Chapter V: Act 1903: ). It is to be noted, however, that in these states the mere (2)

For the next forty years, and under three successive princes, Leibnitz was in the service of the Brunswick family, and his headquarters were at Hanover, where he had charge of the ducal library. Leibnitz thus passed into a political atmosphere formed by the dynastic aims of the typical German state (see HANOVER; BRUNSWICK). He supported the claim of Hanover to appoint an ambassador at the congress of Nimeguen (1676)[7] to defend the establishment of primogeniture in the Lüneburg branch of the Brunswick family; and, when the proposal was made to raise the duke of Hanover to the electorate, he had to show that this did not interfere with the rights of the duke of Württemberg. In 1692 the duke of Hanover was made elector. Before, and with a view to this, Leibnitz had been employed by him to write the history of the Brunswick-Lüneburg family, and, to collect material for his history, had undertaken a journey through Germany and Italy in 1687-1690, visiting and examining the records in Marburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Munich, Vienna (where he remained nine months), Venice, Modena and Rome. At Rome he was offered the custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his joining the Catholic Church.

About this time, too, his thoughts and energies were partly taken up with the scheme for the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. At Mainz he had joined in an attempt made by the elector and Boyneburg to bring about a reconciliation, and now, chiefly through the energy and skill of the Catholic Royas de Spinola, and from the spirit of moderation which prevailed among the theologians he met with at Hanover in 1683, it almost seemed as if some agreement might be arrived at. In 1686 Leibnitz wrote his _Systema theologicum_,[8] in which he strove to find common ground for Protestants and Catholics in the details of their creeds. But the English revolution of 1688 interfered with the scheme in Hanover, and it was soon found that the religious difficulties were greater than had at one time appeared. In the letters to Leibnitz from Bossuet, the landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels, and Madame de Brinon, the aim is obviously to make converts to Catholicism, not to arrive at a compromise with Protestantism, and when it was found that Leibnitz refused to be converted the correspondence ceased. A further scheme of church union in which Leibnitz was engaged, that between the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, met with no better success.

Returning from Italy in 1690, Leibnitz was appointed librarian at Wolfenbüttel by Duke Anton of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Some years afterwards began his connexion with Berlin through his friendship with the electress Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg and her mother the princess Sophie of Hanover. He was invited to Berlin in 1700, and on the 11th July of that year the academy (Akademie der Wissenschaften) he had planned was founded, with himself as its president for life. In the same year he was made a privy councillor of justice by the elector of Brandenburg. Four years before he had received a like honour from the elector of Hanover, and twelve years afterwards the same distinction was conferred upon him by Peter the Great, to whom he gave a plan for an academy at St Petersburg, carried out after the czar's death. After the death of his royal pupil in 1705 his visits to Berlin became less frequent and less welcome, and in 1711 he was there for the last time. In the following year he undertook his fifth and last journey to Vienna, where he stayed till 1714. An attempt to found an academy of science there was defeated by the opposition of the Jesuits, but he now attained the honour he had coveted of an imperial privy councillorship (1712), and, either at this time or on a previous occasion (1709), was made a baron of the empire (_Reichsfreiherr_). Leibnitz returned to Hanover in September 1714, but found the elector George Louis had already gone to assume the crown of England. Leibnitz would gladly have followed him to London, but was bidden to remain at Hanover and finish his history of Brunswick.

During the last thirty years Leibnitz had been busy with many matters. Mathematics, natural science,[9] philosophy, theology, history jurisprudence, politics (particularly the French wars with Germany, and the question of the Spanish succession), economics and philology, all gained a share of his attention; almost all of them he enriched with original observations.

His genealogical researches in Italy--through which he established the common origin of the families of Brunswick and Este--were not only preceded by an immense collection of historical sources, but enabled him to publish materials for a code of international law.[10] The history of Brunswick itself was the last work of his life, and had covered the period from 768 to 1005 when death ended his labours. But the government, in whose service and at whose order the work had been carried out, left it in the archives of the Hanover library till it was published by Pertz in 1843.

It was in the years between 1690 and 1716 that Leibnitz's chief philosophical works were composed, and during the first ten of these years the accounts of his system were, for the most part, preliminary sketches. Indeed, he never gave a full and systematic account of his doctrines. His views have to be gathered from letters to friends, from occasional articles in the _Acta Eruditorum_, the _Journal des Savants_, and other journals, and from one or two more extensive works. It is evident, however, that philosophy had not been entirely neglected in the years in which his pen was almost solely occupied with other matters. A letter to the duke of Brunswick, and another to Arnauld, in 1671, show that he had already reached his new notion of substance; but it is in the correspondence with Antoine Arnauld, between 1686 and 1690, that his fundamental ideas and the reasons for them are for the first time made clear. The appearance of Locke's _Essay_ in 1690 induced him (1696) to note down his objections to it, and his own ideas on the same subjects. In 1703-1704 these were worked out in detail and ready for publication, when the death of the author whom they criticized prevented their appearance (first published by Raspe, 1765). In 1710 appeared the only complete and systematic philosophical work of his lifetime, _Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme, et l'origine du mal_, originally undertaken at the request of the late queen of Prussia, who had wished a reply to Bayle's opposition of faith and reason. In 1714 he wrote, for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a sketch of his system under the title of _La Monadologie_, and in the same year appeared his _Principes de la nature et de la grâce_. The last few years of his life were perhaps more occupied with correspondence than any others, and, in a philosophical regard, were chiefly notable for the letters, which, through the desire of the new queen of England, he interchanged with Clarke, _sur Dieu, l'âme, l'espace, la durée_.

Leibnitz died on the 14th of November 1716, his closing years enfeebled by disease, harassed by controversy, embittered by neglect; but to the last he preserved the indomitable energy and power of work to which is largely due the position he holds as, more perhaps than any one in modern times, a man of almost universal attainments and almost universal genius. Neither at Berlin, in the academy which he had founded, nor in London, whither his sovereign had gone to rule, was any notice taken of his death. At Hanover, Eckhart, his secretary, was his only mourner; "he was buried," says an eyewitness, "more like a robber than what he really was, the ornament of his country."[11] Only in the French Academy was the loss recognized, and a worthy eulogium devoted to his memory (November 13, 1717). The 200th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in 1846, and in the same year were opened the Königlichsächsische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften and the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Leipzig and Vienna respectively. In 1883, a statue was erected to him at Leipzig.

Leibnitz possessed a wonderful power of rapid and continuous work. Even in travelling his time was employed in solving mathematical problems. He is described as moderate in his habits, quick of temper but easily appeased, charitable in his judgments of others, and tolerant of differences of opinion, though impatient of contradiction on small matters. He is also said to have been fond of money to the point of covetousness; he was certainly desirous of honour, and felt keenly the neglect in which his last years were passed.

_Philosophy._--The central point in the philosophy of Leibnitz was
only arrived at after many advances and corrections in his opinions.
This point is his new doctrine of substance (p. 702),[12] and it is
through it that unity is given to the succession of occasional
writings, scattered over fifty years, in which he explained his views.
More inclined to agree than to differ with what he read (p. 425), and
borrowing from almost every philosophical system, his own standpoint
is yet most closely related to that of Descartes, partly as
consequence, partly by way of opposition. Cartesianism, Leibnitz often
asserted, is the ante-room of truth, but the ante-room only.
Descartes's separation of things into two heterogeneous substances
only connected by the omnipotence of God, and the more logical
absorption of both by Spinoza into the one divine substance, followed
from an erroneous conception of what the true nature of substance is.
Substance, the ultimate reality, can only be conceived as force. Hence
Leibnitz's metaphysical view of the monads as simple, percipient,
self-active beings, the constituent elements of all things, his
physical doctrines of the reality and constancy of force at the same
time that space, matter and motion are merely phenomenal, and his
psychological conception of the continuity and development of
consciousness. In the closest connexion with the same stand his
logical principles of consistency and sufficient reason, and the
method he developed from them, his ethical end of perfection, and his
crowning theological conception of the universe as the best possible
world, and of God both as its efficient cause and its final harmony.

The ultimate elements of the universe are, according to Leibnitz,
individual centres of force or monads. Why they should be individual,
and not manifestations of one world-force, he never clearly
proves.[13] His doctrine of individuality seems to have been arrived
at, not by strict deduction from the nature of force, but rather from
the empirical observation that it is by the manifestation of its
activity that the separate existence of the individual becomes
evident; for his system individuality is as fundamental as activity.
"The monads," he says, "are the very atoms of nature--in a word, the
elements of things," but, as centres of force, they have neither
parts, extension nor figure (p. 705). Hence their distinction from the
atoms of Democritus and the materialists. They are metaphysical points
or rather spiritual beings whose very nature it is to act. As the bent
bow springs back of itself, so the monads naturally pass and are
always passing into action without any aid but the absence of
opposition (p. 122). Nor do they, like the atoms, act upon one another
(p. 680); the action of each excludes that of every other. The
activity of each is the result of its own past state, the determinator
of its own future (pp. 706, 722). "The monads have no windows by which
anything may go in or out" (p. 705).

Further, since all substances are of the nature of force, it follows
that--"in imitation of the notion which we have of souls"--they must
contain something analogous to feeling and appetite. It is the nature
of the monad to represent the many in one, and this is perception, by
which external events are mirrored internally (p. 438). Through their
own activity the monads mirror the universe (p. 725), but each in its
own way and from its own point of view, that is, with a more or less
perfect perception (p. 127); for the Cartesians were wrong in ignoring
the infinite grades of perception, and identifying it with the reflex
cognizance of it which may be called apperception. Every monad is thus
a microcosm, the universe in little,[14] and according to the degree
of its activity is the distinctness of its representation of the
universe (p. 709). Thus Leibnitz, borrowing the Aristotelian term,
calls the monads _entelechies_, because they have a certain perfection
([Greek: to enteles]) and sufficiency ([Greek: autarkeia]) which make
them sources of their internal actions and, so to speak, incorporeal
automata (p. 706). That the monads are not pure entelechies is shown
by the differences amongst them. Excluding all external limitation,
they are yet limited by their own nature. All created monads contain a
passive element or _materia prima_ (pp. 440, 687, 725), in virtue of
which their perceptions are more or less confused. As the activity of
the monad consists in perception, this is inhibited by the passive
principle, so that there arises in the monad an appetite or tendency
to overcome the inhibition and become more perceptive, whence follows
the change from one perception to another (pp. 706, 714). By the
proportion of activity to passivity in it one monad is differentiated
from another. The greater the amount of activity or of distinct
perceptions the more perfect is the monad; the stronger the element of
passivity, the more confused its perceptions, the less perfect is it
(p. 709). The soul would be a divinity had it nothing but distinct
perceptions (p. 520).

The monad is never without a perception; but, when it has a number of
little perceptions with no means of distinction, a state similar to
that of being stunned ensues, the _monade nue_ being perpetually in
this state (p. 707). Between this and the most distinct perception
there is room for an infinite diversity of nature among the monads
themselves. Thus no one monad is exactly the same as another; for,
were it possible that there should be two identical, there would be no
sufficient reason why God, who brings them into actual existence,
should put one of them at one definite time and place, the other at a
different time and place. This is Leibnitz's principle of the
_identity of indiscernibles_ (pp. 277, 755); by it his early problem
as to the principle of individuation is solved by the distinction
between genus and individual being abolished, and every individual
made _sui generis_. The principle thus established is formulated in
Leibnitz's law of continuity, founded, he says, on the doctrine of the
mathematical infinite, essential to geometry, and of importance in
physics (pp. 104, 105), in accordance with which there is neither
vacuum nor break in nature, but "everything takes place by degrees"
(p. 392), the different species of creatures rising by insensible
steps from the lowest to the most perfect form (p. 312).

As in every monad each succeeding state is the consequence of the
preceding, and as it is of the nature of every monad to mirror or
represent the universe, it follows (p. 774) that the perceptive
content of each monad is in "accord" or correspondence with that of
every other (cf. p. 127), though this content is represented with
infinitely varying degrees of perfection. This is Leibnitz's famous
doctrine of pre-established harmony, in virtue of which the infinitely
numerous independent substances of which the world is composed are
related to each other and form one universe. It is essential to notice
that it proceeds from the very nature of the monads as percipient,
self-acting beings, and not from an arbitrary determination of the
Deity.

From this harmony of self-determining percipient units Leibnitz has to
explain the world of nature and mind. As everything that really exists
is of the nature of spiritual or metaphysical points (p. 126), it
follows that space and matter in the ordinary sense can only have a
phenomenal existence (p. 745), being dependent not on the nature of
the monads themselves but on the way in which they are perceived.
Considering that several things exist at the same time and in a
certain order of co-existence, and mistaking this constant relation
for something that exists outside of them, the mind forms the confused
perception of space (p. 768). But space and time are merely relative,
the former an order of coexistences, the latter of successions (pp.
682, 752). Hence not only the secondary qualities of Descartes and
Locke, but their so-called primary qualities as well, are merely
phenomenal (p. 445). The monads are really without position or
distance from each other; but, as we perceive several simple
substances, there is for us an aggregate or extended mass. Body is
thus active extension (pp. 110, 111). The unity of the aggregate
depends entirely on our perceiving the monads composing it together.
There is no such thing as an absolute vacuum or empty space, any more
than there are indivisible material units or atoms from which all
things are built up (pp. 126, 186, 277). Body, corporeal mass, or, as
Leibnitz calls it, to distinguish it from the _materia prima_ of which
every monad partakes (p. 440), _materia secunda_, is thus only a
"phenomenon bene fundatum" (p. 436). It is not a _substantia_ but
_substantiae_ or _substantiatum_ (p. 745). While this, however, is the
only view consistent with Leibnitz's fundamental principles, and is
often clearly stated by himself, he also speaks at other times of the
_materia secunda_ as itself a composite substance, and of a real
metaphysical bond between soul and body. But these expressions occur
chiefly in the letters to des Bosses, in which Leibnitz is trying to
reconcile his views with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church,
especially with that of the real presence in the Eucharist, and are
usually referred to by him as doctrines of faith or as hypothetical
(see especially p. 680). The true vinculum _substantiale_ is not the
_materia secunda_, which a consistent development of Leibnitz's
principles can only regard as phenomenal, but the _materia prima_,
through which the monads are individualized and distinguished and
their connexion rendered possible. And Leibnitz seems to recognize
that the opposite assumption is inconsistent with his cardinal
metaphysical view of the monads as the only realities.

From Leibnitz's doctrine of force as the ultimate reality it follows
that his view of nature must be throughout dynamical. And though his
project of a _dynamic_, or theory of natural philosophy, was never
carried out, the outlines of his own theory and his criticism of the
mechanical physics of Descartes are known to us. The whole distinction
between the two lies in the difference between the mechanical and the
dynamical views of nature. Descartes started from the reality of
extension as constituting the nature of material substance, and found
in magnitude, figure and motion the explanation of the material
universe. Leibnitz, too, admitted the mechanical view of nature as
giving the laws of corporeal phenomena (p. 438), applying also to
everything that takes place in animal organisms,[15] even the human
body (p. 777). But, as phenomenal, these laws must find their
explanation in metaphysics, and thus in final causes (p. 155). All
things, he says (in his _Specimen Dynamicum_), can be explained either
by efficient or by final causes. But the latter method is not
appropriate to individual occurrences,[16] though it must be applied
when the laws of mechanism themselves need explanation (p. 678). For
Descartes's doctrine of the constancy of the quantity of motion (i.e.
momentum) in the world Leibnitz substitutes the principle of the
conservation of _vis viva_, and contends that the Cartesian position
that motion is measured by velocity should be superseded by the law
that moving force (_vis motrix_) is measured by the square of the
velocity (pp. 192, 193). The long controversy raised by this criticism
was really caused by the ambiguity of the terms employed. The
principles held by Descartes and Leibnitz were both correct, though
different, and their conflict only apparent. Descartes's principle is
now enunciated as the conservation of momentum, that of Leibnitz as
the conservation of energy. Leibnitz further criticizes the Cartesian
view that the mind can alter the direction of motion though it cannot
initiate it, and contends that the quantity of "_vis directiva_,"
estimated between the same parts, is constant (p. 108)--a position
developed in his statical theorem for determining geometrically the
resultant of any number of forces acting at a point.

Like the monad, body, which is its analogue, has a passive and an
active element. The former is the capacity of resistance, and includes
impenetrability and inertia; the latter is active force (pp. 250,
687). Bodies, too, like the monads, are self-contained activities,
receiving no impulse from without--it is only by an accommodation to
ordinary language that we speak of them as doing so--but moving
themselves in harmony with each other (p. 250).

The psychology of Leibnitz is chiefly developed in the _Nouveaux
essais sur l'entendement humain_, written in answer to Locke's famous
_Essay_, and criticizing it chapter by chapter. In these essays he
worked out a theory of the origin and development of knowledge in
harmony with his metaphysical views, and thus without Locke's implied
assumption of the mutual influence of soul and body. When one monad in
an aggregate perceives the others so clearly that they are in
comparison with it bare monads (_monades nues_), it is said to be the
ruling monad of the aggregate, not because it actually does exert an
influence over the rest, but because, being in close correspondence
with them, and yet having so much clearer perception, it seems to do
so (p. 683). This monad is called the entelechy or soul of the
aggregate or body, and as such mirrors the aggregate in the first
place and the universe through it (p. 710). Each soul or entelechy is
surrounded by an infinite number of monads forming its body (p. 714);
soul and body together make a living being, and, as their laws are in
perfect harmony--a harmony established between the whole realm of
final causes and that of efficient causes (p. 714)--we have the same
result as if one influenced the other. This is further explained by
Leibnitz in his well-known illustration of the different ways in which
two clocks may keep exactly the same time. The machinery of the one
may actually move that of the other, or whenever one moves the
mechanician may make a similar alteration in the other, or they may
have been so perfectly constructed at first as to continue to
correspond at every instant without any further influence (pp. 133,
134). The first way represents the common (Locke's) theory of mutual
influence, the second the method of the occasionalists, the third that
of pre-established harmony. Thus the body does not act on the soul in
the production of cognition, nor the soul on the body in the
production of motion. The body acts just as if it had no soul, the
soul as if it had no body (p. 711). Instead, therefore, of all
knowledge coming to us directly or indirectly through the bodily
senses, it is all developed by the soul's own activity, and sensuous
perception is itself but a confused kind of cognition. Not a certain
select class of our ideas only (as Descartes held), but all our ideas,
are innate, though only worked up into actual cognition in the
development of knowledge (p. 212). To the aphorism made use of by
Locke, "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu," must
be added the clause, "nisi intellectus ipse" (p. 223). The soul at
birth is not comparable to a _tabula rasa_, but rather to an unworked
block of marble, the hidden veins of which already determine the form
it is to assume in the hands of the sculptor (p. 196). Nor, again, can
the soul ever be without perception; for it has no other nature than
that of a percipient active being (p. 246). Apparently dreamless sleep
is to be accounted for by unconscious perception (p. 223); and it is
by such insensible perceptions that Leibnitz explains his doctrine of
pre-established harmony (p. 197).

In the human soul perception is developed into thought, and there is
thus an infinite though gradual difference between it and the mere
monad (p. 464). As all knowledge is implicit in the soul, it follows
that its perfection depends on the efficiency of the instrument by
which it is developed. Hence the importance, in Leibnitz's system, of
the logical principles and method, the consideration of which occupied
him at intervals throughout his whole career.

There are two kinds of truths--(1) truths of reasoning, and (2) truths
of fact (pp. 83, 99, 707). The former rest on the principle of
identity (or contradiction) or of possibility, in virtue of which that
is false which contains a contradiction, and that true which is
contradictory to the false. The latter rest on the principle of
sufficient reason or of reality (_compossibilité_), according to which
no fact is true unless there be a sufficient reason why it should be
so and not otherwise (agreeing thus with the _principium melioris_ or
final cause). God alone, the purely active monad, has an _a priori_
knowledge of the latter class of truths; they have their source in the
human mind only in so far as it mirrors the outer world, i.e. in its
passivity, whereas the truths of reason have their source in our mind
in itself or in its activity.

Both kinds of truths fall into two classes, primitive and derivative.
The primitive truths of fact are, as Descartes held, those of internal
experience, and the derivative truths are inferred from them in
accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, by their agreement
with our perception of the world as a whole. They are thus reached by
probable arguments--a department of logic which Leibnitz was the first
to bring into prominence (pp. 84, 164, 168, 169, 343). The primitive
truths of reasoning are identical (in later terminology, analytical)
propositions, the derivative truths being deduced from them by the
principle of contradiction. The part of his logic on which Leibnitz
laid the greatest stress was the separation of these rational
cognitions into their simplest elements--for he held that the
root-notions (_cogitationes primae_) would be found to be few in
number (pp. 92, 93)--and the designation of them by universal
characters or symbols,[17] composite notions being denoted by the
formulae formed by the union of several definite characters, and
judgments by the relation of aequipollence among these formulae, so as
to reduce the syllogism to a calculus. This is the main idea of
Leibnitz's "universal characteristic," never fully worked out by him,
which he regarded as one of the greatest discoveries of the age. An
incidental result of its adoption would be the introduction of a
universal symbolism of thought comparable to the symbolism of
mathematics and intelligible in all languages (cf. p. 356). But the
great revolution it would effect would chiefly consist in this, that
truth and falsehood would be no longer matters of opinion but of
correctness or error in calculation,[18] (pp. 83, 84, 89, 93). The old
Aristotelian analytic is not to be superseded; but it is to be
supplemented by this new method, for of itself it is but the ABC of
logic.

But the logic of Leibnitz is an art of discovery (p. 85) as well as of
proof, and, as such, applies both to the sphere of reasoning and to
that of fact. In the former it has by attention to render explicit
what is otherwise only implicit, and by the intellect to introduce
order into the _a priori_ truths of reason, so that one may follow
from another and they may constitute together a _monde intellectuel_.
To this art of orderly combination Leibnitz attached the greatest
importance, and to it one of his earliest writings was devoted.
Similarly, in the sphere of experience, it is the business of the art
of discovery to find out and classify the primitive facts or data,
referring every other fact to them as its sufficient reason, so that
new truths of experience may be brought to light.

As the perception of the monad when clarified becomes thought, so the
appetite of which all monads partake is raised to will, their
spontaneity to freedom, in man (p. 669). The will is an effort or
tendency to that which one finds good (p. 251), and is free only in
the sense of being exempt from external control[19] (pp. 262, 513,
521), for it must always have a sufficient reason for its action
determined by what seems good to it. The end determining the will is
pleasure (p. 269), and pleasure is the sense of an increase of
perfection (p. 670). A will guided by reason will sacrifice transitory
and pursue constant pleasures or happiness, and in this weighing of
pleasures consists true wisdom. Leibnitz, like Spinoza, says that
freedom consists in following reason, servitude in following the
passions (p. 669), and that the passions proceed from confused
perceptions (pp. 188, 269). In love one finds joy in the happiness of
another; and from love follow justice and law. "Our reason," says
Leibnitz,[20] "illumined by the spirit of God, reveals the law of
nature," and with it positive law must not conflict. Natural law rises
from the strict command to avoid offence, through the maxim of equity
which gives to each his due, to that of probity or piety (_honeste
vivere_),--the highest ethical perfection,--which presupposes a belief
in God, providence and a future life.[21] Moral immortality--not
merely the simple continuity which belongs to every monad--comes from
God having provided that the changes of matter will not make man lose
his individuality (pp. 126, 466).

Leibnitz thus makes the existence of God a postulate of morality as
well as necessary for the realization of the monads. It is in the
_Théodicée_ that his theology is worked out and his view of the
universe as the best possible world defended. In it he contends that
faith and reason are essentially harmonious (pp. 402, 479), and that
nothing can be received as an article of faith which contradicts an
eternal truth, though the ordinary physical order may be superseded by
a higher.[22]

The ordinary arguments for the being of God are retained by Leibnitz
in a modified form (p. 375). Descartes's ontological proof is
supplemented by the clause that God as the _ens a se_ must either
exist or be impossible (pp. 80, 177, 708); in the cosmological proof
he passes from the infinite series of finite causes to their
sufficient reason which contains all changes in the series necessarily
in itself (pp. 147, 708); and he argues teleologically from the
existence of harmony among the monads without any mutual influence to
God as the author of this harmony (p. 430).

In these proofs Leibnitz seems to have in view an extramundane power
to whom the monads owe their reality, though such a conception
evidently breaks the continuity and harmony of his system, and can
only be externally connected with it. But he also speaks in one place
at any rate[23] of God as the "universal harmony"; and the historians
Erdmann and Zeller are of opinion that this is the only sense in which
his system can be consistently theistic. Yet it would seem that to
assume a purely active and therefore perfect monad as the source of
all things is in accordance with the principle of continuity and with
Leibnitz's conception of the gradation of existences. In this sense he
sometimes speaks of God as the first or highest of the monads (p.
678), and of created substances proceeding from Him continually by
"fulgurations" (p. 708) or by "a sort of emanation as we produce our
thoughts."[24]

The positive properties or perfections of the monads, Leibnitz holds,
exist _eminenter_, i.e. without the limitation that attaches to
created monads (p. 716), in God--their perception as His wisdom or
intellect, and their appetite as His absolute will or goodness (p.
654); while the absence of all limitation is the divine independence
or power, which again consists in this, that the possibility of things
depends on His intellect, their reality on His will (p. 506). The
universe in its harmonious order is thus the realization of the divine
end, and as such must be the best possible (p. 506). The teleology of
Leibnitz becomes necessarily a _Théodicée_. God created a world to
manifest and communicate His perfection (p. 524), and, in choosing
this world out of the infinite number that exist in the region of
ideas (p. 515), was guided by the _principium melioris_ (p. 506). With
this thorough-going optimism Leibnitz has to reconcile the existence
of evil in the best of all possible worlds.[25] With this end in view
he distinguishes (p. 655) between (1) metaphysical evil or
imperfection, which is unconditionally willed by God as essential to
created beings; (2) physical evil, such as pain, which is
conditionally willed by God as punishment or as a means to greater
good (cf. p. 510); and (3) moral evil, in which the great difficulty
lies, and which Leibnitz makes various attempts to explain. He says
that it was merely permitted not willed by God (p. 655), and, that
being obviously no explanation, adds that it was permitted because it
was foreseen that the world with evil would nevertheless be better
than any other possible world (p. 350). He also speaks of the evil as
a mere set-off to the good in the world, which it increases by
contrast (p. 149), and at other times reduces moral to metaphysical
evil by giving it a merely negative existence, or says that their evil
actions are to be referred to men alone, while it is only the power of
action that comes from God, and the power of action is good (p. 658).

The great problem of Leibnitz's _Théodicée_ thus remains unsolved. The
suggestion that evil consists in a mere imperfection, like his idea of
the monads proceeding from God by a continual emanation, was too bold
and too inconsistent with his immediate apologetic aim to be carried
out by him. Had he done so his theory would have transcended the
independence of the monads with which it started, and found a deeper
unity in the world than that resulting from the somewhat arbitrary
assertion that the monads reflect the universe.

The philosophy of Leibnitz, in the more systematic and abstract form
it received at the hands of Wolf, ruled the schools of Germany for
nearly a century, and largely determined the character of the critical
philosophy by which it was superseded. On it Baumgarten laid the
foundations of a science of aesthetic. Its treatment of theological
questions heralded the German _Aufklärung_. And on many special
points--in its physical doctrine of the conservation of force, its
psychological hypothesis of unconscious perception, its attempt at a
logical symbolism--it has suggested ideas fruitful for the progress of
science.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--(1) Editions: Up to 1900 no attempt had been made to
publish the complete works. Several editions existed, but a vast mass
of MSS. (letters, &c.) remained only roughly classified in the Hanover
library. The chief editions were: (1) L. Dutens (Geneva, 1768), called
_Opera Omnia_, but far from complete; (2) G. H. Pertz, _Leibnizens
gesammelte Werke_ (Berlin, 1843-1863) (1st ser. History, 4 vols.; 2nd
ser. Philosophy, vol. i. correspondence with Arnauld, &c., ed. C. L.
Grotefend; 3rd ser. Mathematics, 7 vols., ed. C. J. Gerhardt); (3)
Foucher de Careil (planned in 20 vols., 7 published, Paris,
1859-1875), the same editor having previously published _Lettres et
opuscules inédits de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1854-1857); (4) Onno Klopp, _Die
Werke von Leibniz gemäss seinem Handschriftlichen Nachlasse in der
Königlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover_ (1st series, Historico-Political
and Political, 10 vols., 1864-1877). The _Oeuvres de Leibnitz_, by A.
Jacques (2 vols., Paris, 1846) also deserves mention. The
philosophical writings had been published by Raspe (Amsterdam and
Leipzig, 1765), by J. E. Erdmann, _Leibnitii opera philos. quae extant
Latina, Gallica, Germanica, omnia_ (Berlin, 1840), by P. Janet (2
vols., Paris, 1866, 2nd ed. 1900), and the fullest by C. J. Gerhardt,
_Die Philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz_ (7 vols.,
1875-1890); cf. also _Die kleineren philos. wichtigeren Schriften_
(trans. with commentary, J. H. von Kirchmann, 1879). The German works
had also been partly published separately; G. E. Guhrauer (Berlin,
1838-1840). Of the letters various collections had been published up
to 1900, e.g.: C. J. Gerhardt (Halle, 1860) and _Der Briefwechsel von
G. W. Leibnitz mit Mathematikern_ (1899); _Corrispondenza tra L. A.
Muratori e G. Leibnitz_ (1899); and cf. _Neue Beiträge zum
Briefwechsel zwischen D. E. Jablonsky und G. W. Leibnitz_ (1899).

In 1900 it was decided by scholars in Berlin and Paris that a really
complete edition should be published, and with this object four German
and four French critics were entrusted with the preliminary task of
correlating the MSS. in the royal library at Hanover. This process
resulted in the preparation of the _Kritischer Katalog der
Leibnitz-Handschriften zur Vorbereitung der interakademischen
Leibnitz-Ausgabe unternommen_ (1908), and also in certain other
preliminary publications, e.g. L. Couturat, _Opuscules et fragments
inédits_ (1903); E. Gerland, _Leibnizens nachgelassene Schriften
physikalischen, mechanischen und technischen Inhalts_ (1906); Jean
Baruzi, _Leibniz_ (1909), containing unedited MSS. and a
sketch-biography; cf. the same author's _Leibniz et l'organisation
religieuse de la terre_ (1907).

_Translations._--Of the _Systema Theologicum_ (1850, C. W. Russell),
of the correspondence with Clarke (1717); _Works_, by G. M. Duncan
(New Haven, 1890); of the _Nouveaux Essais_, by A. G. Langley (London,
1894); the _Monadology and other Writings_, by R. Latta (Oxford,
1898).

_Biographical._--The materials for the life of Leibnitz, in addition
to his own works, are the notes of Eckhart (not published till 1779),
the _Éloge_ by Fontenelle (read to the French Academy in 1717), the
"Eulogium," by Wolf, in the _Acta Eruditorium_ for July 1717, and the
"Supplementum" to the same by Feller, published in his _Otium
Hannoveranum_ (Leipzig, 1718). The best biography is that of G. E.
Guhrauer, _G. W. Freiherr von Leibnitz_ (2 vols., Breslau, 1842;
_Nachträge_, Breslau, 1846). A shorter _Life of G. W. von Leibnitz, on
the Basis of the German Work of Guhrauer_, has been published by J. M.
Mackie (Boston, 1845). More recent works are those of L. Grote,
_Leibniz und seine Zeit_ (Hanover, 1869); E. Pfleiderer, _Leibniz als
Patriot, Staatsmann, und Bildungsträger_ (Leipzig, 1870); the slighter
volume of F. Kirchner, _G. W. Leibniz: sein Leben und Denken_ (Köthen,
1876); Kuno Fischer, vol. iii. in _Gesch. der neuern Philosophie_ (4th
ed., 1902).

_Critical._--The monographs and essays on Leibnitz are too numerous to
mention, but reference may be made to Feuerbach, _Darstellung,
Entwicklung, und Kritik der Leibnitz'schen Phil._ (2nd ed., Leipzig,
1844); Nourrisson, _La Philosophie de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1860); R.
Zimmermann, _Leibnitz und Herbart: eine Vergleichung ihrer
Monadologien_ (Vienna, 1849); O. Caspari, _Leibniz' Philosophie
beleuchtet vom Gesichtspunkt der physikalischen Grundbegriffe von
Kraft und Stoff_ (Leipzig, 1870); G. Hartenstein, "Locke's Lehre von
der menschl. Erk. in Vergl. mit Leibniz's Kritik derselben
dargestellt," in the _Abhandl. d. philol.-hist. Cl. d. K. Sächs.
Gesells. d. Wiss._, vol. iv. (Leipzig, 1865); G. Class, _Die metaph.
Voraussetzungen des Leibnitzischen Determinismus_ (Tübingen, 1874); F.
B. Kvet, _Leibnitzens Logik_ (Prague, 1857); the essays on Leibnitz in
Trendelenburg's _Beiträge_, vols. ii. and iii. (Berlin, 1855, 1867);
L. Neff, _Leibniz als Sprachforscher_ (Heidelberg, 1870-1871); J.
Schmidt, _Leibniz und Baumgarten_ (Halle, 1875); D. Nolen, _La
Critique de Kant et la Métaphysique de Leibniz_ (Paris, 1875); and the
exhaustive work of A. Pichler, _Die Theologie des Leibniz_ (Munich,
1869-1870). Among the more recent works are: C. Braig, _Leibniz: sein
Leben und die Bedeutung seiner Lehre_ (1907); E. Cassirer, _Leibniz'
System in seinem wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen_ (1902); L. Couturat,
_La Logique de Leibniz d'après des documents inédits_ (1901); L.
Davillé, _Leibniz historien_ (1909); Kuno Fischer, _G. W. Leibniz_
(1889); R. B. Frenzel, _Der Associationsbegriff bei Leibniz_ (1898);
R. Herbertz, _Die Lehre vom Unbewussten im System des Leibniz_ (1905);
H. Hoffmann, _Die Leibniz'sche Religions-philosophie in ihrer
geschichtlichen Stellung_ (1903); W. Kabitz, _Die Philosophie des
jungen Leibniz_ (1909), a study of the development of the Leibnitzian
system; H. L. Koch, _Materie und Organismus bei Leibniz_ (1908); G.
Niel, _L'Optimisme de Leibniz_ (1888); Bertrand A. W. Russell, _A
Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz_ (1900); F. Schmöger,
_Leibniz in seiner Stellung zur tellurischen Physik_ (1901); A.
Silberstein, _Leibnizens Apriorismus in Verhältnis zu seiner
Metaphysik_ (1904); Stein, _Leibniz und Spinoza_ (1890); F. Thilly,
_Leibnizens Streit gegen Locke in Ansehung der angeborenen Ideen_
(1891); R. Urbach, _Leibnizens Rechtfertigung des Uebels in der besten
Welt_ (1901); W. Werckmeister, _Der Leibnizsche Substanzbegriff_
(1899); F. G. F. Wernicke, _Leibniz' Lehre von der Freiheit des
menschlichen Willens_ (1890). (W. R. So.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Bedenken, welchergestalt securitas publica interna et externa
und status praesens jetzigen Umständen nach im Reich auf festen Fuss
zu stellen._

[2] _De expeditione Aegyptiaca regi Franciae proponenda justa
dissertatio._

[3] _Consilium Aegyptiacum._

[4] _A Summary Account of Leibnitz's Memoir addressed to Lewis the
Fourteenth_, &c. [edited by Granville Penn], (London, 1803).

[5] In a letter to the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (autumn 1671),
_Werke_, ed. Klopp, iii. 253 sq.

[6] He was made a foreign member of the French Academy in 1700.

[7] _Caesarini Furstenerii tractatus de jure suprematus ac legationis
principum Germaniae_ (Amsterdam, 1677); _Entretiens de Philarète et
d'Eugène sur le droit d'ambassade_ (Duisb., 1677).

[8] Not published till 1819. It is on this work that the assertion
has been founded that Leibnitz was at heart a Catholic--a supposition
clearly disproved by his correspondence.

[9] In his _Protogaea_ (1691) he developed the notion of the
historical genesis of the present condition of the earth's surface.
Cf. O. Peschel, _Gesch. d. Erdkunde_ (Munich, 1865), pp. 615 sq.

[10] _Codex juris gentium diplomaticus_ (1693); _Mantissa codicis
juri gentium diplomatici_ (1700).

[11] _Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland_, by himself (1726), i. 118.

[12] When not otherwise stated, the references are to Erdmann's
edition of the _Opera philosophica_.

[13] See _Considérations sur la doctrine d'un esprit universel_
(1702).

[14] Cf. _Opera_, ed. Dutens, II. ii. 20.

[15] The difference between an organic and an inorganic body
consists, he says, in this, that the former is a machine even in its
smallest parts.

[16] _Opera_, ed. Dutens, iii. 321.

[17] Different symbolic systems were proposed by Leibnitz at
different periods; cf. Kvet, _Leibnitzens Logik_ (1857), p. 37.

[18] The places at which Leibnitz anticipated the modern theory of
logic mainly due to Boole are pointed out in Mr Venn's _Symbolic
Logic_ (1881).

[19] Hence the difference of his determinism from that of Spinoza,
though Leibnitz too says in one place that "it is difficult enough to
distinguish the actions of God from those of the creatures" (_Werke_,
ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. p. 160).

[20] _Opera omnia_, ed. Dutens, IV. iii. 282.

[21] Ibid. IV. iii. 295. Cf. Bluntschli, _Gesch. d. allg.
Staatsrechts u. Politik_ (1864), pp. 143 sqq.

[22] P. 480; cf. _Werke_, ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. pp. 158, 159.

[23] Werke, ed. Klopp, iii. 259; cf. Op. phil., p. 716.

[24] Werke, ed. Pertz, 2nd ser. vol. i. p. 167.

[25] "Si c'est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc
les autres?"--Voltaire, _Candide_, ch. vi.

LEICESTER, EARLS OF. The first holder of this English earldom belonged to the family of Beaumont, although a certain Saxon named Edgar has been described as the 1st earl of Leicester. Robert de Beaumont (d. 1118) is frequently but erroneously considered to have received the earldom from Henry I., about 1107; he had, however, some authority in the county of Leicester and his son Robert was undoubtedly earl of Leicester in 1131. The 3rd Beaumont earl, another Robert, was also steward of England, a dignity which was attached to the earldom of Leicester from this time until 1399. The earldom reverted to the crown when Robert de Beaumont, the 4th earl, died in January 1204.

In 1207 Simon IV., count of Montfort (q.v.), nephew and heir of Earl Robert, was confirmed in the possession of the earldom by King John, but it was forfeited when his son, the famous Simon de Montfort, was attainted and was killed at Evesham in August 1265. Henry III.'s son Edmund, earl of Lancaster, was also earl of Leicester and steward of England, obtaining these offices a few months after Earl Simon's death. Edmund's sons, Thomas and Henry, both earls of Lancaster, and his grandson Henry, duke of Lancaster, in turn held the earldom, which then passed to a son-in-law of Duke Henry, William V., count of Holland (c. 1327-1389), and then to another and more celebrated son-in-law, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. When in 1399 Gaunt's son became king as Henry IV. the earldom was merged in the crown.

In 1564 Queen Elizabeth created her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. The new earl was a son of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland; he left no children, or rather none of undoubted legitimacy, and when he died in September 1588 the title became extinct.

In 1618 the earldom of Leicester was revived in favour of Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle, a nephew of the late earl and a brother of Sir Philip Sidney; it remained in this family until the death of Jocelyn (1682-1743), the 7th earl of this line, in July 1743. Jocelyn left no legitimate children, but a certain John Sidney claimed to be his son and consequently to be 8th earl of Leicester.

In 1744, the year after Jocelyn's death, Thomas Coke, Baron Lovel (c. 1695-1759), was made earl of Leicester, but the title became extinct on his death in April 1759. The next family to hold the earldom was that of Townshend, George Townshend (1755-1811) being created earl of Leicester in 1784. In 1807 George succeeded his father as 2nd marquess Townshend, and when his son George Ferrars Townshend, the 3rd marquess (1778-1855), died in December 1855 the earldom again became extinct. Before this date, however, another earldom of Leicester was in existence. This was created in 1837 in favour of Thomas William Coke, who had inherited the estates of his relative Thomas Coke, earl of Leicester. To distinguish his earldom from that held by the Townshends Coke was ennobled as earl of Leicester of Holkham; his son Thomas William Coke (1822-1909) became 2nd earl of Leicester in 1842, and the latter's son Thomas William (b. 1848) became 3rd earl.

See G. E. C(okayne), _Complete Peerage_, vol. v. (1893).

LEICESTER, ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF (c. 1531-1588). This favourite of Queen Elizabeth came of an ambitious family. They were not, indeed, such mere upstarts as their enemies loved to represent them; for Leicester's grandfather--the notorious Edmund Dudley who was one of the chief instruments of Henry VII.'s extortions--was descended from a younger branch of the barons of Dudley. But the love of power was a passion which seems to have increased in them with each succeeding generation, and though the grandfather was beheaded by Henry VIII. for his too devoted services in the preceding reign, the father grew powerful enough in the days of Edward VI. to trouble the succession to the crown. This was that John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, who contrived the marriage of Lady Jane Grey with his own son Guildford Dudley, and involved both her and her husband in a common ruin with himself. Robert Dudley, the subject of this article, was an elder brother of Guildford, and shared at that time in the misfortunes of the whole family. Having taken up arms with them against Queen Mary, he was sent to the Tower, and was sentenced to death; but the queen not only pardoned and restored him to liberty, but appointed him master of the ordnance. On the accession of Elizabeth he was also made master of the horse. He was then, perhaps, about seven-and-twenty, and was evidently rising rapidly in the queen's favour. At an early age he had been married to Amy, daughter of Sir John Robsart. The match had been arranged by his father, who was very studious to provide in this way for the future fortunes of his children, and the wedding was graced by the presence of King Edward. But if it was not a love match, there seems to have been no positive estrangement between the couple. Amy visited her husband in the Tower during his imprisonment; but afterwards when, under the new queen, he was much at court, she lived a good deal apart from him. He visited her, however, at times, in different parts of the country, and his expenses show that he treated her liberally. In September 1560 she was staying at Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, the house of one Anthony Forster, when she met her death under circumstances which certainly aroused suspicions of foul play. It is quite clear that her death had been surmised some time before as a thing that would remove an obstacle to Dudley's marriage with the queen, with whom he stood in so high favour. We may take it, perhaps, from Venetian sources, that she was then in delicate health, while Spanish state papers show further that there were scandalous rumours of a design to poison her; which were all the more propagated by malice after the event. The occurrence, however, was explained as owing to a fall down stairs in which she broke her neck; and the explanation seems perfectly adequate to account for all we know about it. Certain it is that Dudley continued to rise in the queen's favour. She made him a Knight of the Garter, and bestowed on him the castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of Denbigh and other lands of very great value in Warwickshire and in Wales. In September 1564 she created him baron of Denbigh, and immediately afterwards earl of Leicester. In the preceding month, when she visited Cambridge, she at his request addressed the university in Latin. The honours shown him excited jealousy, especially as it was well known that he entertained still more ambitious hopes, which the queen apparently did not altogether discourage. The earl of Sussex, in opposition to him, strongly favoured a match with the archduke Charles of Austria. The court was divided, and, while arguments were set forth on the one side against the queen's marrying a subject, the other party insisted strongly on the disadvantages of a foreign alliance. The queen, however, was so far from being foolishly in love with him that in 1564 she recommended him as a husband for Mary Queen of Scots. But this, it was believed, was only a blind, and it may be doubted how far the proposal was serious. After his creation as earl of Leicester great attention was paid to him both at home and abroad. The university of Oxford made him their chancellor, and Charles IX. of France sent him the order of St Michael. A few years later he formed an ambiguous connexion with the baroness dowager of Sheffield, which was maintained by the lady, if not with truth at least with great plausibility, to have been a valid marriage, though it was concealed from the queen. Her own subsequent conduct, however, went far to discredit her statements; for she married again during Leicester's life, when he, too, had found a new conjugal partner. Long afterwards, in the days of James I., her son, Sir Robert Dudley, a man of extraordinary talents, sought to establish his legitimacy; but his suit was suddenly brought to a stop, the witnesses discredited and the documents connected with it sealed up by an order of the Star Chamber.