appearances, to make the strongest impression and to spread farther than any other, especially if it is an idea which accords with the simplest insight of reason, and which flows naturally from every part of knowledge. Now such is the idea of God, for the brilliant marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that every rational creature who will reflect thereupon cannot fail to dis cover the author of all these marvels; and the impression that the discovery of such a Being must naturally make upon the souls of all those who have once heard him spoken of is so great, and carries with it thoughts of so great weight and so adapted to spread themselves in the world, that it appears to me wholly strange that an entire nation of men can be found upon the earth so stupid as to have no idea of God. This, I say, seems to me as surprising as to think of men who should have no idea of numbers or of fire."
I would I might always be allowed to copy word for word a number of other excellent passages of our author, which we are obliged to pass by. I will only say here, that this author, in speaking of the simplest lights of reason, which agree with the idea of God, and of that which naturally proceeds from it, ap pears to differ but little from my view of innate truths; and, concerning this, that it appears to him as strange that there may be men without any idea of God, as it would be surprising to find men who had no idea of numbers or of fire, I will remark that the inhabitants of the Marian Islands, to which has been given the name of the Queen of Spain, who has protected mis-* sions there, had no knowledge of fire when they were dis covered, as appears from the narrative which Kev. Father Gobien,1 a French Jesuit, charged with the care of distant missions, has given to the public and sent to me.]
§ 16. Ph. If you are right in concluding that the idea of God is innate, from the fact that all enlightened races have had this idea, virtue ought also to be innate because enlightened races have always had a true idea of it.
Th. [Not virtue, but the idea of virtue, is innate, and per haps you intend only that.]
1 Charles le Gobion, 1(553-1708. Professor of Philosophy at Tours; secre tary and procurator of Chinese missionaries; wrote and published a number of works on these missions in China; his Histoire des Isles Mariannes, Paris, (ii. m] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 105 Ph. It is as certain that there is a God, as it is certain that the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are equal. And there has never been a rational creature who applied himself sincerely to the examination of the truth of these two propositions who has failed to give them his con sent. Nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that there are many men who, having never turned their thoughts in this direction, are ignorant equally of these two truths.
Th. [I admit it; but that does not prevent them from being innate — that is to say, does not prevent you from being able to find them in yourself.]
§ 18. Ph. It would be more advantageous to have an innate idea of substance; but it turns out that we do not have it, either innate or acquired, since we have it neither through sensation nor reflection.
Th. [I am of opinion that reflection suffices to discover the idea of substance within ourselves, who are substances. And this notion is one of the most important. But we shall speak of it, perhaps more fully, in the sequel of our con ference.]
§ 20.1 Ph. If there are innate ideas in the mind without the mind's being actually aware of their presence, they must at least be in the memory, whence they must be drawn by means of reminiscence — that is to say, be known, when memory re calls them, as so many perceptions which have been in the mind before, unless reminiscence can subsist without reminis cence. For this conviction, where it is an inwardly certain one, that a given idea has previously been in our mind, is properly what distinguishes reminiscence from every other kind of thinking.
Th. [In order that knowledge, ideas, or truths be in our mind, it is not necessary that we have ever actually thought of them; they are only natural habitudes; i.e. dispositions and aptitudes, active and passive, and more than a tabula rasa. \/ It is true, however, that the Platonists believed that we have / already actually thought of that which we recognize in our selves; and to refute them it is insufficient to say that we do not at all remember it, for it is certain that an infinite number 1 Gerhardt's reading. So also Locke, Philos. Works, Vol. 1, p. 197, Bohn's ed. — TR.
106 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [HK. i of thoughts recur to us which we have forgotten that we had. It has happened that a man believed he had composed a new verse, which it turned out he read word for word a long time previous in some ancient poet. And often we have an extraordinary facility of conceiving certain things, because we formerly conceived them, without remembering them. It is possible that a child, having become blind, forgets ever having seen light and colors, as happened at the age of two and a half years from small-pox in the case of the celebrated Ulric Schoen- berg, a native of Weide, in the Upper Palatinate, who died at Konigsberg, in Prussia, in 1649, where he taught philosophy and mathematics to the admiration of every one. It may be that such a man has remaining effects of former impressions without remembering them. I believe that dreams often thus revive in us former thoughts. Julius Scaliger,1 having cele brated in verse the illustrious men of Verona, a certain self- styled Brugnolus, a Bavarian by birth, but afterward estab lished at Verona, appeared to him in a dream and complained that he had been forgotten. Julius Scaliger, not remembering to have heard him spoken of before, did not allow himself to make elegiac verses in his honor in consequence of this dream.
At length, the son, Joseph Scaliger,2 travelling in Italy, learned more particularly that there had been formerly at Verona a celebrated grammarian or learned critic of this name, who had contributed to the re-establishment of polite literature in Italy. This story is found in the poems of Scaliger the father, to gether with the elegy, and in the letters of the son. It is related also in the "Scaligerana,"3 which are culled from the 1 Julius Cffisar Scaliger, 1484-1558. His Latin verse appeared in successive volumes in 153:5, 1534, 153!), 1540, 1574. His tastes were, however, philosophi cal and scientific rather than literary. His scientific works, in the form of commentaries, have only a historical interest. The Esotericarum cxercitatio- num liber, Paris, 1557, 4to, a philosophical treatise on the De Stibtilitate, 1552, of Cardan (vid. ante, p. 67, note 1), is the work which hest makes known Scaliger as a philosopher. It was a popular text-book until the final fall of Aristotle's physics. — TR.
2 Joseph Justus Scaliger, 1540-1609, reputed the greatest scholar of modern times. He was the first to set forth and apply sound principles of textual criticism and emendation in his editions of some of the classical authors, and with him arose a new school of historical criticism. He reconstructed the lost Chronicle of Eusehius, a work of considerable importance in the study of ancient history. — TR.
3 Two collections of anecdotes concerning Joseph Scaliger, numbered accorden. in] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 107 conversations of Joseph Scaliger. It is very likely that Julius Scaliger had known something of Brugnol which he no longer remembered, and that the dream was partly the revival of a former idea, although he may not have had that reminiscence, properly so called, which makes us know that we have already had this same idea; at least, I see no necessity which obliges us to assert that there remains no trace of a perception when there is not enough of it to remind us that we have had it.]
§ 24. Ph. [I must admit that your reply is natural enough to the difficulties which we have framed against innate truths. Perhaps, also, our authors do not contest them in the sense in which you maintain them. Thus I return only to say to you, sir] that we have had some reason to fear that the view of innate truths serves as a pretext for laziness, for exempting ourselves from the trouble of research, and gives opportunity to masters and teachers to lay down as a principle of principles that principles must not be questioned.
Tli. [I have already said that if it is the aim of your friends to advise the search for the proofs of the truths which they can receive, without distinguishing whether or not they are innate, we are entirely agreed; and the view of innate truths, of the manner in which I take them, should deter no one from such search, for, besides being well to seek the reason of the instincts, it is one of my great maxims that it is good to seek demonstrations of the axioms also, and I remember that at Paris, when the late Mr. lloberval,1 already an old man, was ing to their date of composition. The first was written in Latin by Francois Vertunien, a friend of Scaliger, who took notes of his conversations with Scaliger, especially of all criticisms or anecdotes worthy of preservation, and afterwards wrote them out. An advocate, Francois de Sigogne, bought the MS. long after the author's death, and published it at Saumer in 1G(>9. The second was written in French and Latin by two youths named Vassal), who, when students at Leyden, habitually conversed after supper with Scaliger, then Professor of Belles Lettres there, and on their return to their rooms wrote out all they could remember of his conversation. Their MS. was finally published at La Haye, 1G(>(>, by Isaac Vossius. The edition of the Scaliyerana, accounted the best, is that of 1740, 12mo. The story is told at length, and the Elegy of the elder Scaliger cited, in the Cologne ed. of the Scalif/erana, 1(>!>5, pp. 69- 1 Gilles Personne de Roberval, a French geometer, born 1(502, at Roberval, a small village of Beauvais, died 1075 at Paris. He was Professor of Mathematics in the Royal College of France for many years. One of the conditions of the tenure of this chair was that its holder should propose mathematical questions for solution, and resign iu lavor oi any one solving them better than himself.
108 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. i laughed at because he wished to demonstrate those of Euclid after the example of Apollonius l and Proclus,2 1 illustrated the utility of this investigation. As for the principle of those who say that it is wholly unnecessary to argue against the one who denies principles, it has no authority whatever in regard to these principles which can admit neither doubt nor proof. It is true that, in order to avoid scandal and disturbance, regula tions may be made regarding public disputations and some other lectures, in virtue of which the discussion of certain established truths may be prohibited. But this is rather a question of police than of philosophy.]
Roberval kept the chair till his death. He is best known for his original method for the construction of tangents. — TR.
1 Apollonius of Perga, born probably about 250 B.C., died in the reign of Ptolemy Philopater, 222-205 B.C. Next to Archimedes, lie was the most noted of the Greek geometers. His fame has been transmitted to modern times chiefly by his treatise on the Conic Sections, the best edition of which, and the only one containing the Greek text that has yet appeared, is: Apollonii perf/aci conicorum libri octo, etc., ed. Halley: Oxford, 1710, folio. He was the first to show that all three of the conic sections can be cut from the same cone by changing the position of the intersecting plane. — TR.
2 Proclus Diadochus, 410-485, " the great schoolman of Neo-Platouism," the doctrines of which received at his hands the final form in which they have come down to us. He came to Athens in his twentieth year, and remained there teaching and writing till his death. Among his writings now extant are a Treatise on the Sphere, Commentaries on Euclid, and on several of Plato's dialogues, and the wholly independent works 2-roix«Wis ®eoAoyiK7j( or Institutes of Theology, and the six books fis T»JI> U\driavo^ &fo\oyiav, or Platonic Theology. His philosophical work is found for the most part in the Commentaries on Plato. For his mathematical work, cf. In primum Euclidis Elementorum librum Commentarii, ex recognitione G. Friedlein: Lipsire, 1873; also George Johnston Allman, Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid, Dublin: University Press, 1889; and in " Hermathena," a series of papers on literature, science, and phi losophy, by members of Trinity College, Dublin, Nos. 5, 7, 10-13, Dublin: 1878, 1881, 1884-1887. For his philosophy, cf. Zeller, Die. Philos. d. Griech., 3d ed., 1881, Vol. 3, pp. 774 sq., and Outlines,'^ 101; Hegel, Gesch. d. Philos., 2d ed., Vol. 3, pp. 61-79; Alfred William Benn, The Greek Philosophers, Vol.2, pp.
358-360, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1882. The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries on the first Book of Euclid's Elements, etc., were translated by Thomas Taylor, London, 1792, 2 vols. in 1, 4to. — TR.
NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING BOOK II. — IDEAS CHAPTER I WHICH TREATS OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND EXAMINES BY THE WAY WHETHER THE MIND OF MAN ALWAYS THINKS § 1. Ph. Having examined the question of innate ideas, let us consider their nature and their differences. Is it not true that the idea is the object of thought?
Th. [I admit it, provided you add that it is an immediate internal object, and that this object is an expression of the na ture or the qualities of things. If the idea were the form of thought, it would spring up and cease with the actual thought to which it corresponds; but being the object it may exist pre vious to and after the thoughts. External sensible objects are only mediate because they cannot act immediately upon the soul.1 God alone is the external immediate object. We might say that the soul itself is its own immediate internal object; but it is this in so far as it contains ideas, or what corresponds to things. For the soul is a little world,2 in which distinct ideas are a representation of Goch and in which confused ideas are a representation of the universe.]
§ 2. Ph. We who suppose that at the beginning the soul is a tabula rasa, void of all characters and without an idea, ask how it comes to receive ideas, and by what means it acquires this 1 Cf. Book IV., chaps. 9 and 11. The opposition here set up between mediate and immediate knowledge corresponds to Kant's a posteriori and a priori knowledge. — TR.
2 Microcosm. — TR.
110 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n prodigious quantity of them? To that question the reply in a word is: From experience.
Th. [This tabula rasa, of which, so much, is said, is in my opinion only a fiction which nature does not admit, and which is based only upon the imperfect notions of philosophers, like the vacuum, atoms, and rest, absolute or relative, of two parts of a whole, or like the primary matter1 which is con ceived as without form. Uniform things and those which con tain no variety are never anything but abstractions, like time, space, and the other entities of pure mathematics. There is no body whatever whose parts are at rest, and there is no sub stance whatever that has nothing by which to distinguish it from every other. Human souls differ, not only from other souls, but also among themselves, although the difference is not at all of the kind called specific. And, according to the proofs which I believe we have, every substantial thing, be it soul or body, has its own characteristic relation to every other; and the one must always differ from the other by intrinsic connotations. Xot to mention the fact that those who speak so frequently of this tabula rasa after having taken away the ideas cannot say what remains, like the scholastic philoso phers, Avho leave nothing in their primary matter.1 You may perhaps reply that this tabula rasa of the philosophers means that the soul has by nature and originally only bare fac ulties. But faculties without some act, in a word the pure powers of the school, are also only fictions, which nature knows not, and which are obtained only by the process of ab straction. For where in the world will you ever find a faculty which shuts itself up in the power alone without performing any act? There is always a particular disposition to action, and to one action rather than to another. And besides the disposition there is a tendency to action, of which tendencies there is always an infinity in each subject at once; and these tendencies are never without some effect. Experience is nec essary, I admit, in order that the soul be determined to such or such thoughts, and in order that it take notice of the ideas which are in us; but by what means can experience and the senses give ideas? Has the soul windows, does it resemble tablets, is it like wax? It is plain that all who so regard the 1 Materia Prima. — TB.
en. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 111 soul, represent it as at bottom corporeal. You oppose to me this axiom received by the philosophers, that there is nothing in the soul which does not come from the senses. But you must except the soul itself and its affections. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, excipe: nisi ipse intellectus. Now the soul comprises being, substance, unity, identity, cause, perception, reason, and many other notions which the senses cannot give. This view sufficiently agrees with your author of the Essay, who seeks the source of a good part of ideas in the spirit's reflec tion upon its own nature.
Ph. [I hope, then, that you will agree with this skilful author that all ideas come through sensation (or through re flection, that is to say, from observations which we make either upon objects exterior and sensible or upon the inner workings of our soul.
Th. [In order to avoid a discussion upon what has delayed us too long, I declare to you in advance, sir, that when you say that ideas come to us from one or the other of these causes, I understand the statement to mean their actual perception, for I think I have shown that they are in us before they are perceived so far as they have any distinct character.
§ 9. Ph. [In the next place let us inquire when we must say that the soul begins to perceive and actually to think of ideas. I well know that there is an opinion which states that the soul always thinks, and that actual thought is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is from the body. § 10. But I cannot conceive that it is any more necessary for the soul always to think than for the body always to be in motion, per ception of ideas being to the soul what movement is to the body. That appears to me very reasonable at least, and I would gladly know your view, sir, thereupon.
Th. You have stated it, sir. Action is no more connected with the soul than with the body, a state without thought in the soul and an absolute repose in the body appearing to me equally contrary to nature, and without example in the world. A substance once in action, will be so always, for all the im pressions remain and are merely mingled with other new ones. Striking a body, we arouse therein or determine rather an infinite number of vortices as in a liquid, for at bottom every solid has a degree of liquidity and every liquid a degree of 112 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [HK. n solidity, and there are no means of ever stopping entirely these internal vortices. Now we may believe that if the body is never at rest, the soul, which corresponds to it, will never be without perception either.]
Ph. But it is, perhaps, a privilege of the author and conserver of all things, that being infinite in his perfections, he never slum bers nor sleeps. This is not granted to any finite being, or at least not to such a being as is the soul of man.
Th. [It is certain that we slumber and sleep, and that God is exempt from both. But it does not follow that we have no perception while asleep. Rather just the contrary is found to be the case, if we consider it carefully.]
Ph. There is something in us which has the power to think; [but it does not thereby follow that it is always in action.]
Th. [Real powers are never simple possibilities. They have always tendency and action.
Ph. But this proposition — rthe soul always thinks — is not self-evident.
Th. I do not say it is. A little attention and reasoning is necessary to discover it; the common people perceive it as little as they do the pressure of the air or the roundness of the earth.]
Ph. I doubt if I thought last night; this is a question of fact, it must be decided by sensible experiences.
Th. [It is decided as it is proved, that there are imperceptible bodies and invisible movements, although certain persons treat them as absurd. There are also numberless perceptions little noticed which are not sufficiently distinguished to be perceived or remembered, but they become known through certain conse quences.]
Ph. There was a certain author who raised the objection that we maintain that the soul ceases to exist, because we are not sensible of its existence during our sleep. But this objection can arise only from a strange prepossession, for we do not say that there is no soul in man because we are not sensible of its existence during our sleep, but only that man cannot think without being aware of it.
Th. [I have not read the book which contains this objection, but it would not have been wrong merely to object to you that it does not follow because the thought is not perceived, that it ceases for that reason; for otherwise it could be said for the en. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 113 same reason that there is no soul during the time in which it is not perceived. And to refute this objection it is necessary to point out in particular the thought that it is essential to it that it be perceived.]
§11. Ph. It is not easy to conceive that a thing can think and not be conscious that it thinks.
Tli. There is, doubtless, the knot of the affair and the diffi culty which has embarrassed able men. But here are the means of extricating ourselves therefrom. We must consider that we think of many things at a timgy>but we attend only to the thoughts which are most distinct, and the process cannot go on otherwise, for if we should attend to all, we would have to think attentively of an infinite number of things at the same time, all of which we feel and which make an impression upon our senses. I say even more: there remains something of all our past thoughts, and none can ever be wholly effaced. Now when we sleep without dreaming and when we are stunned by some blow, fall, symptom, or other accident, an infinite number of minute confused sensations take form within usflind death itself can produce no other effect upon the souls of animals, who ought, doubtless, sooner or later, to acquire distinct per ceptions, for all goes on in an orderly way in nature. I admit, however, that in this state of confusion, the soul would be with out pleasure and without pain, for these are noticeable percep tions.
§ 12. Ph. Is it not true that those with whom we have at present to do, [i.e. the Cartesians, who believe that the soul always thinks,] grant life to all animals, differing from man, without giving them a soul which knows and thinks; and that these same (Cartesians) find no difficulty in saying that the soul can think independently of a body?
Th. [For myself, I am of another opinion, for although I agree with the Cartesians in their affirmation that the soul thinks always, I am not agreed with them in the two other points. I believe that the beasts have imperishable souls aiid that human and all other souls are never without- spine body. I hold also that God alone, as being an actus purus, is wholly exempt therefrom.]
Ph. If you had been of the opinion of the Cartesians, I should have inferred therefrom, that the bodies of Castor or Pollux i Ill LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. n could be sometimes with, sometimes without a soul, though being always alive, and the soul having the ability also to be sometimes in one body and sometimes elsewhere, we might suppose that Castor and Pollux had only a single soul, which was active alternately in the body of these two men sleeping and awake by turns; thus it would be two persons as distinct as Castor and Pollux could be.
Th. I, in my turn, will make you another supposition, which appears more real. Is it not true that we must always admit that after some interval or some great change, one may fall into a state of general forgetfulness? Sleidan l (they say), before his death, forgot all he knew; and there are many other examples of this sad event. Suppose that such a man became young again and learned all anew, will he be another man on that account? It is not then memory which, properly speaking, makes the same man. Nevertheless, the fiction of a soul which animates different bodies in turn, without concern ing itself in one of these bodies with that which happens to it in the other, is one of those fictions contrary to the nature of things which arise from the imperfect notions of philosophers, as space without body and body without motion, and which dis appear when one penetrates a little deeper; for you must know 1 John Sleidan, original name Philipsohn, c. 150(5-1556, the annalist of the Reformation. He was secretary for five years from 15o<> to Cardinal tin Bellay, minister of Francis I. of France. He was wont to copy all documents bearing upon the Reformation to which he had access, and upon the suggestion of Bucer to Philip of Hesse, after some delay was appointed, with the consent of the heads of the Schmalkaldic League, historian of the Reformation, with a salary and access to all necessary documents. He finished the first volume of his great work in 1545. His work was then interrupted by a diplomatic mis sion in a French embassy to Henry VIII. of England. While there lie improved every opportunity to collect materials for his history. In 1551 he was a mem ber of the Council of Trent for Strassburg. On his return he was made Pro fessor of Law at Strassburg, a position which enabled him to devote his whole attention to his great work. It was finished for the press in 1554, and published at Strassburg in 1555. It is entitled: Commentariorum do statu rclit/ionis et reipublicsB Carolo Quintn, CsBftarc, libri XXVI. The ed. of 1555 contained only 25 books; that of 1559 the 20th and an apology of Sleidan, written by himself. The best edition is that of Francfort, 1785-86, 3 vols., 8vo. The work is "the most valuable contemporary history of the times of the reformation, and contains the largest collection of important documents." It is especially noteworthy for its accuracy, impartiality, and purity of style. There are two English translations, by John Daws, 1560, and G. Bohum, 16S9. There are also translations in other languages. Cf. H. Baumgarten, Uebcr Sleidanus Leben und Briefwechsel, 1878; Sleidans Briefwechsel, 1881. — Tit.