title of man, entire stranger as he would be to our globe; but if he asked for baptism and wished to be received as a proselyte of our law, I think that we should see great discussions arise among the theologians. And if communication were opened with these planetary men, sufficiently approaching ourselves according to Huygens,1 the question would require a universal council in order to know whether we ought to extend the care of the propagation of the faith even beyond our globe. Many would doubtless maintain that the rational animals of these countries, not being of the race of Adam, have no part in the redemption of Jesus Christ; but others would perhaps say that we have not sufficient knowledge either of the place where Adam has always been, or of what has been done with all his posterity, since there have been theologians, indeed, who believed that the moon was the place of paradise; and perhaps that with the plurality we should conclude for the surest thing, viz., to baptize these men upon condition that they be susceptible of baptism; but I doubt whether we should ever wish to make them priests in the Roman Church, because their consecration would always be doubtful, and we should expose the people to the danger of a material idolatry, according to the hypothesis of this church. Happily the nature of things exempts us from all these embarrassments; but these bizarre fictions are useful in speculation, in order rightly to know the nature of our ideas.
§ 23. Ph. Not only in theological questions, but also on other occasions some would perhaps wish to regulate them selves by the race, and to say that in animals propagation by the copulation of the male and the female, and in plants by means of the seeds, keeps the supposed real species distinct and entire. But this would serve only to fix the species of animals and vegetables. What must be done about the rest? And even as regards these it is not sufficient, for if history is to be believed, women have been gotten with children by magots. And here is a new question: Of what species must such a production be? You often see mules and jumarts (see Diction- 344 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. in naire Etymologique de M. Menage1), the first begotten by an ass and a mare, the last by a bull and a mare. I have seen an animal begotten of a cat and a rat, which had visible marks of these two animals.2 Whoever will add thereto the monstrous productions, will find that it is very hard to determine species by generation; and if it can only be done by that means, must I go to the Indies to see the father and mother of a tiger, and the seed of the tea-plant, and could I not otherwise decide whether the individuals which come to us are of these species? Th. Generation or race gives at least a strong presumption (i. e. a provisional proof) and I have already said that very often our signs are only conjectural. The race has sometimes been contradicted by the figure, as when the child is unlike the father and mother, and the mixture of figures is not always the sign of the mixture of races; for it may happen that a female gives birth to an animal which seems to belong to another species and that the mother's imagination alone has caused this irregularity: to say nothing of what is called mola.s But as meanwhile we judge provisionally the species by the race, we also judge the race by the species. For when a forest child,4 taken from among the bears, who had many of their ways, but who made himself known at last as a rational animal, was presented to John Casimir,5 king of Poland, he did not scruple to believe him of the race of Adam, and to baptize him under the name of Joseph, although perhaps upon the condition, si baptizatus non es, according to the usage of the Roman church, because he might have been carried off by a bear after baptism. We have not as yet sufficient knowledge 1 Cf. Dutens, Leibnit. op. om., 5, 350, 543; 6, Ft. II., 21, Gerhardt, 2, 530, 539. Grilles Menage, 1613-1092. The first ed. was entitled Origines de la lanr/ue fran<;oise, Paris, 1650, 4to. A new ed. appeared at Paris, 1694, fol., under the name, Dictionnairc Etymologique de la lanyue fran<;oise, etc.; and this was afterwards enlarged and edited by A. F. Jault, Paris, 1750, 2 vols., fol. — Tit.
2 An instance of superficial observation and hasty inference, like that of the men with tails above mentioned, ante, p. 341, note 3. — TR.
3 An amorphous fleshy mass in the uterus. — TR.
4 Schaarschmidt states that J. H. F. Ulrich, in his German trans., with ad ditions and notes, Halle, 1778-80, of Raspe's CEuvres philosoph. latincs etfran- qaises de feu Mr. Leibniz, "gives in a note, p. 139-1-10, information concerning the child of the bears found in the forest, without, however, quoting the source of his communications." — TR.
5 John II., Casimir V., 1609-1672. He was elected king of Poland in 1614, and abdicated in 1688. — TK.
CH. vi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 345 of the effects of the intermixture of animals: and often mon sters are destroyed, instead of being brought up, whilst they are seldom long lived. The belief is that mixed animals do not multiply; but Strabo l attributes propagation to the mules of Cappadocia, and letters from China tell me that in neigh boring Tartary there are race-mules. We see also that the mixtures of plants are capable of preserving their new spe cies.2 We do not always indeed know in the case of animals whether it is the male or the female, or both, or neither, which determines the species. The doctrine concerning the eggs of females which the late Mr. Kerkring3 made famous, seemed to reduce the males to the condition of moist air as related to plants, which furnishes seeds with the means of pushing and raising themselves from the earth; following the verses of Vergil which the Priscillianists 4 were wont to repeat: 1 Cf. Gcof/raphica, p. 212, ed. Casauboa, 1G20; Bk. V., chap. 1, § 4, ed. by Gustav Kramer, Berlin, 1844-52, 3 vols., 8vo; English trans. Vol. 1, p. 31(5 (Bolm's Class. Lib.), London, 1887. — TR.
2 Of. C. Darwin, 1809-1882, Oriyin of Species, and the new inquiries and investigations consequent upon it. — TR.
3 Theodore Kerkkrinck, 1640-1693, a Dutch physician, born at Amsterdam, died at Hamburg, a fellow-pupil with Spinoza, 1632-1(377, of a physician, Francis Van der Ende, and author of works on medicine, anatomy, and chem istry, among which was the one here referred to by Leibnitz: Anthropogenise ichnographia sive conformatio foetus ab ovo usque ad ossificationis principia, in supplementum osteoyenise fcetuum, 4to, Amstelodami, 1671. His Opera omnia anatomica, 2d ed., 4to, Lugd. Bat., 1717. Cf. Dutens, Leibnit. op. om., 5, 173, 199; F. Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, p. 13. — TR.
4 The Priscillianists were an heretical sect which appeared in Spain toward the close of the fourth century, and continued till about the middle of the sixth. Their speculative doctrines are a combination of Christianity with Gnosticism and Manichffiism. Their moral system was rigidly ascetic, and celibacy was required. The charges of immorality and licentiousness so fre quently brought against them by their adversaries, " are, to say the least, not sufficiently well authenticated." The information that they made use of these verses of Vergil, to which they attached a religious dogma, as a foundation for their heresy and alleged sexual license comes from a letter of Jerome, c. 346-420, to Ctesiphon, Epist. 133 ad Ctesiphontem, Opera, ed. Vallarsi, Veronaj, 1734-42, Vol. 1, p. 1029, a; 2d ed., Venetiis, 17(56-72; J. P. Migne, Patrol, s. Lat., Vol. 22, p. 1150-51, Paris, 1845, latest ed., Paris, 1864-66. Cf. also Sulpicius Severus, 363-406, or 410, Ilistor. Sacra, or Chronica, Bk. II., chaps. 46-51, and Dialog., III., 11-13, ed. C. Halm, Vienna, 1866 (Vol. 1 of the Corpus Script. Eccles. Latinorum), and J. Bernays, Die Chronik des Sulp. Severus, Berlin, 1861; A. Neander, Hist, of the Christ. Rclig. and Church, 2, 771-779, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Milman's ed., chap. 27; Smith and ~Wa.ce, Diet, of Christ. Bioy., 4, 470-478, London, John Murray, 1887.— TR.
346 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [KK. in Cum pater omnipotens fcecundis imbribus aether Conjugis in Isetse gremium descendit et ornnes Magnus alit inagno commistus corpore foetus.1 In a word according to this hypothesis the male would no longer be more than the rain. But Leeuwenhoek2 has reha bilitated the masculine genus, and the other sex is in its turn degraded, as if it performed only the earth's function as regards seeds, by furnishing them place and nourishment; a view which might obtain even if we still maintained the theory of the eggs. But this does not prevent the imagination of the female from having a great influence upon the form of the fcetus, even if we supposed that the animal has already come from the male. For this is a condition destined ordi narily to a great change, and much more susceptible also to extraordinary changes. It is asserted that the imagination of a woman in this condition, who was shocked by the sight of a cripple, caused the separation of the hand of the foetus very near its term, and that this hand was subsequently found in the after-birth; a statement, however, which requires confir- 2 Antoon van Leeuwenhoek, 1632-1723, a distinguished Dutch naturalist, "the father of scientific microscopy," who shares with Malpighi, 1628-1694, the discovery of the capillary circulation of the blood, thus completing the doctrine of Harvey, 1598-1657, and with his own pupil, Ludwig Hamm, the discovery of the active moving constituents of the seminal fluid, which he called " animalcula spermatica," or "spermatozoa." Leeuwenhoek communicated his discovery, 1677, of the spermatozoa in a letter to Sir Christopher Wren, 1631-1723, President of the Royal Society, 1681, " De ovario, et imaginovis ejus ovis; homo ex animalcule oritur." The letter is found in Leeuwenhoek's Arcana natures detecta sive epistolse ad societatem Eeaiam Analiam scripts^, Delft, 1695, 4to, p. 28 sq. Leeuwenhoek strenuously opposed the doctrine of "spontaneous generation," and did more than any other naturalist to over throw it. Cf. Dutens, Leibnit. op. om., 5, 173, 174, 319, 337; 6, Pt. I., 211, 213, 218, Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 3, 562, 565, 571, 579, 580, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 329, 330; Pt. II., 214, Protor/fea, § 17; Systeme noureau, § 6, Ger hardt, 4, 480, Erdmann, 125, b, Jacques, 1, 471, trans. Duncan, Philos. Wks. of Leibnitz, 73; Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, § 6, G., 6, 601, E., 715, b, trans. D., 212; G., 7, 568. He published the greater part of his discussions and investigations in 112 papers in the Philos. Transactions of the Royal Society, and in 26 papers in the Memoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences, of both of which bodies lie was a member. The most complete collection of his works is the Opera omnia sen arcanss naturss ope microscopiorum detecta, Leyden, 1719-22, 4 vols., 4to; from this, Select Works, trans, by Samuel Hoole, London, 1800-1807, 2 vols, 4to, does not contain the letter to Wren. There is a Life in Dutch by Haaxman, Leyden, 1875. — TB.
en. vi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 347 mation. Perhaps some one will arise who will maintain that, although the soul can come only from one sex, both sexes furnish something of the organism, and that from the two bodies one is made, just as we see that the silk-worm is as it were a double animal, and encloses a flying insect under the form of the caterpillar: in such darkness are we still upon so important a point. Some day perhaps the analogy of plants will give us some light, but at present we have but little in formation regarding the generation of plants themselves, the surmise concerning the pollen which has been remarked, as that which might correspond to the masculine semen, not yet being very clear. Besides a slip of a plant is very often capable of giving a new and complete plant, to which no analogy is as yet seen in animals; also we cannot say that the foot of an animal is an animal, as each branch of the tree seems to be a plant capable of fruit-bearing by itself. Fur thermore the intermixture of species, and even the changes in one and the same species often go 011 with much success in plants. Perhaps at some time or place in the universe the species of animals are, or were, or will be more subject to change than they are at present with us, and many animals who have somewhat of the cat, as the lion, the tiger, and the lynx, might have been of one and the same race and may now be as it were new subdivisions of the ancient species of cats. Thus I always return to what I have more than once said that our determinations of physical species are provisional and proportional to our knowledge.1 § 24. Ph. Men at least in making their divisions of species have never thought of substantial forms, save those who, in this single corner of the world where we are, have learned the language of our schools.
Th. It seems that lately the term substantial forms has come into disrepute with certain classes and that they are ashamed to speak of them. Meanwhile there is perhaps in that circumstance more of fashion than of reason. The scho lastics employed inaptly a general notion, when they used it to explain particular phenomena; but this abuse does not de stroy the thing. The soul of man is a little disconcerting to 1 Leibnitz here touches upon the theory of evolution, or development, but keeps himself within very moderate limits in the statement of his views. --TK.
348 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. in the dogmatism of some of our moderns. There are some who admit that it is the form of man; but they also affirm that it is the only substantial form of known nature. Descartes thus speaks of it, and he censures Regius1 because he contested this quality of a substantial form of the soul and denied that man was a unum per se, a being endowed with a veritable unity.2 Some think that this excellent man did this as a matter of policy. I doubt this a little because I think he had reason for so doing. But this privilege is not given to man only, as if nature were made of broken sticks. There is room for the judgment that there is an infinite number of souls, or, to speak more generally, of primitive entelechies, which have something analogous to perception and appetite, and which are all, and remain always, substantial forms of bodies. It is true that species apparently exist which are not truly a unum per se (I.e. bodies endowed with a veritable unity, or with an Divisible essence which makes their entire active principle), any more than a mill or watch might be. The salts, the minerals, and the metals may be of this nature, i.e. simple contextures or masses in which there is a certain regularity. But the bodies of both, i.e. animate bodies as well as the contextures without life will be specified by their internal structure, since in those indeed which are animate, the soul and the machine,3 each by 1 Pierre Sylvain Re'gis — Latin, Regius — 1632-1707, a celebrated Cartesian, at first destined for the church, but who, on going to Paris to study theology at the Sorhonne, heard Renault (cf. ante, p. 233, note 2) on Cartesianism, became a zealous adherent of the doctrine, renounced the priesthood, and gave himself up to teaching the new philosophy. His enormous success aroused the opposition of Harlay, the Archbishop of Paris, who forbade his teaching. He therefore turned to composition, expounding his philosophical ideas in his Cours entier de philosophic, or Systeme general selon les principes de Des cartes, 4 vols., 4to, Paris, 1090, 2d ed., 3 vols., Amsterdam, 165)1. He inter preted Descartes in the sense of empiricism, and thus drew upon himself the philosopher's censure, cf. Descartes, Remarks on the Programme of Regius, Works, ed. Cousin, Paris, 1824-26, Vol. 10, pp. 70-111; see also Veitch, The Method, Meditations and Selections from the Principles of Descartes, 8th ed., Edinburgh, 1881, pp. 278, 287. His doctrines were a reaction against the ultra idealism of Malcbranche. Other works of his are Response a la censura philosophise cartesianse, 12mo, Paris, 165)1; L' Usage de la Raison et do la Foi, 2 Cf. Descartes, 155)6-1650, Epist., L, 89, pp. 292-293, ed. of 1668, p. 261, ed. of 165)2, Cousin's ed., Vol. 8, pp. 57!)-583; Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 8 I.e. body, according to the linguistic usage of the Cartesians. — TR.
CH. vi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 349 itself, suffice for the determination; for they agree perfectly, and although having no immediate influence the one upon the other, they are mutually expressive, the one having concen trated into a perfect unity all that the other has dispersed in the manifold. Thus, when the arrangement of species is the question, it is useless to dispute about the substantial forms, although it may be well for other reasons to know if there are any and what their nature is; for without this one would be a stranger in the intellectual world. For the rest the Greeks and the Arabians have spoken of these forms as well as the Europeans, and if the common people do not speak of them, no more do they speak of algebra or of surds.1 § 25. Ph. Languages were formed before the sciences, and ignorant and unlettered people reduced things to certain species.
1 The doctrine of the substantial forms, of which the Mediaeval schoolmen made so much use, finds its origin and point of departure in the eTSos and ova-ia of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle used ovaia in two senses; in its primary and proper signification, as a concrete and individual substance, a compound (<rvvo\ov) of matter (v\y) and the determining principle, form (elSos), in which sense individual things were called "first substances" (vrpwrai oio-i'ai ); sec ondly, as applied to the genus, in which sense species were called "second substances" (Sevrepai ovo-i'at). According as they were nominalists or realists, the Schoolmen, in their interpretation of Aristotle, regarded the substantial forms as mere concepts of genus and species, the product of the abstraction- power of the mind, which might correspond to, though they did not constitute, the reality of things; or, as real universals existing in concrete things, consti tuting their inmost essence and determining its nature. Locke adopts the nominalistic view of these forms as purely subjective having no corresponding reality in nature. Leibnitz maintains them in the realistic sense as expres sions of the reality of the " first substances," and in direct connection with them develops his doctrine of monads. Cf. Diseours de Mctaphys., 1080, § 10 sq., Gerhardt, 4, 443; Systeme noureau, 1698, §§ 3, 4, 11, G. 4, 478 sq. (also ibid, first draft, G. 4, 47.3), Erdmann, 124, Jacques, 1, 470, trans. Duncan, Philos. Wks. of Leibnitz, 72; I)c ipsa natura, 1098, §§ 11, 12, G. 4, 510, E. 157, J. 1, 402, D. 120; also G. Hartenstein, Ueber Leibniz's Lehre v. d. Verhliltniss d. Monaden z. Kiirperwclt, in his Histor. philos. Abhandl., Leipzig, 1870, 409 sq.. Stein, Leibniz u. Spinoza, Berlin, 1890, 158 sq., Dillmann, FAne n. Darstf/. d. Leibniz. Monadenlehre, Leipzig, 1891, 225 sq. For Leibnitz's theological use of Aristotle's forms — eis^ — cf. Thdodicte, Pt. III., §§ 335-0, and J. H. v. Kirchmann's note 240 thereto, Band 80, p. 133, and note (52 f., Bd. 82, p. 87, of his Philos. Tiibliothek. Leipzig, 1879. On the eMo; and ov<ria of Plato and Aris totle, cf. Wallace, Outlines of the Philos. of Aristotle, §§ 10, 31, 32, 34, 37, and Zeller, Philos. d. Griec/i., II., i [Vol. 3], 058 'sq., 4th ed. 1889, II. 2 [Vol. 4], 304 sq., 3d ed., 1879. For the Scholastic doctrine, cf. B. Haureau, Histoire de la pliilos. schnlcixtique, 2d ed., Paris, 1872-80; A. Stock!, Gesch. d. Philos. d. MittelaUers, Mainz, 1802-00; C. Prantl, Gesch. d. Lorjik im Abendlande, Leip zig, 1855-1870, passim. Cf. also G. 1, 10, 22 sq., 4, 208. — TR, 350 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. in Tli. True, but persons who study these matters rectify the popular notions. Assayers have found exact means of dis cerning and separating the metals; botanists have enriched wonderfully the doctrine of plants, and the experiments made upon insects have opened for us a new path in the knowledge of animals, but we are still very far distant from the half of our course.
§ 26. Ph. If species were a work of nature they could not be conceived so differently by different persons. Man appears to one person an animal without feathers, with two feet and with large nails, and another after a more profound exami nation adds to these reason. Many people, however, deter mine the species of animals by their external form rather than by their birth, since the question has been put more than once whether certain human foetuses should be admitted to baptism or not, for the sole reason that their external configuration differed from the ordinary form of infants, without knowing whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in another mould, some of whom are found, who, although of an approved form, are never able to exhibit during their entire life as much reason as appears in an ape or elephant, and who never give any indication of being governed by a rational soul. Whence it appears evident that the external form which alone has found mention, and not the faculty of reasoning which no one could know would be wanting in its time, has been regarded essential to the human species. And in these circumstances theologians and jurisconsults the most learned have been compelled to renounce their sacred definition of rational animal, and to put in its place some other essence of the human species. "Mr. Menage," (Menagiana Tom. I. p. 278, of the Dutch edition of 1694,) l " furnishes us the example of a certain abbot of St. Martin, which deserves to be related. When this abbot of St. Martin, he says, came into the world, he had so little the figure of a man, that he resembled rather a monster. For some time they deliberated whether he should be baptized. He was baptized however, and declared a man provisionally, i.e. till time should show what he was. He 1 Menagiana sive exccrpta ex ore sFJr/idii Mcnagii, 1st ed., 1 vol., 12mo, Paris, 1(503, 3d ed.. enlarged and corrected by La Monnoye, Paris, 1715. Erd- niann, Jacques, and Schaarschmidt in his German trans, erroneously read 1G49.
en. vi] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 351 was so disfigured by nature, that they called him all his life the Abbot Malotru. He was of Caen." There was a child who came very near being excluded from the human species simply because of his shape. He narrowly escaped as it was, and it is certain that a figure a little more deformed would have deprived him of it for ever and have caused him to perish as a being who ought not to pass for a man. Yet no reason can be given why a rational soul could not have been lodged in him, if the lineaments of his face had been a little more altered; why a visage a little longer, or a flatter nose, or a wider mouth could not have subsisted as well as the rest of the irregular figure with a soul and with qualities which made him capable, wholly disfigured as lie was, of being clothed with dignity in the church.
Tli. Up to the present time, no rational animal has been found with an external figure very different from ours, there fore, when the question arose of baptizing a child, race and figure have always been considered only as marks by which to judge whether it was a rational animal or not. Thus theo logians and jurisconsults have never needed to renounce for that reason their sacred definition.
§ 27. Ph. But if that monster, of which Licetus,1 Bk. I., chap. 3, speaks, with a man's head and a hog's body, or other monsters, with the heads of dogs and of horses, etc., upon the bodies of men had lived and could have spoken, the difficulty would be much greater.