Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Leibniz denied that he invoked God to intervene in nature, or that there was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology. He was simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to be of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore God-dependent. He was not adding anything to mutual representation, he was just showing what it necessarily contained or implied. At least he was doing nothing worse than recognized scholastic practice. Scholastic Aristotelianism explained all natural causality as response to stimulus, and then had to postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being stimulated, and this was God. Apart from this supreme and first stimulus nothing would in fact be moving. The Aristotelians claimed simply to be analysing the nature of physical motion as they perceived it, and to find the necessity of perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it. No violence was thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was anything brought in from without to patch it up; it was simply found to be of its own [28] nature God-dependent.

It seems as though the reproachful description _'Deus ex machina'_ should be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than Aristotle's or Leibniz's, say for the occasionalist theory. Occasionalism appeared to introduce God that he might make physical matter do what it had no natural tendency to do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind. Ideas, on the other hand, have a natural tendency to represent one another, for to be an idea is to be a representation; God is not introduced by Leibniz to make them correspond, he is introduced to work a system in which they shall correspond. This may not be _Deus-ex-machina philosophy_, but it is _physical theology_; that is to say, it treats divine action as one factor among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural system. And this appears to be perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous: God's action cannot be a factor among factors; the Creator works through and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'This is the creature, and that is God' of distinguishable causalities in the natural world. The creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its Creator both in existence and in action.

The only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to the religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite existence throughout, because it is finite. All arguments to God's existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites are to be rejected. They do not indicate God, they indicate the failure of our power to analyse the world-order. When Leibniz discovered that his system of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought to have seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought not to have said, 'With the help of God I will leap over the wall.'

If we condemn Leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not him but his age. No contemporary practice was any better, and much of it a good deal worse, as Leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. And because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off. On the contrary, Leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset any philosophical theism of the Christian type. This is particularly so[29] in the _Theodicy_, as its many citations of theologians suggest. His discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence in which they result has much of that luminous serenity which colours the best works of the Age of Reason.

Every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to conceive God by the analogy of the human mind. When Leibniz declares the harmony of monads to be pre-established by God, he is invoking the image of intelligent human pre-arrangement. Nor is he content simply to leave it at that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act by which God pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for theological purposes of Leibnitian doctrine about the human mind.

The human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the human body. If we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas is more developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which each of them conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them. The conception of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. It will be the conception of a mind _absolutely_ dominant, to whose ideas, that is to say, the whole system simply corresponds, without any reciprocating correspondence on his side. In a certain sense this is to make God the 'Mind of the World'; and yet the associations of the phrase are misleading. It suggests that the world is an organism or body in which the divine mind is incarnate, and on which he relies for his representations. But that is nonsense; the world is not _a_ body, nor is it organic to God. Absolute dominance involves absolute transcendence: if everything in the world without remainder simply obeys the divine thoughts, that is only another way of saying that the world is the creature of God; the whole system is pre-established by him who is absolute Being and perfectly independent of the world.

Of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said: we can think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection to dominant mind. It is no use asking further _how_ God's thoughts are obeyed in the existence and action of things. What we can and must enquire into further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus obeyed. They must be understood to be volitions or decrees. There are indeed two ways in which things obey the divine thought, and correspondingly two sorts of divine thoughts that they obey. In so far as created things conform to [30] the mere universal principles of reason, they obey a reasonableness which is an inherent characteristic of the divine mind itself. If God wills the existence of any creature, that creature's existence must observe the limits prescribed by eternal reason: it cannot, for example, both have and lack a certain characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor can it contain two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one part and three parts. Finite things, if they exist at all, must thus conform to the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to be any. Finite things are particular and individual: each of them might have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. But if so, the whole universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might as a whole be otherwise. Therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by existing have the nature of _choices_ or _decrees_.

What material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of the infinite mind making choices or decrees? If we use such language of God, we are using language which has its first and natural application to ourselves. We all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make decrees. What is to choose? It involves a real freedom in the mind. A finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession of perceptions, ideas, or representations. With regard to some of our ideas we have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our body. We think of them as constituting our given substance. They are sheer datum for us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which they mediate to us. They make up a closely packed and confused mass; they persevere in their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual counterpart of the force which we have to recognize in things as physically interpreted. Being real spiritual force, it is quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not love our own existence and, in a sense, will it in all its necessary circumstances? But if we can be said to will to be ourselves and to enact with native force what our body and its environment makes us, we are [31] merely willing to conform to the conditions of our existence; we are making no choice. When, however, we think freely or perform deliberate acts, there is not only force but choice in our activity. Choice between what? Between alternative possibilities arising out of our situation. And choice in virtue of what? In virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as seemingly better.

Can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of God's creative decrees? We will take the second point in it first: our choice is in virtue of the appeal of the seeming best. Surely the only corrective necessary in applying this to God is the omission of the word 'seeming'. His choice is in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. The other point causes more trouble. We choose between possibilities which arise for us out of our situation in the system of the existing world. But as the world does not exist before God's creative choices, he is in no world-situation, and no alternative possibilities can arise out of it, between which he should have to choose. But if God does not choose between intrinsic possibilities of some kind, his choice becomes something absolutely meaningless to us--it is not a choice at all, it is an arbitrary and unintelligible _fiat_.

Leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject, possibilities of action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can conceive a world different in many respects from this world, in which, for example, vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I can do nothing towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is practically impossible but speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single principle of necessary and immutable reason. I, indeed, can explore only a very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; God does not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. So among all possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it.

But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. Out of the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a choice? Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he would never come to the end of it. Embracing infinite possibility in [32] the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it.

But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen for us by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are pre-determined, it would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole argument cuts its own throat.

There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's method, and it can be studied at length in the _Theodicy_. He certainly makes the very best he can of it, and it hardly seems that any of those contemporaries whose views he criticizes was in a position to answer him. The alternative method is to make the most of the negative element involved in all theology. After all, we do not positively or adequately understand the nature of infinite creative will. Perhaps it is precisely the transcendent glory of divine freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. But so mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a late-seventeenth-century philosopher.

One criticism of Leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. He allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a choice of mere caprice. There is a sort of choice Leibniz never so much as considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his categories, and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic creativity. In such choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate simply between shaped and given possible schemes. And perhaps some such element enters into all our choices, since our life is to some extent [33] freely designed by ourselves. If so, our minds are even more akin to the divine mind than Leibniz realized. For the sort of choice we are now referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an infinite, or at least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility. And such is the nature of the divine creative choice. The consequence of such a line of speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more through us, and less simply for us, than Leibniz allowed: the 'harmony' into which we enter would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. Leibniz, in fact, could have nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would have found it easy to be ironical about it if his contemporaries had proposed it.

II

Leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and letters, preserved in the archives of the Electors of Hanover not because of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the political importance of most of them. From among this great mass various excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors of Leibniz's works. It may be that the most profound understanding of his mind is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to consider the public history of Leibniz, we may set them aside.

Of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. The _New Essays_ remained in Leibniz's desk, the _Theodicy_ saw the light. And so, to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author of the _Theodicy_.

The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In 1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's _Essay concerning Human Understanding_ was being prepared at Amsterdam. He wrote some polite comments on Locke's great work, and published them. He also sent them to Locke, hoping that Locke would write a reply, and that Leibniz's reflexions and Locke's reply might be appended to the projected French translation. But Locke set Leibniz's comments aside. Leibniz, not to be defeated, set to work upon the _New Essays_, in which the whole substance of Locke's book is systematically discussed in dialogue. The _New Essays_ were written in 1703. But meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between Leibniz [34] and the disciples of Locke and Newton, in which the English, and perhaps Newton himself, were much to blame, and Leibniz thought it impolitic to publish his book. It was not issued until long after his death, in the middle of the century.

The discussion with Locke was a failure: Locke would not play, and the book in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never appeared. The discussion with Bayle, on the other hand, was a model of what a discussion should be. Bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in a philosophical dialogue. And the book in which the controversy was systematized duly appeared with great éclat.

Here is the history of the controversy. In 1695 Leibniz was forty-nine years old. He had just emerged from a period of close employment under his prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical principles upon the polite world and see what would come of it. He therefore published an article in the _Journal des Savants_ under the title: 'New System of Nature and of the Communication of Substances, as well as of the Union between Soul and Body'. In the same year Foucher published an article in the _Journal_ controverting Leibniz; and in the next year Leibniz replied with an 'Explanation'. A second explanation in the same year appeared in Basnage's _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, in answer to reflexions by the editor. M. Pierre Bayle had all these articles before him when he inserted a note on Leibniz's doctrine in his article on 'Rorarius', in the first edition of his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_. The point of connexion between Rorarius and Leibniz was no more than this, that both held views about the souls of beasts.

Pierre Bayle was the son of a Calvinist pastor, early converted to Catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. He held academic employments in Switzerland and Holland; he promoted and edited the _Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_, and he produced that extraordinary work the _Historical and Critical Dictionary._ The notices it contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs upon which Bayle could hang his philosophical reflexions. He could write an intelligent discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to reconcile the points of view from which he felt impelled to write upon this author and that.[35] His was not a systematic mind. So far as he had a philosophical opinion, he was a Cartesian; in theology he was an orthodox Calvinist. He could not reconcile his theology with his Cartesianism and he did not try to. He made a merit of the oppositions of faith to reason and reason to itself, so that he could throw himself upon a meritorious and voluntary faith.

There is nothing original in this position. It was characteristic of decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished. But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality, we might have suspected Leibniz of inventing him.

In the first edition of his _Dictionary_, under the article 'Rorarius', Bayle gave a very fair account of Leibniz's doctrine concerning the souls of animals, as it could be collected from his article in the _Journal des Savants_, 27 June 1695. He then proceeded to comment upon it in the following terms:

'There are some things in Mr. Leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to some difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. He will have it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of outward bodies; that _it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect _spontaneity_ with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect _conformity_ to outward things_.... That _its internal perceptions arise from its original constitution, that is to say, the representative constitution (capable of expressing beings outside itself in relation to its organs) which was bestowed upon it from the time of its creation, and makes its individual character_ (_Journal des Savants_, 4 July 1695). From whence it results that it would feel hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there were not any one body in the universe, and _though nothing should exist but God and that soul_. He has explained (_Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, Feb. 1696) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular laws which put the soul upon action, it must feel hunger at such an hour; [36] and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion of matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that same hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. I will forbear preferring this system to that of occasional causes till the learned author has perfected it. I cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and spontaneous actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog would feel pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity of that soul should be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general with any unpleasing perceptions.

'Besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the Cartesian system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that the system of occasional causes brings in God acting by a miracle (ibid.), _Deum ex machina_, in the mutual dependency of the body and soul: for since God does only intervene according to general laws, he cannot be said to act in an extraordinary manner. Does the internal and active virtue communicated to the forms of bodies according to M. Leibniz know the train of actions which it is to produce? By no means; for we know by experience that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and such perceptions in an hour's time. It were therefore necessary that the forms should be directed by some internal principle in the production of their acts. But this would be _Deus ex machina,_ as much as in the system of occasional causes. In fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by their Creator. It may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. If it were composed of several pieces, as a machine, it would act different ways, because the peculiar activity of each piece might change every moment the progress of others; but how will you find in a simple substance the [37] cause of a change of operation?'

Leibniz published a reply to Bayle in the _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_ for July 1698. As in all his references to Bayle, he is studiously polite and repays compliment for compliment. The following are perhaps the principal points of his answer.

1. On the example of the dog:

(_a_) How should it of itself change its sentiment, since everything left to itself continues in the state in which it is? Because the state may be a state of _change_, as in a moving body which, unless hindered, continues to move. And such is the nature of simple substances--they continue to evolve steadily.

(_b_) Would it really feel as though beaten if it were not beaten, since Leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place as though nothing existed but God and itself? Leibniz replies that his remark refers to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it. The spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel.

(_c_) Why should the dog ever be displeased _spontaneously_? Leibniz distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the mind, of itself, but not chosen by it.

2. On Cartesianism and miracle:

Cartesianism in the form of occasionalism _does_ involve miracle, for though God is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body and mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their natural capacities.

3. On the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than uniformly?

Leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not. A point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils the formula of the curve. But it does not move monotonously, for the curve constantly varies. Such is the uniformity of the action of simple substances.

Bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. In the second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'Rorarius', he added the following note:

'I declare first of all that I am very glad I have proposed some small difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they [38] have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be admired in it. I look now upon that new system as an important conquest, which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. We had only two hypotheses, that of the Schools and that of the Cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_ of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a _way of assistance_ or occasional causality. But here is a new acquisition, a new hypothesis, which may be called, as Fr. Lami styles it, a _way of pre-established harmony_. We are beholden for it to M. Leibniz, and it is impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power and wisdom of the Author of all things. This, together with the advantage of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to prefer this new system to that of the Cartesians, if I could conceive any possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_.

'I desire the reader to take notice that though I confess that this way removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet I do not retract what I have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in God acting miraculously. (See M. Leibniz's article in _Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants_, July 1698.) I am as much persuaded as ever I was that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless God produces it as an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle properly so called. But being willing to cut off from this dispute as many things as I possibly can, I consent it should be said that the surest way of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of nature. I will therefore lay aside what I might reply to that part of M. Leibniz's answer.

'I will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion than to that of some other philosophers. I will not therefore propose the difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can receive from God the power of moving itself. They are strong and almost unanswerable, but M. Leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than that of the Aristotelians; nay, I do not know whether the Cartesians would presume to say that God cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting. If they say so, how can they own that Adam sinned? And if they dare not[39] say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that matter is not capable of any activity. Nor do I believe that it is more difficult for M. Leibniz than for the Cartesians or other philosophers, to free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human liberty. Wherefore, waiving this, I shall only speak of what is peculiar to the system of the _pre-established harmony_.

'I. My first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of the divine art above everything that can be conceived. Fancy to yourself a ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a harbour precisely when it is necessary. Suppose such a ship sails in that manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that God, notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of receiving it from God. And yet what M. Leibniz supposes about the machine of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. Let us apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the person of Julius Caesar.

'II. We must say according to this system that the body of Julius Caesar did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no impression on it. We must say that the rule according to which that faculty of Caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone to the Senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have spoken there such and such words, etc., though God had willed to annihilate his soul the next day after it was created. We must say that this moving power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of Caesar passed from a certain thought to another. Can a blind power modify itself so exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years [40] before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing what it is to do? Is not this much more incomprehensible than the navigation I spoke of in the foregoing paragraph?

'III. The difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[1] and which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts of modifications. How is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a thousand different ways? Suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here required? Will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with the changes of the soul? This seems to be altogether impossible.

[1] 'According to M. Leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be reduced to a true unity. Since therefore the body of every man is composed of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action really distinct from the principle of each of the others. He will have the action of every principle to be spontaneous. Now this must vary the effects _ad infinitum_, and confound them. For the impression of the neighbouring bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every one of them.'

'IV. It is in vain to have recourse to the power of God, in order to maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that God was able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is necessary, that they may move in a given manner. This supposition is rejected by everybody except some Cartesians; and no Cartesian would admit it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that God was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see other men do. By denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and knowledge of God: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily confined within certain bounds. The actions of creatures must be [41] necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of the subject that receives it. We may therefore reject M. Leibniz's hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties than that of the Cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. It puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants.

'V. Now let us consider the soul of Julius Caesar, and we shall find the thing more impossible still. That soul was in the world without being exposed to the influence of any spirit. The power it received from God was the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple, indivisible and immaterial. M. Leibniz owns it; and if he did not acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (Mr. Locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and I could refute it several other ways; which I need not mention since he acknowledges the immateriality of our soul and builds upon it.

'Let us return to the soul of Julius Caesar, and call it an immaterial automaton (M. Leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of Epicurus; I mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which will never meet any other atom. This is a very just comparison: for this atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything: and, on the other hand, the soul of Caesar is a spirit which has received the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [42] of any other spirit or of any body. It is neither assisted nor thwarted by anything whatsoever. If you consult the common notions and the ideas of order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always move in the same manner. This is the consequence of an axiom approved by M. Leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ... we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless something happens to hinder it_. (M. Leibniz, ibid.)

'Everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power, as Democritus and Epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the Creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform manner, without ever turning or going back. Epicurus was laughed at, when he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he could give no reason for this new part of his system. It was inconsistent with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which begins to play at that very moment. The first of these reasons cannot be admitted in a vacuum. The second is impossible, since an atom has not the faculty of thinking. And the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle that is a perfect unity. I must make some use of all this.

'VI. Caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. The faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so M. Leibniz), which it has received from God, both as to possession and exercise. If the first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. Now this soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [43] moment as it was at the first. It must therefore produce again at the second moment the same thought it had produced just before. If it be objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be in such a state, in the case that I have supposed; I answer that its change will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the preceding situation. A soul may therefore continue in its state of change, if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding.

'But suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some reason of affinity. If I suppose that in a certain moment the soul of Caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, I can conceive that it does immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one another, and which are so common in men's souls. One cannot apprehend how God could place in the soul of Julius Caesar the principle of what I am going to say. He was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when he was sucking; and therefore according to M. Leibniz's hypothesis which I am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk, which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. By what springs was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? If you run over the life of that Roman emperor, every page will afford you matter for a stronger objection than this is.

'VII. The thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made in a human body require. By virtue of this supposition it should be said that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine, awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those spirits. But then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[44] but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just like all material beings. We are here in quest of a single being, which produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.

'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M. Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some reflexions upon his answers.

'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner, and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very things at which the objections of those who take this system to be impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes. Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it, that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it I shall make use of a comparison.

'Fancy to yourself an animal created by God and designed to sing continually. It will always sing, that is most certain; but if God designs him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. Without this one cannot apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [45] appointed him by God. Let us apply this to man's soul. M. Leibniz will have it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of the body. This set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the singing animal above mentioned. Can the soul change its perceptions or modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? But experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. Were it not at least necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause of such and such a thought? Must they not be so placed and disposed as to operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence _pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the tablature in question. It is not therefore possible that a human soul should execute that law.

'M. Leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it: but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from distinguishing them. The present state of each substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state. The soul, though never so simple, has always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a machine. For each foregoing perception has an influence on those that follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in motions...The perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite variety of what is to result from it in time. This is only a consequence of the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of all the parts of the world_. I have but little to say in answer to this: I shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the right way of solving all the difficulties. M. Leibniz, through the [46] penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main inconveniency. I do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits. Nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual world. I hope that his curious explanations will remove all the impossibilities which I have hitherto found in his system, and that he will solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of Father Lami. And these hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important conquest.

'He will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to the supposition of the Cartesians there is but one general law for the union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that God gives a particular law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. Do not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in angelic nature?'

Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch for the _Theodicy_.

The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which, according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to compare it. It contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to play in the total harmony.

As to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony, this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to happen next. To the objection 'But the created soul is not an omniscient observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[47] Leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once we attend to the relevant facts. All he claims to be doing is to generalize this observation. All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the least conscious.

Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article 'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their fuller treatment in the _Theodicy_.

In the same year Leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to Bayle himself, offering further explanations of disputed points. He concluded it with a paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the historian-philosopher with Bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history:

'We have good reason to admire, Sir, the way in which your striking reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your boundless researches into matters of fact. I too am not always able to excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were it not that the interests of States frequently depend upon them. I have worked much on the history of Germany in so far as it bears upon these countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging to general history. So I have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer facts. But if the choice were open to me, I should prefer natural history to political, and the customs and laws God has established in nature, to what is observed among mankind.'

Leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in Bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to them. Before he had leisure to finish the task, Bayle died. The work nevertheless appeared in 1710 as the Essays in _Theodicy_.

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