this is going to be an analysis of the first of the four cardinal directions on the rotpolitical compass
'■ Of. ante, p. 93, note 1. — Tr. 2 Cf. ante, p. 108, note 1. — Tk.
3 A strange remark for Leibnitz to make, who had so thoroughly studied Aristotle in liis youth, and iu later years Plato, whose works contain demon- strations inferior in no respect certainly to the precision of the Pandects. The only explanations that seem to toucli tlie case are that Leibnitz had in mind the stringency and completeness of mathematical demonstration, which in form, and sometimes in content also, is apparently, and sometimes really, superior, though not necessarily so merely because mathematical, to the demonstrations of philosophy; or, as he seems to suggest in the immediately following con- text, that metaphysics being a matter of inire thought and ethics largely an ideal not as yet realized in the actual, their demonstrations cannot, like those of mathematics, be experimentally verified, and must thus be regarded as, in a sense, lacking in completeness as demonstra,tions. — Tr.
■• Cf. ante, p. 108, note 2. Leibnitz's remark concerning Proclus has its justification in the fact that his philosophical system, while embracing the entire philosophy and theology of his predecessors methodically elaborated with great dialectic art and skill, is yet purely formal in its completeness, its thought exhibiting little freedom or creative power, and wholly lacking in any real scientific basis and character. Though presenting here and there evidence of deep speculative ability on the part of its author, his philosoijhy is never- theless wholly wanting in such demonstration as is found in his mathematical work. — Tk.
physics experiments demand labor and expense. Now men at once relaxed their attention, and as a consequence were led astray when they were destitute of this faithful guide, experience, who aided and sustained them in their walk, as that little revolving machine does, which prevents children from falling when walking. There was a s^iccedaneum,^ but it is something that has not been and is not yet sufEicieiitly con- sidered. And I shall speak of it in its place. Tor the rest, blue and red are scarcely capable of furnishing matter for demonstration by means of the ideas we have of them, because these ideas are confused. And these colors do not supply matter for reasoning so long as in experience they are found accompanied by some distinct ideas, but in which the con- nection with their own ideas does not appear.]
§ 14. Ph. Besides intuition and demonstration, which are the two degrees of our knowledge, all the rest is faith or opinion, and not knowledge, at least as regards all general truths. But the mind has also another perception, regarding the particular existence of finite beings outside of us, and this is sensitive knowledge.''
Til. [Opinion, based on probability, deserves perhaps the name knowledge also ; otherwise nearly all historic knowledge and many other kinds will fall. But without disputing about terms, I hold that the investigation of the degrees of prrobability is very important, that we are still lacking in it, and that this lack is a great defect of our logics.^ For if the question can- not always be decided absolutely, the degree of resemblance ex datis can always be determined, and consequently one can reasonably judge what view is the most likely. And when
1 I.e., a substitute. The expression was mueli used by the later Roman jurists. —Tr.
2 Locke's word is " sensitive," Philos.WkH. (Bolm's ed.), Vol. 2, p. 141, ad Jin. His three degrees ol knowledge are intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive, cf. infra, p. 420. — Tr.
^ Of. Leibnitz's letter to Kestner, No. 11, Jan. .30, 1711, § .S (Dutens, Lnhnit. op.om.i, Pt. in., 264, and Kortholt, Leibnit. epist. ad diversos, 'A, 2.51) : "Ea vero pars Logicse, qua sc. gradus verisimilitudinum et argumentornm pondera constituerentur, nuspiam hactenus reperitur traditur. Ego juvenis aliquando aggressus sum, sed per varia dissipatus, fere intra voluntatem steti. Topica Aristotelis scopo meo non respondet. Congerit rcgulas, qiife occasionem aliquam prsebere possunt de argumentis cogitandi, sed quae non possunt docere, quantum cuique argumento aut judicio ponderia insit." — Tr.
our moralists (I mean the wisest of them, such as the present {moderne) General of the Jesuits)^ unite the safest and the most probable, and prefer even the safe to the probable,- they are not far in fact from the most probable ; for the question of safety is here that of the little probability of an evil to be feared. The fault of the moralists lax upon this article ' has largely been, that they have had a too limited and too inade- quate notion of the prohahle, which they have confounded with ike Endoxon ^ ov the probable {opinable) of Aristotle; for Aris- totle in his " Topics " did not mean to accommodate himself to the opinion of others, as did the orators and sophists. Endoxon is with him what has been received from the greatest number or the most authoritative : he is wrong in having restricted his '' Topics " to this, and this view caused him to adhere only to received maxims, for the most part vague, as if he wished
the idea has been brewing in my head for some time, since the period in my life when i was most suicidal, winter-spring 2022. i don’t want it to be too heavy, but read the title
1 Leilniitz probably refers to Tirso Gonzalez, General of the Jesuits from 1087-1705, and author of a work on probabilism, opposing the doctrine and maintaining that the Jesuits did not originate it, entitled Fundamentum theoloyix moralis, id est tractatus theologicus de recto usu opinionnm pivba- bilium, 4to, Dillingen, KiSO, Naples, 1604. An abridgment with the title Synop- sis tract, theol. de recto usu opinionum probabilium, conciniiata a theologo quodain. Soc. Jesu : cui accessit lor/istica probabilittitum, 3d ed., appeared at Venice, 161)6, Svo. Cf. Midland, liiog. Univ. 18, 111-112, Du Tin, Biblioth. des aut. ecch's. du XVII. .vcr/e, and, for the De recto usu opin. prob., Migne, Theol. cur. compl. Vol. 11, p. 13il7. — Tr.
2 The theory of moral probabilism is, perhaps the most celebrated question discussed in Moral Theology, and formed one of the chief subjects of contro- versy between the Jausenists and the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The aim of nutral probabilism is to find some rule by which action may be determineil in tliat portiou of the moral realm iu which certainty is impossible, and probability only can be attained. The probable opinion being that which has a certain number of arguments in its favor, either intrinsic, i.e., gi'ounded in reason, judgment iu regard to which was restricted to men of considerable education and especially to those versed in moral theology, or extrinsic, i.e., resting on some external authority, such as that of some theologian of repute; and the safe opinion, that which conforms to the moral law, casuists distinguish the following doctrines: 1. Probahilium, which permits action in accord with the opinion which is least probable and least safe ; 2. Probabilorism, or the preference of the most probable opinion, regardless of its relative safety; 3. Tutiorism, or tire choice of the safest opinion, without regard to its rela- tive probability. On the whole subject, cf. the dissertation of Pierre Nicole annexed to his Latin trans, of Pascal's Lettres prorinciales, and Janet, La Morale, Bk. TIL, Chap. 3, Paris, 1874, Eng. trans.. The TJieory of Morals, VV- 292-.308, New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1S83. — Tk.
2 According to Janet, the casuists refuted by Pascal. — Tr.
W- Topics, I., 1, 100" 21 : IrSo^a 6t TcLSoKOUi'Ta Trao-ll' T] Tot? TrXeiVTOls rj T0t9 (TOl/loi?, ital TOUTOis i; Tritrii' ij TOii irAeioTois ^ toIi ii.i\iirra v>™pi>ois nai erSoJoi!. — TR.
to reason only by means of qnodlibets ' or proviu'bti. ISut the probable or the likely is more extended : it must be drawn from the nature of things ; and the opinion of persons whose authority has weight is one of the things which may contribute to render an opinion probable, but not what completes the en- tire verisimilitude. At the time when Copernicus ^ was almost alone in his opinion, it was still incomparably more probable than that of all the rest of tlie human race. Now T do not know but that the establishment of the art of estimatimj probabilities'' would be more useful than a majority of our demonstrative sciences, and I have thought of this more than once. J
I'll. Scnsilive knowledge, or that which establishes the exist- ence of particular beings without us, goes beyond bare proba- bility ; but it has not all the certainty of the two degrees of knowledge of which we have just spoken. Nothing is more certain than that the idea we receive of an external object is in our mind, and this is intuitive knowledge : but the knowl- edge whether from this we can certainly infer the existence of anything without us corresponding to this idea, this it is which certain persons think may be questioned, because men may have such ideas in their minds, when no such thing actu- ally exists. For myself I believe, however, that there is a degree of evidence which elevates us beyond doubt. One is unalterably convinced that there is a great difference between the perceptions which he lias when by day he looks at the sun, and when by night he thinks about it ; and the idea which is
iTho MediiBval Latin " quofUibetiim " was a very elaborate and subtle scholastic arKumentation upon a question chosen at pleasure — "quod liliet" — but almost always of a theological or philosophical character. Such ques- tions wore called " qnodlibetaria? quawtiones"; they were proposed chiefly for the exercise of students, and their discussion was carried on to satisfy curiosity or for entertainment, and, for the most part, served rather to exhibit the skill and dexterity of the dialectician than to establish truth. The French word "quolibet," starting from the scholastic use of the term in the sense of an argumentative subtlety, came by a debasing extension of this meaning to signify a witty, but not always appropriate commonplace, a bad joke, a piin, an epigram; and it is in this sense that Leibnitz, coupling the word with "proverbs," uses the term. — Tr.
2 Nicolas Copernicus, UTIW.M;), published his theory of the planetary system in his Be orbium calenliiim revuliidoiiihiis lit. VI,, Nuremberg, 1543, 2d ed., Basle, irjfiB, both fol. .3d ed., with notes by Nicolas Mnlci- in his AstroiKimla Insiaurata, Amsterdam, 1617 and 1(140, 4lo. — Tk.
^Cf. ante, p. 213, note 2, p. 214, note 1; also Erdmann, Leibnit. "pfra philos.,Si. — TR.
renewed by recourse to tire memory is very different from that wliich actually comes to us by means of tlie senses. Some one will say that a drecwi may produce the same effect. I reply in the first place that it matters little that I remove this doubt, because if all is but a dream, reasoning is useless, truth and knowledge nothing at all. In the second place, he will ac- knowledge, in my opinion, the difference between dreaming of being in a fire, and being actually in it. And if he persists in appearing sceptical, I shall tell him that it is enough that we certainly find pleasure or pain following the application to ourselves of certain objects, true or dreamt of, and that this certitude is as great as our happiness or misery ; two things beyond which we have no interest. Thus I think we may count three sorts of knowledge : intuitive, demonstrative and sensitive. Th. [I think you are right, sir, and I also think that to these species of certitude or certain knowledge you can add the Jcnoiuledge of the probable; thus there will be two sorts of hnoidedge, as there are two sorts of proofs, the first of which produce certitude, and the second end only in probability. But let us come to this dispute of the Sceptics and the Dogmatists upon the existence of things without us. We have already touched upon it, but we must return to it here. I formerly discussed the subject a great deal viva voce and in writing with the late Abbe Foucher,^ Canon of Dijon, a learned and
i don’t think death or beauty or suicide or fascism are good. if you read this and take that away, or think that that’s what i think, i’m a bad writer
1 Simon Foucher, 1644-1696, a devoted student of the Platonic pliilosopliy, in consequence of wliich he was called "the restorer of the philosophy of the Academy." His Critique de la Recherche de la Virile, here mentioned by Leibnitz, appeared at Paris, 1675. It was based upon the sceptical principles of the IVIiddle Academy, and was subjected to a very sharp criticism by Male- branohe in the Preface to the next edition of the Recherche de la VMU. Foucher also wrote Dissertation sur la recherche de la v^ritd ou sur la philo- sophic des academicienx, Paris, 1673, said to be his best work, and De la Sagesse des anciens, Paris, 168.3. For Foucher's " objections " (published in the "Journal des Savans" of Sept. 12, 1695) to Leibnitz's doctrine of pre- established harmony as set forth in the Systeme nouveau ("Jour, des Savans," June 27, 1695), cf. Gerhardt, 1, 424, and 4, 487, Erdmann, 129, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 102, trans. Duncan, 81 ; and for Leibnitz's reply (" Jour, des Savans," April 3 and 9, 1696), cf. G. 4, 493, E. 131, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 67, trans. Duncan, 85. The correspondence of Foucher with Leibnitz was first published by Foucher de Careil in his Lettres et opuscules inedits de ieibjitz, Paris, 1854, pp. 27-131 {cf. Introd. pp. 22-41, where the controversy over Malehranche is thoroughly con- sidered), and more recently, 1875, after a new comparison with the originals in the Royal Library at Hannover, by Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift.,1., 363s(7. — Te.
subtile man, but a little too prepossessed in favor of his Acad- emicians, which sect he was very desirous of reviving, as Gas- sendi^ had brought upon the stage that of Epicurus.^ His critique upon " The Search after Truth," ^ and the other minor treatises which he afterwards published, have made their author quite well known. He published also in the " Journal des Savans " some objections to my Sj^stem of Pre-established Harmony, when I gave it to the public after having digested it for many years ; but death prevented him from replying to my answer. He always preached the necessity of guarding against prejudice and of using great accuracy, but besides the fact that he himself did not make it his duty to carry out his counsel to others, in which he was perhaps excusable, it seems to me that he was not careful whether another did it, antici- pating doubtless that no one would ever do it. Now I showed him that the truth of sensible things consisted only in the connection of phenomena, which must have its reason and is that which distinguishes them from dreams ; but that the
1 Cf. ante, pp. 64, note 2, Go, u. 3. Gassendi published on the life and phi- losophy of Epicurus: De vita, morihus et doctrina Kpirurl, Lugd. Bat., 1647; Animadversiones in libr. X. Diog. Laert. de Epicure, Lugd. Bat. 1649; Si/n- tagmaphilos. Epicuri, The Hague, 1655. For his philosophy, cf. his Hyntayma philosophicum. Vols. 1 and 2 of his Opera omnia ; also Stijckl, Gesch. d, Phi- los. d. Mittelalters, III. [Vol. 4], 316-327; Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, Vol. 1, Eng. trans. Vol. 1, pp. 253-269; R. Adamson, article "Gassendi," in Encyclop. Brit., 9th ed. — Tr.
2 Of. ante, p. 126, note 1. On his life and philosophy, cf. Zeller, Philos. d. &riech., III., 1 [Vol. 5], 363 sq., 3d ed., Leipzig, 1880; Lange, Gesch. d. Materi- alismus, Vol. 1, Eng. trans., Vol. 1, pp. 98 sq. ; Benn, The Greeh Philosophers, Vol. 2, pp. 53 sq. ; Wm. Wallace, Epicureanism, in the series of " Chief Ancient Philosophies," pub. by the Society for promoting Christian Knowl- edge, London, 1880. — Tr.
8 The De la Recherche de la VeriU, the principal work of Malebranche, 1638-1715, appeared in 1674-1679. The most recent edition is that of F. Bouil- lier, with an introduction and notes, 2 vols., Paris, 1880. On Malebranehe's philosophy, cf. Bouillier, Histoire de la Philos. diricsienne, Paris, 18.54; Olle'- Laprune, La Philos. de Mcdebranche, 2 vols., Paris, 1870-1872; Kuno Fischer, Gesch. d. n. Philos., 3d ed., I., 1, Enn'. trans, by J. P. Gordy, New York, Scrib- ners, 1887; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2d ed., Vol. 1, p. 1.59 sq. For a critical account of Malebranehe's place in the history of philosophy, cf. Edward Caird, article " Cartesianism," in Encyclop. Brit., 9th ed. For Leib- nitz's correspondence with Malebranche, cf. Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 1, 315-361; for his discussion of Malebranehe's philosophy, cf. Gerhardt, 3, 656-660, Erdmann, 735-737, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 213, trans. Duncan, 2;!;i-2:!7 ; G. 6, 67^94 (cf. also 481^83), E. 690-697, D. 2, Pt. I., 201 ; G. 6, 574-578 (cf. also 480-483; Locke's examination of Malebranche is in his Philos. Works, Vol. 2, 413^58, Bohn's ed.), E. 450-452, trans. Duncan, 185-189. —Te.
truth of our existence and the cause of phenomena is of a different nature, because it establishes substances, and that the Sceptics spoiled what they rightly say by carrying it too far, and by wishing indeed to extend their doubts even to immediate experience, and to the geometrical truths, a thing which Foucher did not do however, and to the other truths of reason, which he did a little too much. But to return to you, sir, you are right in saying that there is ordinarily some difference between feelings and imaginations ; but the Sceptics will say that the more or less does not alter the species. Be sides, although feelings are wont to be more vivid than im- aginations, it is nevertheless a fact that there are cases where imaginative persons are impressed as much or perhaps more by their imaginations than another is by the truth of things : so that I think the tiue criterion concerning the objects of the senses is the connection of the phenomena, i.e. the connection
' of that which takes place in different places and times, and in the experience of different men who are themselves, each to the others, very important phenomena in this respect. And the connection of the phenomena which guarantees the truths of
I fact in respect to sensible things outside of us, is verified by means of the truths of reason; as the phenomena of optics are explained by geometry. It must, however, be admitted that none of this certitude is of the highest degree, as you have well recognized. For it is not impossible, metaphysically speaking, that there may be a dream continuous and lasting like the life of a man ; but it is a thing as contrary to reason as would be the fiction of a book which should be formed by chance by throwing together the type pell-mell. For the rest, it is also true that, provided the phenomena are connected, it does not matter whether they are called dreams or not, since experience shows that we are not deceived in the measures we take concerning phenomena when they are understood accord- ing to tlie truths of reason.']
1 Cf. New Essays, Bk. III., chap. 4, § 2, Tli., ante, pp. 318, 319, notes 1 and 2, and Bk. IV., chap. 11, § 10, Th,, infra, p. 512. The principle of the "con- nection of tlie phenomena," their constant occnrrence in the same order and relations, givin,? them a certain measure of objectivity in our consciousness and enabling us to predict the appearance of other members of the series when one member presents itself, is for Leilmitz the guarantee of the truth of our sense-knowledge and the ground of our greatest possible certaiuty therein;
§ 16. Ph. For the rest, knowledge is not always clear, though ideas may be. A man who has as clear ideas as any mathe- matician in the world of the angles of a triangle and of equality to two right angles, may yet have a very obscure perception of their agreement.
my chemical romance had it right when they started it off at the end, but if they wanted to sing songs about death, that should have been it. instead of being about death, the black parade is really about rotting, the transition from one life to another. in my head, death and rotting are perpendicular to each other, because of course the rotting of a body is the swarming of a new form of life. instead, death is the total uncompromising annihilation of a body
Th. [Ordinarily when ideas are thoroughly understood their agreements and disagreements appear. I admit, however, that at times some of them are so complex, that much care is needed to develop what they conceal ; and in this respect certain agreements or disagreements may still remain obscure. As to your example, I remark that if we have in the imag- ination the angles of a triangle we do not on that account have clear ideas of them. The imagination cannot furnish us an image common to acute-angled and obtuse-angled triangles, and yet the idea of triangle is common to them : thus this idea does not consist in images and it is not as easy as you may think thoroughly to understand the angles of a triangle.]
§ 1. Ph. Our knowledge does not extend beyond our ideas, § 2. nor beyond the perception of their agreement or dis- agreement. § 3. It cannot always be intuitive, because we cannot always compare things immediately, for example, the size of two triangles upon one and the same base, equal, but very different. § 4. Our knowledge, also, cannot always be demonstrative, for we cannot always find mediate ideas. § 5. Finally, our sensitive knowledge regards only the existence of things which actually strike our senses. § 6. Thus not only our ideas are limited, but also our knowledge is more limited than our ideas. I do not doubt however that human knowl- can be carried much farther if men will devote thcm-
but he holds that this guarantee is " verified," and the consecutions of experi- ence supplemented, " by means of the truths of reason," and particularly by the use of the principles of logic. The position here taken is also that of the modern scientist, who keeps strictly within the scientific realm and does not pass on to consider the ultimate metaphysical nature and ground of the phenomena he investigates. — Te.
selves sincerely to discovering the means of perfecting truth, with entire freedom of mind and with all the application and industry they employ in coloring or maintaining falsehood, in defending a system in favor of which they have declared themselves, or else a certain party and certain interests, with which they find themselves united. But after all our knowledge can never embrace all we may wish to know concerning the ideas we have. For example, we shall never perhaps be able to find a circle equal to a square, and know certainly that it is so. Th. [Tlicie are confused ideas in which we cannot promise ourselves a complete knowledge, like those of certain sensible ' qualities. But when they are distinct, there is room to hope 1 for all. As for the square equal to the circle, Archimedes has already shown that there is one. For it is the one whose side is the mean pi'oportional between the semi-diameter and the scnii-oircumference. Ho has also determined a straight line equal to the circumference of the circle by means of a straight line tangent to the spiral, as others by the tangent to the quadratrix ; a method of quadrature with which Clavius ' was wholly content ; not to speak of a thread applied to the cir- cumference and then stretched out, or of the circumference which revolves to describe the cycloid and is changed to a straiglit line. Home demand that the construction be made by employing only the ruler and the compasses ; but the majority of geometrical problems cannot be constructed hy this means. 'I'he question then is rather that of finding the proportion between the square and the circle. But this pro- portion not being capable of expression in finite rational num- bers, it has been necessary, in order to employ only rational num])(;rs, to express this same proportion in an infinite series^
I Cliristo|)Iicr Clavins, 35.17-1612, a Jc.init and (listinKnished matliomatician, Prorcs.sor or Mathematics at llfniii, anrl callBrl "the Knclifl of the sixteenth century," was employed by l'o|ic, (ireu'ory XIIl. in tlio reformation of the calendar, for wliieli Iji; made the principal calenlations. Among his -works are; KiicUiVk rlpmi'iiloriiiii. Home, 1.17-1; fiiniix /ijiraa liiiu/fiitPK, etc., Rome, LWd, 4tn; llnriKiiii ValiiKliirii. ii Grrr/nrin XIIl. P.M. restUiili, Jtrpliridin, Rome, KJOIi. 1 lis Oprra mnihi'iii(i1i,i-ii , containing these and several other works, appeared at MaycTiee, WVl, t) vols., fol. — Tr.
'^ Leibnitz's infinite series, which, according to Schaarschmidt, ho had dis- covered before he becnme acqnainted with Huygeng, and also before his
dLscoveryof theinfmitesimal calculns, is "^ 1 +- ---|-i— + ...,and
of these numbers, which I have assigned in a manner quite simple. Xow we should like to know whether there is not some finite quantity, although it be irrational only, or more than irrational, which can express this infinite series, that is to say, whether we can find exactly an abbreviated expression for this series. But finite, especially irrational, expressions, if we proceed to the most irrational of all, may vary in too many ways for us to be able to make an enumeration of them or to determine easily all that they are capable of. There might be perhaps a means of doing it if this irrationality should be ex- plained by an ordinary, or even more, an extraordinary equa-
as related to unity it expresses the proportion obtaining between the circle and the circumscribed square. Cf. De vera proportione circuli ad quadratum circumscriptum in numeris rationalibus, ''Acta Erud. Lips.," February, 1682, p. 41 sg., Gerhardt, Leibniz, math. Schrift., U., 1 [3'ol. 5], IIS, Dutens, Leib- nit. op. om., S, liO sq.; Quadratura arithmetica, " Acx:\ Ernd. Lip.," April, 1691, p. 180, Gerhardt, Leibniz, math, .^rhrifl., 11., 1 [Vol. 5], 130, Dutens, 3, 242; also letter to Conring, Jan. 3, liJTS, Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Si-Io-ir't., 1, 1S7.
The problem of which Leibnitz here speaks is the modern form of the prob- lems of the rectification and quadrature of the circle or the calculation and construction of r and of a square mathematically exactly equal in area to a given circle. In referring to it he distinguishes between an "ordinary," or algebraic, and an *' extraordinary," or, as it is now termed, transcendental equation. The problem is to prove that tt cannot be the root of any equation haring whole numbers for coefficients, or that tt is not algebraical. The quad- rature of the circle has long been known to be an unsolvable problem, — Leib- nitz knew this, — but the impossibility of its solution has only recently been demonstrated. Not until mathematicians possessed the methods furnished by the theory of definite integrals and the departments of higher algebra devel- oped in the last few decades was this demonstration possible. With the aid of these methods Prof. Lindemann of Kunigsberg succeeded, in June, 1SS2. in demonstrating with exactness the non-algebraic character of tt, and thus proved for the first time that the rectification and the squaring of the circle with ruler and compasses is impossible. For his proof, cf. Cher die Ludolph'sche ZaW. in the "Sitzungsberichte d. ki'mgl. Pr. Akad. d.Wiss., zu Berlin," June 22, 1882, pp. ii79-(J.S2 ; the "Comptes Rendus " of the French Academy, Vol. 115, pp. 72-74, " Math. Annalen," Vol. 20, pp. 213-225.
honestly you can just watch mishima instead of reading this
For an historical sketch of the problem of circle-quadrature, cf. Holtzen- dorff andVirchow, Sommlung f/emeinverstiindlicher ici.^senschaftlicher Vor- trage. Heft 67 ; an article from this by H. Schubert, in " The Jlonist," January, 1891, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 197-228, reprinted in Smithsonian Report, 1890, pp. 97- 120; and the article " Squaring of the Circle," in the Encyclop. Brit., 9th ed.. Vol. 22, pp. 4.50-454 (American Reprint). On Leibnitz's relation to the prob- lem, cf. Kummer, Festrede am Leibnizlage, in the " Mnnatsberichte d. Pr. Akad. d. Wiss.," July, 1867, p. 387 sq., an article which, while n.it directly taking into consideration the present interesting passage for the history of mathematics, is admirable in its understanding of the peculiarities of Leib- nitz's method of thought.— Tr.
tion, which would introduce the irrational or even the unknown quantity into the exponent/ for which, however, an extended calculation would be required, and in which the difficulty will not easily be solved unless we some day find a short method for its solution. But to exclude all the finite expressions is impos- sible, as I myself know, and to determine exactly the best is an immense task. And all this shows us that the human mind proposes questions so strange, especially when the infinite enters therein, that we must not be astonished if there is some difficulty in making them out, so much the more as all depends often on a short method in these geometrical matters, which cannot always be determined on, just as fractions cannot always be reduced to the lowest terms or the divisors of a number be found. It is true that we may always have these divisors if they are possible, because their number is finite ; but when what we have to examine is infinitely variable and ascends by degrees, we are not its master though we wish to be, and it is too laborious to do all that is necessary in order to attempt methodically to reach the short method or the rule of progression exempting us from going farther. And as its usefulness does not correspond to the labor, its success is left to posterity, which will be able to enjoy it when this laborer prolixity is diminished by the new preparations and means which time may furnish. Unless the persons who devote themselves from time to time to these studies determine to do properly what is necessary in order to further progress, we cannot hope to advance much in a short time. And we must not think that all is done, since indeed in ordinary geometry, we still have no method for determining the best constructions when the problems are a little complex. A certain progres- sion of synthesis should be mixed with our analysis in order the better to succeed. And I remember to have heard it said that the Pensionary De Witt ^ had some thoughts on this subject.]
1 Cf. Letter to Arnaukl, Gerhardt, Leibniz. ijhUon. Schrift., 2, 61, 62, Janet, CEavres philos. de Leibniz, 1, 022. — Tr.
2 Jolm De Witt, 1625-1(172, an illustrious Dutch statesman, was a steadfast opponent ol the House of Orange, wliose re-elevation to power in the United Provinces he lahored earnestly and lor many years successfully to prevent. His plans lor ]iis coimtry were finally defeated by the diplomacy of Louis XIV., the opposition of the Calvinist clergy, and the change in the popular
Ph. There is, indeed, another difficulty, to know whether a purely material being thinlcs or not,^ and perhaps we shall never be capable of knowing this, although we have ideas of matter and of thought, for the reason that it is impossible for us to discover by contemplation of our own ideas without revelation, whether God has not given to some masses of matter, fitly dis- posed, the power to perceive and to think, or whether he has not united and joined to matter so disposed an immaterial substance that thinks. For as regards our notions, it is no more difficult for us to conceive that God, if he pleases, can add to our idea of matter the faculty of thinking, than to under- stand that he joins to it another substance with the faculty of thinking, since we know not ivherein thinking consists, nor to what kind of substance this all powerful Being has been pleased to give that power, which cannot exist in any created being save by virtue of the good pleasure and the bounty of the Creator.
Th. [This question is without doubt incomparably more important than the preceding ; but I venture to say to you, sir, that I wish it were as easy to touch souls in order to influence them for their good, and to heal bodies of their diseases, as I think it is in our power to determine this ques- tion. I hope you will admit at least that I can advance loith- out offending against modesty and without speaking as a master in default of good reasons ; for besides speaking only accord- ing to received and common opinion, I think I have brought thereto an attention not common. In the first place, I grant you, sir, that when we have only confused ideas of thought and of matter, as is ordinarily the case, we must not be astonished if we do not see the means of solving such questions. As I remarked a little before, one who has only the ideas of the angles of a triangle commonly held will never think of finding
feeling towards the Prince of Orange, occasioned by the recollection of their country's obligations to his ancestors. He was massacred, with his brother Cornelius, in the revolution which put the Prince William (afterwards AYilliam III. of England) at the head of the United Provinces. He published Elementa lineanim curvanim, Leyden, ICoO; The Haj,'ue, 1709. — Tk.
1 Of. ante, p. 5C sq., where Leibnitz shows that Locke afterwards gave up the opinion which he once advanced as possible that matter can think. For Leib- nitz, who regards matter as a mere phenomenon and not a reality, the question doesuot exist. — Tr.
them always equal to two right angles. We must consider that matter taken as a complete being (i.e. secondary matter in distinction from ilia xmmary , which is something purely passive and consequently incomplete) is only a mass, or that which results therefrom, and that every real mass supposes simple substances or real unities, and when we further consider what belongs to the nature of these real unities, i.e. perception and its consequences, we are transferred so to speak into another world, that is to say into the intelligible ivorlcl of substances while before we have been only among the piienomena of the senses. And this knowledge of the interior of matter shows us sufficiently its natural capability, and that whenever God shall give it organs suitable for rational expression, the imma- terial substance which reasons will not fail to be given it also, in virtue of that harmony which is also a natural consequence of substances. Matter cannot subsist without immaterial substances, i.e. without the unities ; after which the question should no longer be asked whether God is free to give them to it or not ; and if these substances had not in themselves this correspondence or harmony of which I have just spoken, God would not act in accordance with the natural order. To speak in an entirely simple manner of giving or according powers is to return to the naked faculties of the schoolmen; and to im- agine minute self-subsisting entities, which may go in and out like pigeons from a pigeon-house. It is making substances of them without being aware of it. The primitive poivers con- stitute substances themselves, and the derivative powers, or, if you prefer, the faculties, are only modes of being, which must be derived from substances, and are not derived from matter so long as it is only a machine, i.e. so long as it is abstractly considered only as the incomplete essence of primary matter, or passivity pure and simple. As to which I think you will agree, sir, that it is not within the power of mere mechanism to produce perception, sensation, reason. They must then spring from some other substantial thing. To desire God to act otherwise and to give to things accidents which are not modes of being or modifications derived from substances, is to have recourse to miracles and to what the schoolmen called the obediential power, by a kind of supernatural exaltation, as when certain theologians claim that the fire of hell burns up sepa
rated souls. In wliich case it may indeed be doubted whether it was the fire that acted or whether God did not himself produce the effect, acting in place of the fire.]
or read zizek
Ph. You surprise me somewhat by your elucidations, and you anticipate me in many of the things I was going to say to you upon the limits of our knowledge. I should have said to you that we are not in a state of vision, as the theologians call it, that faith and probability must suffice us as regards many things, and particularly as regards the immateriality of the soul; that all the great ends of morality and religion are established upon sufficiently good foundations without the aid of the proofs of this immateriality drawn from philosophy ; and that it is evident that he who has begun to make us sub- sist here as sensible and intelligent beings, and who has pre- served us many years in this state, can and will make us enjoy also a similar state of sensibility in the other life, and make us capable of receiving there the retribution he has designed for men according as they shall have conducted themselves in this life ; in fine that we may judge by this that the necessity to determine for or against the immateriality of the soul is not so great as some people too zealous for their own views have wished to persuade us. [I was going to say all this to you, and more besides to the same effect, but I see now how differ- ent is the statement that we are sensible, thinking, immortal beings by nature and the statement that we are so only by mir- acle. It is a miracle, in fact, which I know I must admit if the soul is not immaterial ; but this view of miracle, besides being without foundation, will not produce a sufficiently good effect in the minds of most people. I see clearly also from the way you understand the matter, that we can decide rationally as regards the present question, without finding it needful to depart to the enjoyment of the state of vision and to find ourselves in the company of those superior spirits who penetrate very deeply into the internal constitution of things and whose living and penetrating sight and vast field of knowledge may make us imagine by conjecture what happiness they must enjoy.] I had supposed it entirely beyond our knowledge to combine sen- sation with extended matter, and existence with a thing which has absolutely no extension. I had therefore become convinced that those who took sides here followed the unreasonable method
of certain persons, who, seeing that things considered from a certain side are incomprehensible, throw themselves headlong upon the opposite side, although it is no less unintelligible ; a procedure which arose in my opinion from the fact that some having their mind too deeply buried so to speak in matter, could not accord any existence to that which is not material ; and others not finding that thought is included in the natural faculties of matter, concluded that God himself could not give life and perception to a solid substance without putting therein an immaterial substance ; while I now see that if He had done so it would be by a miracle, and that this incomprehensibility of the union of the soul and the body or of the union of sensa- tion with matter seems to cease through your hypothesis of pre- established harmony between different substances.]
Th. [In fact there is nothing unintelligible in this new hypothesis, since it attributes to the soul and to bodies only the modifications which we experience in ourselves and in them ; and only makes them appear more regular and more connected than has been thought hitherto. The diflBculty which remains exists only as regards those who wish to imagine what is only intelligible,^ as if they wished to see sounds or hear colors, and these are they who refuse existence to everything which is not extended, a view which will compel them to refuse it to God himself, i.e. to renounce the causes and reasons of changes and of such changes : these reasons being incapable of arising from extension and from natures purely passive, and not indeed wholly from particular and inferior active natures without the pure and universal act of the supreme substance.]
Ph. One objection remains for me with reference to things whose matter is naturally susceptible of feeling. The body so far as we can conceive it, is capable only of striking and effecting a body, and motion can produce nothing but motion ; so that when we agree that the body produces pleasure or pain or the idea of a color or sound, we seem compelled to abandon oiir reason, to go beyond our own ideas, and to at- tribute this production solely to the good pleasure of our Creator. What reason have we then to conclude that it is not the same with perception in matter ? I almost see what
reply you can make, and although you have already said some- tMng regarding it more than once, I understand you better now, sir, than I have done. But I shall be very glad to hear further what reply you will make regarding it upon this important occasion.
Til. [You rightly judge, sir, that I shall say that matter cannot produce pleasure, pain, or thought in us. It is the soul itself which produces them in conformity to what takes place in matter. And some clever people among the moderns begin to declare that they understand occasional causes only as I. Now this being posited, there occurs nothing unintelligible, except that we cannot distinguish all that enters into our con- fused perceptions, which contain even the infinite, and which are the detailed expression of what occurs in bodies. As for the good pleasw-e of the Creator, it must be said that he is ruled by the natures of things, so that he produces and con- serves therein only what suits them and can be explained, at least in general, by their natures ; for the detail often sur- passes us as much as the care and power of arranging the grains of a mountain of sand according to the order of the figures, although there is here nothing difficult to understand but the multitude. Otherwise if this knowledge were in itself beyond us, and if we could not indeed conceive the rea- son of the relations of the soul and body in general, in fine, if God gave to things accidental jjowers detached from their natures, and consequently removed from reason in general, there would be a back door for calling back the too occult quali- ties which no mind can understand, and these little goblins of faculties incapable of reason,
helpful goblins who proceed to appear like the gods of the theatre, or like the fairies of the Amadis, and who will do at need all that a philosopher wishes, without ceremony and without tools. But to attribute the origin of these powers to the good pleasure of God appears to me a thing not quite congruous with him who is the supreme reason, with whom everything is regular, everything consistent. This good pleasure would not indeed be good, nor pleasure, if there were not a perpetual parallelism between the power and the wisdom of God.]
§ 8. Ph. Our knowledge of identity and diversity goes as far as our ideas, but that of the connection of our ideas, §§9, 10. as regards their coexistence in one and the same subject is very imperfect and almost nothing § 11. especially as regards secondary qualities as colors, sounds, and tastes § 12. because we do not know their connection with the primary qualities, i.e. § 13. how they depend upon size, figure, or motion. § 15, We know a little more of the incompatibility of the secondary qualities ; for a subject cannot have, for example, two colors at the same time, and when they seem to be seen in an opal or in an infusion of lignum nejyhriticum, it is in different parts of the object. § 16. It is the same with the active and passive powers of bodies. Our researches in this direction must depend on experience.
Th. [The ideas of sensible qualities are confused, and the powers which should produce them furnish in consequence only ideas into which some confusion enters : thus the connections of these ideas can be known otherwise than by experience only as they are reduced to the distinct ideas which accom- pany them, as has been done (for example) in regard to the colors of the rainbow and of prisms. And this method pre- sents a beginning in analysis which is of great use in physics ; and by following it I doubt not that medicine in time will find itself considerably more advanced, especially if the public is a little better interested than hitherto.]
§ 18. Ph. As for the knowledge of relations it is the largest field of our knowledge and it is difficult to determine how far it may extend. Progress depends on our sagacity in finding intermediate ideas. Those who are ignorant of algebra cannot imagine the wonderful things that may be done in this field by means of this science. And I do not see that it is easy to determine what new means of perfecting other parts of our knowledge may yet be found out by a penetrating mind. At least the ideas regarding quantity are not the only ones capable of demonstration ; there are others, perhaps the most important part of our coyitempkttion, from which we might deduce certain knowledge, if vices, passions, and domineering did not directly oppose the execution of such enterprise.
sublime beauty exists in the gap between reality and the ideal or some shit. the ephemeral quality of things and their failure to properly realize their ideals produces beauty
Th. [Nothing is truer than what you, sir, here say. What is there more important, supposing it is true, than what I he-
lieve we have determined upon the nature of substance, upon unity and multiplicity, upon identity and diversity, upon the constitution of individuals, upon the impossibilities of void and atoms, upon the origin of cohesion, upon the law of con- tinuity, and the other laws of nature ; but chiefly upon the harmony of things, the immateriality of souls, the union of the soul and the body, the conservation of souls, and even of the animal after death. And there is nothing in all this which I do not think demonstrated or demonstrable.]
Ph. [It is true that your hypothesis appears extremely con- sistent and of great simplicity : a clever man in France who desired to refute it, admits publicly that he was impressed by it. And it is a simplicity very different from that which I see. It will be well to show this doctrine more and more in its true light. But in speaking of things which are of most importance to us, I thought of morality to which I admit your metaphysic gives wonderful foundations : but without digging so deep, it has sufficiently firm foundations, although perhaps they do not extend as far (as I remember that you remarked) when a nat- ural theology like yours is not their base. Yet the considera- tion of the goods of this life alone already serves to establish important consequences for regulating human society. We can estimate justice and injustice as incontestably as in math- ematics ; for example this proposition : There cannot be injustice where there is no property, is as certain as any demonstration which is in Euclid ; property being the right to a certain thing, and injustice the violation of a right. It is the same with this proposition: No government alloivs absolute liberty. For gov- ernment is the establishment of certain laws, whose execution it demands, and absolute liberty is the power each one has of doing whatever he pleases.
Th. [You use the word property a little differently from its ordinary use, for you mean by it the right of one person to a thing to the exclusion of the right of another. Thus if there were no property, as if all were common, there nevertheless might be injustice. By thiiig in the definition of property you must also further understand action ; for otherwise, if there were therein no right to things, it would be always an injustice to prevent men from acting where they find it needful. But according to this explanation it is impossible that there be no 2f
property. As for tlie proposition concerning the incompati- bility of government with absolute liberty, it belongs to the number of the corollaries, i.e. the propositions, which it is sufficient to point out. There are some in jurisprudence which are more complex, as for example, those concerning what is called jits accrescendi,^ concerning the conditions and many other matters ; and I indicated them when I published in my youth some theses upon the conditions, in which I demon- strated some of them. And if I had leisure, I would retouch them.^]
Fh. [That would afford pleasure to the curious, and serve to anticipate any one who might reprint them without re- vision.]
Th. [That is what happened to my " Ars Combinatoria," ' as I have already complained. It was a fruit of my early youth, and yet it was reprinted a long time after without consulting me and without indicating even that it was a second edition, and this made some think to my prejudice that I was capable
1 Cf. Poste, Gains, Elements of Roman Law, Bk. 11., 199 (p. 262, 3d ed., Oxford, 1890) ; " lUud constat si duobus plmibusve per vindicationem eadem res legata sit, sive conjunctim, sive disjiinctim, si oimies veniant ad legatum, partes ad singulos pertinere, et deficlentis portiouem collegatario adcrescere." Also Saudars, Inst, of Justinian, Lib. II., Tit. XX., 8 (p. 226, 8tli ed., London, 1888): "Si eadem res duobus legata sit, sive conjunctim sive disjunctim: si ambo perveniant ad legatum, scinditiu' inter eos legatum; si alter defioiat, quia ant spreverit legatum, aut vivo testatore decesserit, vel alio quolibet modo defecerit, totum ad coUegatarium pertinet."
In reference to the jus accrescendi — the law of increase — Sandars says, p. 198: " If any one instituted heir died before the testator, or refused to take his share of the inheritance, his share was, in fact, undisposed of. But as the testator was always supposed to have disposed of his whole estate, if he dis- posed of any part, this share was divided among all those who entered on the inheritance in proportions corresponding to the share given them by the will. Their claim was called the 'jus accrescendi.' " — Tr.
2 Leibnitz here refers to his thesis De condiUonihus, which he defended under the presidency of Prof. Leonhard Schweudendorfer, at Leipzig, in 1666. Guhrauor states (cf. Leibniz, cine Bioc/raphie, Pt. I., pp. 36-37) that we do not know the treatise in its original form, but in the revision and rearrange- ment of its material made by Leibnitz in 1(>72, in a collection of his juristic treatises under the title Specimina juris, and which is found in Dutens, Leii- nit. op. om., 4, Pt. III., 92 sg. — Tn.
god i hate writing so much, i’m so bad at it
3 The Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria, cf. Gerhardt, 4, 27 sq., Erdmann, 6 .iq., Dutens, 2, Pt. I., .341 sq., appeared at Leipzig in 1666. The pirated edi- tion here referred to by Leibnitz was published at Frankfort, 1690, and re- viewed by him in the " Acta Erud.," February, 1691. Of. Guhrauer, Leibniz, cine Bio;/., Pt. I., pp. 37-38, and Anmerkvnyen z. erst. Buche, pp. 7, 8; Dutens, 6, 295.— Tr.
of publishing such a piece in my mature years ; for although it contains thoughts of some consequence, which I still ap- prove, it also contains some which could become only a young student.]
§ 19. Ph. I find that diagrams are a great remedy for the uncertainty of words, but they cannot have place in moral ideas. Most moral ideas are more complex than the diagrams ordinarily considered in mathematics ; thus the mind finds it difficult to retain the precise combinations of what enters into moral ideas, in a manner as perfect as is necessary in long de- ductions. And if in arithmetic the different stages are not designated by marks whose precise meaning is known, and which last and remain in sight, it is well-nigh impossible to make extended computations. § 20. Definitions furnish some remedy provided they are constantly employed in ethics. And for the rest, it is not easy to foresee what methods may be suggested by algebra or by some other means of this nature to remove other difficulties.
Til. [The late Erhard Weigel,^ a mathematician of Jena in Thuringia, ingeniously invented diagrams to represent moral things ; and when the late Samuel Puffendorf,^ his disciple, pub-
1 Erhard Weigel, 1625-1699, a distinguished German mathematician and astronomer, was professor of mathematics in Jena from 1653 on, where he was Leibnitz's first teacher in the subject, when he studied there in 1663, c/. Guhrauer Leibniz, eine Biographie, Pt. I., pp. 26, 32. The Diet of Eatisbon appointed him to organize a commission for the correction of the calendar. He also labored earnestly for the reform of the school system in Germany, travelling through the country in 1696 for this purpose, cf. Guhrauer, op. cit., Pt. II., pp. 211-214, and the correspondence of Leibnitz and Placoius, from Feb. 12, 1696 on, Dutens, Leibnit. op. om., 6, 61 sq.
Weigel, who was a philosopher, moralist, and an original investigator of the law of nature {Naturrecht) as well as a mathematician, published many works, among them the Expose arithmitique de la morale, or, as the German title runs, Arithmetische Beschreibung der Moralvieisheit von Personen und ScKhen, woraus das gemelne Wesen besteht, nach der pt/thagorischen Kreutz- zahl in lauter teiraktische Glieder eingetheilt, Jena, 1674, 4to, in which he attempted a mathematical exposition of moral philosophy, based upon the Pythagorean principle that the essence of things consists in numbers. Leibnitz thus speaks of this book in the Miscellanea, No. CLIIL, Dutens, 0, 325: "M. Weigelius a fait un excellent livre en AUemand sur la morale e'clairfe par les nombres, et je ne crois pas que les Pythagoriciens ayent rivn dit de plus beau sur ce chapitre." For further remarks of Leibnitz dh Weigel, cf. Guhrauer, Leibnitz's deutsche Schriften, 2, 473 sq. — Tb.
2 Samuel Pufendorf, 1632-1694, was one of the greatest German publicists and historians, and one of the founders of the science of public law. He studied at Jena under Weigel, with whom he formed an intimate friendship,
lished his " Elements of universal Jurisprudence " sufficiently conformed to the thoughts of Weigel, there was added thereto in the Jena edition the " Moral Sphere " of this mathematician. But these diagrams are a kind of allegory nearly like the table of Cebes/ but less popular and serving the memory in the re- tention and arrangement of its ideas rather than the judgment in the acquisition of demonstrative knowledge. They do not cease to have their use in arousing the mind. Geometrical diagrams appear simpler than moral things ; but they are not so, because continuity includes the infinite from which it must be chosen. Por example, to cut a triangle into four equal parts by two straight lines perpendicular to each other is a question apparently simple but really quite difficult. It is not the same in questions of morality since they are determinable
and to whose teaching and influence he largely owes the orderly method and mathematical precision and dryness which characterize his style, and that independence of character which never yielded to the " ipsedixitism " of other writers, however high their position and authority. Among his works are: Eleinenta jicrisprudenti^ universalis, cum appendice de Sphsara •morali {of Weigel), Hag. Com., 1660, 12mo — also Jena, 1660, "hei Meyer" ; the ed. here meant by Leihnitz, according to Schaarschmidt, who states that in the 2d Jena ed., 1669, the Sphmra moralis occurs, p. 313 sq., — the hook which obtained for him from the elector Charles Louis, to whom it was dedicated, the newly created chair of the law of nature and of nations at Heidelberg; De statu imperii gerrnxmici, Geneva, 1667, — the book which first called forth Leibnitz's aversion and criticism, — small in buU^, but great in significance, in which he criticised the political organization of the empire, suggested a remedy for the evils therein, and revealed himself as a consummate statesman, subsequent events proving the justness of his conclusions ; and the work on which his fame chiefly rests, De jure naiurse et gentium, 1672, trans, into French, with notes, by Barbeyrac, Amsterdam, 1712, and into English by Basil Kennett, Loudon, 1729, and resume' of the same, De officio hominis et civis, 1675.
For Leibnitz's criticism of Pufendorf and his work, — the severest, perhaps, lie ever made on any one, and through which he is, to a considerable extent, responsible lor the failure of posterity justly to estimate and acknowledge its debt to him, — c/. letter to Kestner, No. 7, § 2, Dutens, i, Pt. III., 261 ; Monita quxdum ad S. Puffendorfii principia, ibid., 275-283; letter to S. Kor- tholt, No. 3, Dutens, 5, 305; letters to Bierliug, Gerhardt, Leihniz. philos. Schrift., 7, 487, 488, 490, 499, 506, 511, Dutens, 5, 355, 358, 361, 371, 386, 390 — Dutens gives Bierliug's letters to Leibnitz also ; letter to Bourguet, G. 3, 590, Erdmann, 734, b., Dutens, 2, Pt. I., .334. For a comparison of the views of Leibnitz and Pufendorf on the ultimate foundations of natural and public law, cf. Monita qusddam above cited, and Guhrauer, Leibniz, eine Bioq., Pt. I., 233 s?. — Tr.
when we talk about beauty, we need to distinguish it from cuteness, from sex appeal, and from allure, the aesthetic of rotting
1 Cebes of Thebes, a disciple of Socrates, distinguished for his virtue and love of truth; ef. Plato, Phsedo, 59 C, 60 C sq., 63 A. His na-af. Tabula, or ' picture,' is, according to Zeller, Philus. d. Griech., 11., 1 [Vol. 3], 242, 4th cd., 1889, " certainly spurious." — Tr.
by reason alone. For the rest it is not the place here to speak de proferendis scientiae demonstrandi pomoeriis, and to propose true means of extending the art of demonstration beyond its ancient boundaries which have been nearly the same up to the present time as those of mathematics. If God gives me the time necessary for it, I hope some day to publish an essay upon this subject, putting these means into effective use with- out limiting myself to precepts.] '
Ph. [If you carry out this plan, sir, and as it should be, you will infinitely oblige the Phikdethes like myself, i.e. the class who sincerely desire to know the truth.] For truth is naturally agreeable to the mind, and there is nothing so deformed and so incompatible with the understanding as a lie. But men must not be expected to apply themselves much to these discoveries, so long as the desire and the esteem of riches or of power shall lead them to espouse opinions authorized by fashion, and to seek in consequence arguments either to make them pass as good or to varnish over and cover their deform- ity. And while the different parties make all men whom they can get into their power receive their opinions without exam- ining whether they are true or false, what new light can be hoped for in the sciences belonging to morals ? This part of the human race which is under the yoke, ought to expect in most places in the world instead of that light, darkness as thick as that of Egypt, were not the candle of the Lord itself found present in the mind of men,^ a sacred light which all human power cannot wholly extinguish.
TJi. [I do not despair that at some time and in a more tran- quil country men will betake themselves more to reason than they have done. For in fact we must despair of nothing ; and
' Leibnitz's plan to extend and perfect tlie science of demonstration, or that part of logic which is concerned with the methods of proof, and which in his view was conceived up to his own time too narrowly as virtually identical with the method of mathematics, is closely connected, but not identical, with Ws Universal Characteristic; cf. ante, pp. 292, note 1, 375, note 1. Leibnitz, however, never carried his plan into execution, but left some preliminary essays or sketches which serve to indicate what he thought desirable in this direction, and what he purposed himself some day to provide. Cf. Priceptes pour avancer les sciences, Erdmann, Leibnit. op. philos. Ifi5-171, published in a more complete form in Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 7, 157 sg. / and the fragment without title treating of the means of philosophical demonstra- tion, G., 7, 299-301. — Tr. ^ cf. Proverbs 20: 27. ~Tk.
I believe that great changes for evil and for good are reserved for the hnman race, but in the end more for good than for evil. Suppose we see some day a great prince, who, like the ancient kings of Assyria or of Egypt or like another Solomon, reigns a long time in a profound peace, and that this prince, loving virtue and truth and endowed with a great and solid mind, takes it into his head to make men happier and more accommodating among themselves and more powerful over nature ; what wonders will he not do in a few years ? For it is certain that in this case more would be done in ten years than in a hundred or perhaps a thousand while letting things follow their ordinary course. Moreover, if the path were opened once for all, many people would enter therein as the geometers do, though this would be only for their pleas- ure and to acquire fame. The public better civilized will some day turn more than it has hitherto done to the advance- ment of medicine ; natural histories of all countries will he published like almanacs or like the Mercures galans ;^ no val- uable observation will be left without being registered ; those who will apply themselves thereto will be aided ; the art of making such observations will be perfected, and further that of employing them to establish aphorisms. The time wUl come when the number of good physicians having become greater and the number of people of certain professions of which there will then be less need having become proportion- ally less, the public will be in a condition to give more encouragement to natural research, and above all to the ad- vance of medicine, and then this important science will be carried far beyond its present condition and will grow apace. I believe indeed that this business of the police should he the object of the greatest care of those who govern, after that of virtue, and that one of the greatest fruits of good morals or politics will be to produce a better (science of) medicine,
1 "Mercure galaiit," the title o£ different periodicals treating of politicg, llteratm-e, and containing announcements, and news of various kinds; in par- ticular, the title of a journal founded by De Vise' in 1672, and continued, with several short periods of suspension, under various names and editors, till 1853. Leibnitz, in a letter to Sebastian Kortholt, Jan. 0, 1711, inquires whether a complete set can be obtained, and at what price: " Discere etiam velim, an totus Mereurius Gallant, ut sic dicani, vulgo Mercure Galant a Devisaio nuper extincto a multis anuis conipositus, tolerabili pretio haberi possit, et quanti ? " icf. Dutens, Leihnit. op. om. 5, 315). — Tr.
-when men shall begin to be wiser than they are and the no- bility shall learn the better to employ their wealth and their power for their own welfare.]
§ 21. Ph. As for the knowledge of real existence (which is the fourth kind of hnoivledge) it must be said that we have an intuitive knowledge of our existence, a demonstrative knowledge of that of God, and a sensitive knowledge of other things. We shall speak of these fully in what follows.
§ 22. Ph. Having now spoken of knowledge, it appears ap- propriate the better to discover the present condition of our mind that we should consider a little the dark side and take knowledge of our ignorance : for it is infinitely greater than our knowledge. The causes of this ignorance are as follows : (1) Want of ideas ; (2) Inability to discover the connection between the ideas we have ; (3) Neglect to trace and examine them with exactness. § 23. As for the loant of ideas, we have as simple ideas only those coming to us from the senses [in- ternal or external]. Thus as regards an infinite number of the creatures of the universe and their qualities we are like the blind as regards colors not indeed possessing the faculties necessary in order to their knowledge ; and according to all appearances man holds the lowest rank among intellectual beings.
since sex appeal and beauty are in direct opposition, it’s much easier to distinguish the two. sex appeal is kinda founded on a total disinhibition, a slut of course is a woman with no morals. beauty on the other hand requires a rigid adherence to rules, and it has an immense fragility
Th. [I do not know but that there are also some below us. Why should we degrade ourselves unnecessarily? Perhaps we hold a sufficiently honorable rank among rational animals ; for superior genii may have bodies of another kind so that the name animal cannot agree with them. We cannot say whether our sun among the great number of other suns has more above than below it, and we are well placed in his sys- tem: for the earth occupies the middle course between tlie planets, and its distance appears well chosen for a contem- plative animal who should inhabit it. Besides we have in- comparably more reason to praise than to complain of our lot, the majority of our evils riglitly being imputed to our fault. Above all we should be very wrong to complain of the defects of our knowledge, since we avail ourselves so little of that which charitable nature presents to us.]
§ 24. Ph. It is, however, true that the extreme distance of
nearly all parts of the world which are exposed to our sight conceals them from our knowledge, and apparently the visible world is only a small part of this immense universe. We are confined in a small corner of space, i.e. in the system of our sun, and yet we do not know even what takes place in the other planets which as well as our ball revolve about it. § 25. This knowledge escapes us by reason of size and dis- tance ; but other bodies are concealed from us because of their minuteness ; and these are the ones which it would most con- cern us to know ; for from their contexture we could infer the use and operation of those which are visible, and know why rhubarb purges, hemlock kills, and opium produces sleep. Thus § 26. whatever distance human industry may advance experimental philosophy upon physical things, I am compelled to believe that we can attain upon these matters a scientific Icnoioleclge.
Th. [I fully believe that we shall never advance so far as will be desirable ; but it seems to me that some considerable progress will be made in time in the explication of certain phenomena, because the large number of experiments which we are led to make may furnish us data, more than sufficient, so that only the art of employing them will be lacking, (an art) the small beginnings of which I do not despair of seeing pushed forward, since the infinitesimal analysis^ has given us the means of uniting geometry with physics, and dynamics has furnished us with the general laws of nature.]
§ 27. Ph. Spirits are still further removed from our knowl- edge ; we cannot form any idea of their different orders, and yet the intellectual loorld is certainly grander and more beau- tiful than the material world.
Th. [These worlds are always perfectly parallel as regards efficient causes, but not as regards final. For in proportion as spirits rule in matter they produce therein wonderful arrange- ments. This appears in the changes men have made, in order to embellish the earth, as little gods imitating the great archi- tect of the universe, though only by employing bodies and
1 Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, iu his Principia, was the first to apply in a systematic way tlie infinitesimal calculus to physics, after that Galileo, 1564- 1642, had paved tlie way for a theory of universal gravitation by his deter- mination of the law of acceleration in falling bodies. — Tk.
their laws. What may not be conjectured concerning tliis immense multitude of spirits which surpass us? And as spirits form all together a kind of state under God, whose gov- ernment is perfect, we are far removed from comprehending the system of this intelligible world and from conceiving the punishments and rewards prepared for those who deserve them according to the most exact standard, and from imagin- ing what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has ever entered into the heart of man. But all this shows that we have all the distinct ideas necessary for knowing bodies and spirits, but not sufficient detail of facts, nor senses penetrating enough to distinguish confused ideas or sufficiently extended to per- ceive them all.]
§ 28. Ph. As for the connection, the knowledge of which is wanting to us in the ideas which we have, 1 was going to say to you that the mechanical affections of bodies have no connection with the ideas of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, pleasure, and pain; and that their connection depends only upon the good pleasure and the arbitrary will of God. But I remember that you think there is a perfect correspondence, although this is not always an entire resemblance. But you recognize that the too great detail of small things entering therein hinders us from discerning that which is concealed, though you hope still that we shall make much advance there- in; and that thus you do not wish to say with my illustrious author (§ 29), that it is labor lost to engage in such a search, from fear that this belief would injure the growth of science. I should have spoken also of the difficulty which has hitherto been found in explaining the connection between the soul and the body, since a thought cannot be conceived as producing a motion in the body, nor a motion as producing a thought in the mind. [But since I comprehend your hypothesis of pre- established harmony, this difficulty of which they despaired appears to me removed at once, and as it were, by magic] § 30. There remains then the third cause of our ignorance, viz. that we do not follow the ideas we have or may have, and do not apply ourselves to finding intermediate ideas. Thus it is that we are ignorant of mathematical truths, al- though there is no imperfection in our faculties, nor any incertitude in the things themselves. The bad use of words
has contributed the most to prevent us from finding the agree- ment or disagreement of ideas ; and the mathematicians who form their thoughts independently of names and accustom themselves to present to their minds the ideas themselves in- stead of their sounds, have thereby escaped a great deal of embarrassment. If men had acted in their discoveries in the material world as they have been wont to do in regard to those having reference to the intellectual world, and if they had been wholly lost in a chaos of terms of an uncertain mean- ing, they would have disputed endlessly about the zones, the tides, the building of vessels, and the routes; they would never have gone beyond the line, and the antipodes would still be as unknown as they were when to maintain them was declared a heresy.
a perfect circle is beautiful, ending at the beginning
Th. [This third cause of our ignorance is the only blamable one; and you see, sir, that the despair of further advance is therein contained. This discouragement does much injury; and persons of ability and importance have hindered the progress of medicine by the false persuasion that it is labor lost to work therein. When you see the Aristotelian philoso- phers of past time speak of meteors, as the rainbow, for example, you will find that they believed they should not think alone of explaining distinctly this phenomenon; and the attempts of Maurolycus,^ and afterwards of Mare Antony de Dominis ^ appeared to them like the flight of Icarus. But the
1 Francesco Maurolico, 1494-1575, a celebrated Italian mathematician, whose father, a Greek, came originally from Constantinople, taught mathe- matics at Palermo, Naples, Rome, and Messina. In his Treatise on Conies he sought for the first time to deduce tlie properties of these curves from the corresponding curves in the circle of which they are the perspective. He first introduced secants into trigonometrical calculations, constructing and publish- ing a tahle of them in his Theodosii sphierieorum, Messina, 1558, fol. He also investigated tlie structure of the eye, seeking therein tlie explanation of the phenomena of vision. He described exactly the course of the rays of light across the cornea and the crystalline lens, but stopjied in utter astonishment when he discovered that his tlieory led him to admit that the images of objects upon the retina are found inverted. The work of Maurolico, here referred toby Leibnitz, is his Problemata ad perspeetivam et irideni pertinentia, appended toliisP/iod'smi [or Theoremata] delumine et umbra ad perspectivamradiorum incidentiutn, Venice, 1575, 4to, new ed., with notes of Clavius, Lyons, 1613. — Tr.
2 M. Ant. de Dominis, 1566-1624, a native of Dalmatia, was professor of eloquence, philosophy, and natural sciences at the University of Padua. Though archbishop of Spalatro, he was republican in his views of tlie consti- tution and administration of the church and strongly opj)Osed to the doctrine
sequel has disabused the world of this. It is true that the bad use of terms has- caused a good part of the confusion found in our knowledge, not only in ethics and metaphysics, or in what is called the intellectual world, but also in medi- cine where this abuse of terms increases more and more. AVe cannot always aid ourselves with figures as in geometry : but algebra shows us that great discoveries may be made without recurring always to the ideas themselves of things. In ref- erence to the pretended heresy about the antipodes I will say in passing that it is true that Boniface,' Archbishop of May- ence, accused Virgil of Salzburg,^ in a letter, which he wrote
of papal supremacy. While in England he published his views in his De republica ecclesiastica, London, 1617-1G20, reprinted Frankfort, 1(358, both eds., 3 vols., fol. For some specimen quotations from this book, cf. Larousse, Grande Diet. Univ. de XIX' Steele, Vol. 6, p. IOCS, a. Returning to Italy, he and his book were condemned as heretical, in spite of his retraction of his errors, and he was imprisoned, and probably poisoned, in the Castle of St. Angelo, and his body exhumed and burned with great ceremony in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome in January, 1625.
In his Be radiis visus et lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride, Venice, 1611, 4to, cited with high praise by Newton in his Opties, he presented to the world the first attempt at a theory of the rainbow. He successfully reflected rays of light through the interior of raindrops before making them come out again, bat could not account for the angle at which the observer sees the ray of the bow. On his theory, cf. Venturi, Commentarii sopra la storia e le teorie dell' ottica, Bologna, 1814, Vol. 1, p. 149. Of the De radiis visus et lucis, chap. 9 and chap. 13, "Vera iridis tota (/eneratio explicatur," are printed in Libri, Histoire des Sciences math, en Italic depuis la Renaissance jusqu'a la fin du XVII' siecle, 1838-1841, 4 vols., 8vo, Vol. 4, p. 436 sq. Leibnitz thus speaks of him in the Miscellanea Leibnitiana, ed. Feller, No. CXV., p. 198 (cf. also Datens, Leibnit. op. om., 6, 319): " Elegantissime materiam tractavit de- monstrationibusque mathematicis confirmavit. Iridis etiam et uonnullorum aliorum ejusmodi meteortun causam ab Aristotele assignatam recte ex- pendit." — Tk.
1 Boniface (Winfrid, the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk, named Bonifa- cius by Pope Gregory II.), 680-755, the apostle to the Germans, became arch- bishop of Mayeuce (Mainz) in 748. On his life and labors, cf. Neander, Hist, of the Christ. Relig. and Church, 3, 46 sq.; Smith and Wace, Diet, of Christ. Biog., Vol. 1, p. 324. His Opera quse extant omnia, ed. J. A. Giles, Londini, 1844, 2 vols., 8vo; also in Migne, Patrol, s. Lat., Vol. 89, Paris, 186:3. His letters were edited, with notes, by the Jesuit Nic. Serarius, 1555-1609, Jlayence, 1606 and 1629, 4to; and by Wiirdtwein, Moguntise, 1789, fol. — Tr.
2 St. Fergi], best known by the Latinized form of his name, — Virgilius, — was an Irish priest from Aghavoe, Queen's Co., who came to Bavaria, became at first abbot of St. Peter's monastery in Salzlmrg, and finally, on the martyr- dom of Boniface, 755, and the death of John, bishop of Salzburg, was appointed and consecrated bishop, June 13, 766 or 767. One of his last acts as bishop was to visit his entire diocese and to pay a long deferred visit to Carinthia. Pie died Nov. 27, 789.
to the Pope against him on this subject, and that the Pope replied thereto in a way which showed that he employed the term quite in the sense of Boniface; but it does not appear that this accusation has had any results. Virgil has always held his own. The two antagonists pass for saints, and the savants of Bavaria who regard Virgil as an apostle of Carin- thia and the neighboring countries, have justified their mem- ory of him.]
§ 1. Ph. Some one who has not understood the importance of having good ideas, and of understanding their agreement or disagreement, will think that in reasoning upon them so carefully we have been building castles in the air, and that there will be in our entire system only the ideal and imaginary. An extravagant man, whose imagination is heated, will have the advantage of possessing ideas more vivid and in greater num- ber, thus he would also have more knowledge. There will he as much certitude in the visions of an enthusiast as in the
anorexia is an embodiment of a beautiful circular logic, to kill one’s self by rigidly receding into nothingness
Virgil was involved in two controversies with Boniface. First, in regard to the validity of an informally administered baptism in which the officiating and ignorant priest had mutilated the Latin formula. Boniface said the bap- tism was in-valid, and must be repeated ; Virgil maintained its validity, and on his appeal to Pope Zachary (741-752), was sustained. Second, in regard to the "antipodes" here mentioned. Virgil published a philosophical treatise maintaining the rotundity of the earth and the antipodes, which Boniface regarded as heretical because the view advanced was thought to imply the existence of two races of men, one of which did not spring from Adam, was therefore free from original sin, and had no need for or share in the work of the Redeemer. Pope Zachary, in the letter to Boniface here referred to (c/. letters of Boniface, No. 140, in Bibl. Max. Vet. Patr., 27 vols., fol. Lugd., 167T, Vol. 13, p. 131-133), characterized as perverse and heretical the doctrine of another world and other men under the earth, — " De perversa doctrina, quam contra Dominum et animam suam locutus est (quod scilicet alius mundus, et alii homines sub terra sint aliusque sol et luna)," etc. ; hut Virgil showed that his speculations were purely scientific and did not touch the theological doctrines of original sin or the unity of the human race. He was accordingly acquitted of the charge of heresy, and canonized by Gregory IX. in 1233. Of. Smith and Wace, Diet, of Christian Biog., Vol. 4, pp. 1160, 1211, London, 1887 ; Neander, Hist, of the Christ. Relit), and Church, 3, 63 ; also Bayle, Diet. histor. et crit., 2d ed., 1702 (which was, perhaps, Leibnitz's source of infor- mation on the subject), Eng. Trans., London, 1738, Vol. 5, p. 493; and for a justification of Virgil, cf. " Me'moires de Tre'voux," Jan. 1708. — Tr.
reasonings of a sober man, provided this enthusiast speaks consistently; and it will be as true to say that a harpy is not a centaur as to say a square is not a circle. § 2. I reply that our ideas agree with things. § 3. But the criterion will be demanded. § 4. I reply further mi the first place that this agreement is manifest as regards the simple ideas of our mind, for being unable to form them itself, it must be that they are produced by things acting upon the mind ; and in the second 'place, § 5. all our complex ideas (those of substances excepted) being archetypes which the mind itself has made, not intended to be copies of anything nor referred to the existence of any- thing as to their originals, they cannot fail to be completely conformed to the things necessary to real knowledge.
Th. Our certitude would be small, or rather nothing, if it had no other basis of simple ideas than that which comes from the senses. Have you forgotten, sir, how I have shown that ideas are originally in our mind, and that indeed our thoughts come to us from the depths of our own nature, other creatures being unable to have an immediate influence upon the soul. Besides the ground of our certitude in regard to universal and eternal truths is in the ideas themselves, independently of the senses, just as ideas pure and intelligible do not depend on the senses, for example, that of being, unity, identity, etc. But the ideas of sensible qualities, as color, savor, etc. (which in reality are only phantoms),' come to us from the senses, i.e. from our confused perceptions. And the basis of the truth j of contingent and singular things is in the succession which causes these phenomena of the senses to be rightly united as the intelligible truths demand.^ That is the difference which
1 Cf. ante, p. 317 (where the term " phantasies," in line 12, rendered by the word "notions," would have been better rendered, perhaps, by "phantasms" or "phantoms"), notes 1 and 2, and ivfrn, p. 459. Schaarschmidt translates: "Phantasie-Erscheinungen." The term "phantom," or, as it might perhaps have been translated, " phantasm," — the Greek ^ivTairiJ^a., and the Scholastic "phantasma," — signifies here a mental modification given or produced through the agency of the senses, but having no corresponding external object, i.e. an entirely subjective phenomenon, real as such, but which, since it corresponds to no objective external reality, has, to a certain extent, the character of a mere appearance. — Tr.
^Cf. New Essays, Bk. IV., chap. 2, § 14, Th. (2), ante, p. 422, note 1. Leibnitz felt, says Schaarschmidt, that we could not be satisfied from a philo- sophical point of view with the old definition of truth as consisting in the agreement of thought with reality. — Tk.
should be made, while that which you here make between simple and complex ideas, and ideas complex belonging to sub- stances and to accidents, does not appear to me well founded, since all intelligible ideas have their archetypes in the eternal possibility of things.]
§ 5. Ph. It is true that our complex ideas need archetypes outside the mind only when the question concerns an existing substance which must effectively unite outside us these com- plex ideas, and the simple ideas of which they are composed. The knowledge of mathematical truths is real, although it re- volves only upon our ideas, and finds nowhere exact circles. But we are assured that existing things will agree with our archetyp)es according as what we suppose therein is found existing. § 7. This serves to justify the reality of moral things. §8. Nor are Cicero's "Offices" less conformed to truth, because no one in the world rules his life exactly according to the pattern of a virtuous man such as Cicero has painted for us. § 9. But (it will be said) if moral ideas be of our invention, what a strange notion shall we have of justice and temperance?
§ 10. I reply that the uncertainty will be only in the lan- guage, because what is said is not always understood, or always understood in the same way.
Tli. [You might reply also, sir, and much better in my opinion, that the ideas of justice and temperance are not of our invention, any more than those of the circle or the square. I think I have sufficiently shown this.]
§ 11. Ph. As for the ideas of substances existing outside us, our knowledge is real so long as it is conformed to these archetypes; and in this respect the mind must not combine ideas arbitrarily, so much the more as there are very few sim- ple ideas of which we can be certain that they can or cannot exist together in nature beyond what appears by sensible observations.
i think that’s how we get to suicide. i think there are two different approaches to suicide. either it comes spontaneously out of nowhere, or - the beautiful kind - it’s the endpoint of a long, intentional (if unconscious) process of alienating oneself from one’s social environment, parting with one’s posessions etc…
Th. It is, as I have more than once said, because these ideas, when reason cannot judge of their compatibility or con- nection, are confused, like those of the particular qualities of the senses.
§ 13. Ph. It is well also as regards existing substances not to limit ourselves to names or to species supposed to be estab-
lished by names. This makes me return to discussions wo have often enough had regarding the detinition of man. For speaking of an innocent ^ who has lived forty years witliout giv- ing the least sign of reason, could we not say that he holds the middle place between man and beast? It would possibly be thought a very bold paradox, or even a falsehood with very dangerous consequences. But it seemed to me formerly and it seems still to some of my friends whom I cannot disabuse as yet (of the idea) that it is only in virtue of a prejudice based upon this false supposition that these two names man and beast signify distinct species, so well marked by real essences in nature that no other species can intervene between them, as if all things were thrown into the mould according to the precise number of these essences. § 14. When these friends are asked what species of animals these innocents are, if they are neither men nor beasts, they reply they are innocents, and that is sufficient. If asked further what they will become in the next world, our friends reply they are not concerned to know or inquire. Let them fall or stand to their oion master (Kom. 14:4), who is good and faithful and disposes of his creatures not according to the narrow limits of our particular thoughts or opinions, nor does he distinguish them conformably to the names and species it has pleased ns to invent; let it suffice us that those who are capable of instruction will be called to render an account of their conduct and will receive their re- ward according to the deeds done in their bodies (2 Cor. 5 : 10) . § 1.5. I shall exhibit to you the rest of their reasonings. The question (say they) whether imbeciles must be dejrrived of a future state rests upon two equally false suppositions : first that every being having the form and external appearance of man is destined to an immortal state after this life; and second that everything having a human birth must enjoy this privilege. Eemove these imaginative ideas, and you will see that such questions are ridiculous and groundless. In fact I think we shall disallow the first supposition and shall not have the mind so buried in matter as to believe that eternal life is due to any form of material mass, so that the mass must have feeling eternally because moulded upon such a figure. § 16. But the
' Locke's word is " changeling," Philos. Works (Bohn's ed.), Vol. 2, p. 176 sq,, and note. — Tr.
second supposition comes to the rescue. We shall say that this innocent comes from rational parents and that consequently it must have a rational soul. I know not by what rule of logic we can establish such a consequence, nor how after that we should dare to destroy these ill-formed and disfigured produc- tions. Oh, they are monsters, it will be said. Very well, so be it. But what will this always intractable innocent be? Shall a defect in the body make a monster, and not a defect in the mind? This is to return to the first supposition, already refuted, that the external suffices. A well-formed innocent is a man, as we believe; he has a rational soul, although it does not appear; but make the ears a little longer and more pointed, and the nose a little flatter than usual, then you begin to hesitate. Make the face narrower, flatter, and longer; there you are all at once decided. And if the head is per- fectly that of any animal, it is no doubt a monster; and this is for you a demonstration that it has no rational soul and that it should be destroyed. I ask you now where to find the just measure and the final limits bearing with them a rational soul. There are human /cefitses, half beast, half man, others three parts of which belong to the one, and one part to the other. How determine precisely the lineaments which indicate reason? Furtlrer, will not this monster be a species midway between man and beast? And such is the innocent in question. Th. [I am astonished tliat you return to this question suffi- ciently examined by us, and that more than once, and that you have not better catechized your friends. If we distin- guish the man from the beast by the faculty of reason, there is no middle ground, the animal in question must have it or not have it; but as this faculty sometimes does not appear, we judge of it by indices which are not demonstrative of the truth till this reason manifests itself : for we know by the ' experience of those who have lost it and who at last have re- covered its exercise, that its function may be suspended. Birth and form furnish presumptions of that which is concealed. But the presumption of birth is effaced {elidiiur) by a figure very different from the human, such as that of the animal was, born of a woman of Zealand according to Levinus Lemnius ^
1 Livin Lemmens — Latin, Levinus Lemnius — 1505-1368, aDutch physician, wlio was very successful in practice, and had in liis time a very great reputa-
(Book I., Chap. 8), which had a hooked beak, a long and round neck, flashing eyes, a pointed tail, and great agility at first in running about the room. But you will say that there are some monsters or brothers of the Lombards (as the physicians formerly called them because it was said that the women of Lombardy were subject to this kind of childbirth) who approach more and more the human figure. Very well; so be it. How then (say you) can the proper limits of the figure which is to pass as human be determined? I reply that in a conjectural matter there is no precision. And there the affair ends. You object that the innocent does not exhibit reason, and yet passes as a man, but if it had a monstrous figure, it would not be man, and thus you have more regard for figure than for reason. But, does this monster exhibit reason? Certainly not. You see, then, that it lacks more than the innocent. The defect of the exercise of reason is often temporal, but it does not cease in those in whom it is accompanied by a dog's head. For the rest, if this animal with a human figure is not a man, there is no great harm in guarding it during the uncertainty as to its fate. And whether it has a rational soul or not, God will not have made it for nothing, and we may say of the sonls of men who live in a state always similar to that of early infancy that their fate may be the same as that of the souls of those infants who die in the cradle.
§ 1. Ph. Tor many centuries the question has been asked. What is truth? § 2. Our friends think it is the joining or separating of signs according as the things themselves agree or disagree among themselves. By the joining or separating of signs must be understood what is otherwise called a propo- sition.
tion. Lemnius relates this marvellous occurrence, whicli he states was reported to him by the woman herself, as soon as she had barely recovered, but in which there must have been some deception, in his De miraculis occultis naturx, Bk. I., chap. 8, p. 37, Francofurti, 1628, Eng. trans., p. 24, London, 1658. —Te.
Th. But an e2nt7iet does not make a proposition; for example, the ivise man. But there is a union of two terms. Negation also is different from separation ; for saying man, and after an interval saying loise, is not a denial. Agreement also, or dis- agreement is not properly speaking what is expressed by the proposition. Two eggs have agreement and two enemies have disagreement. The question here concerns an entirely par- ticular mode of agreement or disagreement. Thus I think this definition fails wholly to explain the point in question. But what I find least to my taste in your definition of truth is that you seek truth in words. Thus the same sense ex- pressed in Latin, German, English, French, will not be the same truth, and it will be necessary to say with Hobbes,' that
the way that i understand death drive is that i have an unconscious life negating desire for something that is currently impossible, so i covertly do things in order to bring it about without being fully aware of it. my two examples are going to be suicide and anorexia, subcultures that i’ve felt death drive towards, even knowing that i’m a poser
1 Cf. Leibnitz, 7)e stilo pMlos. Nizolii, § 28, ad Jin,, Gerhardt, 4, 158, Erd- mann, 69 b, Diitens, 4, Ft. I., 60, where, after expressing his beliel that " Occam liimself was not more of a Nominalist than Thomas Hobbes now is, who, in trnth, seems to me more than a Nominalist," Leibnitz continues: " Non con- tentus enim cum Noniinalibus nniyersalia ad nomina reducere, ipsam rerum veritatem ait in nominalibus consistere, ac, quod majus est, pendere ah arbitrio humane, quia Veritas i^endeat a definitionibus termiuorum, dehnitiones autera terminorum ab arbitrio humano." Hobbes in his Leviathan (Morley's Uni- versal Library, No. 21), 3d ed., London: Geo. Eoutledge & Sons, 1887, Pt. 1., chap. 4, p. 24, alter speaking of " the imposing' of ' names,' and the ' connec- tion of tiaem,' " says: " When two names are joined together into a conse- quence, or affirmation, as thus, ' a man is a living creature "... if the latter name 'living creature,' signify all that the former name 'man' signifieth, then tlie affirmation, or consequence, is 'true'; otherwise ' false.' For 'true' and ' false ' are attributes of speech, and not of things. . . " And in the next paragraph : " Seeing then that truth consisteth iu the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, .and to place it accordingly." Leibnitz, probably, had this or some similar passage in mind, in his references to Hobbes' doctrine, and his statement is a possible and seemingly fair interpretation of many passages in Hobbes' writings, which passages, however, might be offset by others of a different character. Hobbes, nevertheless, seems never to have gone beyond his nominalistic position, never, at least, so far as consciously to connect his doctrine of truth with the facts of experience and the reality of things ; while Leibnitz's doctrine of truth has to a certain extent at least an objective reference in affirming an actual or at least possible existence of the objects of ideas, cf. ante, pp. 422, note 1, 445, note 2, infra, p. 452, note 1.
For further exposition of Hobbes' doctrine, cf. G. Groom Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 83-90, espec. p. 87 (Philos. Classics) , Edinburgh ; Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1880. On the relation of Leibnitz to Hobbes, cf. F. Tonnies, Leibniz und Hobbes, in the " Philos. Monatshefte," vol. 23, 1887, 557-573 ; see also, " Mind," No. 50, April, 1888, pp. 312-314. For two letters of Leibnitz to Hobljes, cf. Gerhardt, Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 1, 82-87, also, 7, 572-574, where the first letter is given with an amended text. Leibnitz appended to his Thdodic^e a, short piece entitled Heflexions sur I'ouvrage que M. Hobbes a public en
truth depends on the good pleasure of men; which is to speak in a very strange manner. You attribute, indeed, truth to God, who, you will agree with me (I think), has no need of signs. Finally, I have been astonished already more than once at the disposition of your friends who are pleased to make essences, species, and truths nominal.
Ph. Do not advance too fast. Under signs they include ideas. Thus, truths will be either mental or nominal, accord- ing to the species of signs.
Th. [We shall then have also literal truths, which may be distinguished as truths upon paper or parchment, of ordinary black ink or of printer's ink, if truths must be distinguished by signs. It were then better to place truths in the relation' between the objects of ideas which causes the one to be or not to be included in the other. That does not depend upon languages, -and is common to us with God and the angels; and when God manifests a truth to us we shall acquire that which is in his understanding, for although there is an infi- nite difference between his ideas and ours, as regards perfec- tion and extent, it is always true that they agree in the same relation. It is, then, in this relation that truth must be placed, and we can distinguish between the truths which are inde- pendent of our good pleasure, and between the expressions which we invent as seems good to us.j
§ 3. Ph. It is only too true that men, even in their minds, put words in the place of things, especially when the ideas are complex and indeterminate. But it is also true as you have observed, that then the mind contents itself with the iadication only of the truth, without for the present under- standing it, in the persuasion that it depends upon itself to understand it when it will. For the rest, the act which takes place in affirming or denying is more easily conceived by re- flecting upon what goes on in us, than explained in words. Therefore, you do not take it ill that in default of some- thing better we have spoken of joining together or of sepa- rating. § 8. You will also agree that propositions at least may be called verbal, and that, when they are true, they are
Anglois, de la liberie, de la necessity et du hasard, of. Gerhardt, 6, 388-399, Ei-dmaim, 629-634, Janet, CEuvres philos. de Leibniz, 2, 424^37, Dutens, 1, 415-429 (in Latin). — Tk.
ment as it really is, it is a certainty of truth; and the cer- tainty of knowledge consists in perceiving the agreement or disagreement of ideas so far as it is expressed in propositions. This is what we ordinarily call being certain of a proposition.
Th. [In fact this last kind of certainty will also suffice with- out the use of words, and is nothing else than a perfect knowl- edge of the truth; while the first kind of certainty appears to be nothing else than the truth itself.]
§ 4. Ph. Now as we cannot be assured of the truth of any general proposition, unless we know the precise limits of the signification of the terms of which it is composed, it will be necessary for us to know the essence of each species, which is not difficult as regards the simple ideas and the modes. But in substances wherein a real essence distinct from the nominal is supposed to determine the species, the extent of the gene- ral term is very uncertain, because we do not know this real essence; and consequently in this sense we cannot be assured of any general proposition made upon the basis of these sub- stances. But when we suppose the species of substances to be nothing else than the reduction of substantial individuals into certain sorts, arranged under different general names according as they agree with the different abstract ideas which we designate by these names, we cannot doubt whether a prop- osition, well known as it should be, is true or not.
i think the classic way we understand suicide is that there is suicidal intent, and suicidal ideation. i understand intent as wanting to kill yourself, and ideation as wanting to want to kill yourself. ideation is when suicide has a sick allure, but you haven’t yet transformed yourself into someone that actually wants to do it, and will if they have the chance
Th. [I do not know why you, sir, return again to a point sufficiently discussed by us, and which I believe an empty one. But, after all, I am very glad of it, because you give me an op- portunity very suitable (it seems to me) to disabuse you anew. I say then to you that we can be assured, for example, of a thousand truths regarding gold, or that body whose internal essence makes itself known by the greatest weight known here below, or by the greatest ductility, or by other marks. For we say that the body of the greatest known ductility is also the heaviest of all known bodies. It is true that it is not impossible that all which has hitherto been noticed in gold will some day be found in two bodies distinguishable by other new qualities, and that thus gold would no longer be the low- est species, as it has hitherto been regarded provisionally. We might also, if the one kind remained rare, and the other became common, think it proper to reserve the name of
true gold to the single rare species, in order to retain it in use as money by means of new assays which would be suited to it. After which we shall not doubt, also, that the internal essence of these two species is different; and if indeed the definition of an actually existing substance should not be fully determined in all respects (as in fact, that of men is not as regards the external figure), we should not cease to have an infinite number of general propositions upon its subject, which would follow from reason and the other qualities which we recognize in it. All that we can say regarding these gen- eral propositions is, that in case man is taken as the lowest species and restricted to the race of Adam, we shall have no properties of man such as are named in quarto modo,^ or may
1 The term in quarto modo, here used by Leibnitz, relers to a classification ot propria — ISm, properties — existent in the time of Porphyry, 233-304, though not accepted by him, — c/. El(7ayuiy^, chap. 4, 4", 14 (in Aristotle, ed. Berl.
Acad., Vol. 4, p. 4) : to Se l6toc Staipova-t Terpaxtos . . . (18.) rerapToy Be e<J>* ov avv- SeipafiriKe to ^6vci» Kal Trai'Tt Kal ael, u)S Ta> ai'SpoiTra) TO ye^aari-KOV . . . (22.) rauTa Se koX
Kvpm iSid <l>i](riv, oTi (tal ii/Ti(rTpe.()5i — and due, perhaps, to some one of the old Peripatetics, and prevalent in different forms in the Middle Age, according to ■which classification as given by Porphyry there were four classes : 1. Propria belonging to one species only, but not to et'ery individual thereof, as gram- matical to man ; 2. Propria belonging to every individual of the species, but not to this species alone, as biped to man ; 3. Propria belonging to one species only and to every individual thereof, hut not ahvays, as hoary to man ; 4. Pro- pria belonging to one species only, to every individual thereof, always, as risibility or risible to man.
The propria of this fourth class — quartus modus — are, each, of equal breadth with its subject, and, though no part of the essence of the species of which they are predicated, — man, for example, without theproprium risible, still being man, — as a matter of fact belong to every individual ot the species on all occasions, and to no individual of any other species. Propositions predi- cating such j)ropria are judgments in A, according to Archbishop Thomson's tei-minology, of the type "Common Salt is Chloride of Sodium," and are of com'se convertible.
Propria of this fourth class alone, i.e. pi-opria each of which would be coinci- dent with its subject so as to be enouncible in a j udgment in A — reciprocal — con- stitute the fourth predicable, and answer to the Utof of Aristotle and Porphyry, and the proprium of Appuleius, Marcianus Capella and Eoethius. These writers, with the exception of Aristotle, to whom probably the four-fold divis- ion of propria was unknown, regard the other three classes, which were pro- pria according to the Middle Age schoolmen, as accidents, — accidentia, avii^t- |3,i«dTa, — a fact which explains the somewhat peculiar language of Leibnitz: "We shall have no properties of man such as (,of the sort that) are named in quarto modo," etc. Leibnitz's thought is this: "In the case of 'man' " taken as the lowest species — species ififlma — and "limited to Adam's race, there is, except provisionally, no such proprium. ' Sole-rational-animal ' would be, provisionally, such a proprium, because up till now we know no men whom it
be enounced concerning him by a reciprocal or simply conver- tible proposition, unless provisionally, as in saying: man is the only rational animal. Taking man as those of our race, the provisional consists in the assumption that he is the only rational animal of those known to us; for we might some day find other animals who would have in common with the posterity of men of the present time all that which we have hitherto observed in them, but who would have another origin. It is as if the so-called Australians should overrun our coun- tries : in all likelihood we should then discover some means of distinguishing them from ourselves. But in case this should not happen, and supposing that God had forbidden this mixt- ure of these races, and that Jesus Christ had redeemed ours only, it would be necessary to try to make some artificial marks in order to distinguish between them. There would doubtless be an internal difference, but as it would not make itself recog- nizable, we should be reduced to the extrinsic denomination of birth alone which we should try to accompany with a durable artificial mark that would give an intrinsic denomination, and a constant means of distin_guishing our race from the others. These are all fictions, for we have no need to recur to these distinctions, being the only rational animals of this globe. Yet these fictions are useful in knowing the natures of ideas, substances, and truths general in their character. But if man were not taken as the loiuest sjxcies nor as that of the rational animals of the race of Adam, and if, instead of that, he signified a genus common to several species, which belonged now to a single known race, but which might belong also to others distinguishable either by birth or even by their natural marks, as, for example, in the case of the supposed Australians; then, I say, this genus would have reciprocal propositions, 'and the present definition of man would not be provisional. It is
would not fit, and know of no other species any of whose individuals it would fit. Only provisionally, however, for future discoveries may show, in either of these respects, that ' sole-rational-animal,' and ' man ' are not exactly coinci- dent concepts." On the whole suhject, cf. Prantl, Gesch. d. Lonilc, Vol. 1, pp. 34.3, 31)5, 42.5, ,581, 584, C30, 674, 676, 696, Vol. 2, pp. 342-343, Vol. 3, p. 102, Vol. 4, p. 241, note 383; Aldrich, Artis Logics Budimenta, ed. Mansel, Oxford, 18.56, pp. 32-34.
I would add that for much of the material as well as of the languai^e of the ahove note, I am indehted to the kindness of Pres. E, B. Andrews of Brown University. — Tr.
so of course for most of my life, i existed in the realm of ideation; eventually at some point i started taking actions to make suicide more appealing so that i could metamorphose my ideation into intent. this looks like starting to self harm, participate in very negative social spaces while alienating myself from positive ones, and third thing. at a certain point then my ideation suddenly flipped into intent - in a single instant i understood the poetic beauty of suicide, and that it was something that i had to do now, and i created a plan to inform a friend right before i did it who didn’t know my address so if they wanted to stop me, they’d have to get both their and my parents involved. it was a really sick, tragic idea, either all these people would be forced to care about me, or i would die. “if the war is lost, may the nation perish”
the same with gold; for suppose that some day there were two kinds of it distinguisliable, the one rare and hitherto unknown, the other common and perhaps artificial, discovered in the course of time; then suppose that tlie name gold should continue for the present species, i.e. for the natural and rare gold, in order to preserve by its means the commodity of gold money, based upon the rarity of this substance, its definition known hitherto by intrinsic denominations would have been provisional only, and should be augmented by new marks which will be discovered, to distinguish the rare gold or the ancient species from the new artificial gold. But if the name gold should then remain common to the two species, i.e. if by gold you mean a genus of which up to the present time we know no subdivision, and which we now take as the lowest species (but only provisionally until the subdivision is known) and if some day a new species were found, i.e. an artificial gold, easy to make, and which might become common ; I say that in this sense the definition of this genus should not be judged provisional, but perpetual. And indeed, without troubling ourselves with the names man or gold, whatever name is given to the genus or to the lowest known species, and even if none should be given them, what has just been said would be always true of ideas, genera or species, and species will be defined provisionally only by the definitions of genera. But it will always be allowable and reasonable toi assume, by means of a reciprocal proposition, that there is a real internal essence belonging either to the genus or the species, which makes itself known ordinarily by external marks. I have assumed hitherto that the race does not degenerate or change; but if the same race passed into another species, we should be so much the more obliged to recur to other marks and denominations intrinsic or extrinsic, without confining ourselves to the race.
§ 7. Ph. Complex ideas, which the names we give to the species of substances justify, are collections of ideas of certain qualities which we have observed coexisting in an unknown sub- stratum which we call substance. But we cannot know cer- tainly what other qualities coexist necessarily with such com- binations, unless we can discover their dependence as regards their primary qualities.
Th. I have already remarked before that the same (diffi- culty) is found in the ideas of accidents, whose nature is a little abstruse, as, for examijle, are the figures in geometry; for when the question concerns, for example, the figure of a mirror which collects all the parallel rays into one point as a focus, many properties of this mirror may be found before its construction is known, but we shall be uncertain about many other relations it may have, until we find in it that which corresponds to tlie internal constitution of substances, i.e. the construction of this figure of the mirror, which will constitute as it were the key to ulterior knowledge.]
Ph. But if we had known the internal constitution of this body, we should have found therein only the dependence which the primary, or what you call manifest, qualities may have. I.e. you would know what size, figure, and moving force depend thereupon ; but we should never know the connection which they may have with the secondary or confused qualities, i.e. with the sensible qualities, as colors, tastes, etc.
Th. The fact is, you still assume that these sensible quali- ties, or rather the ideas we have of them, do not depend upon figure and movement in a natural way, but only upon the good pleasure of God, who gives us these ideas. You appear to have forgotten, sir, the remonstrance I have more than once made to you against this opinion, in order to make you think rather that tliese sensitive ideas depend in detail upon the fig- ures and movements, and express them exactly, although we cannot distinguish therein this detail in the confusion of too great a multitude and minuteness of mechanical actions which strike our senses. But if we had reached tliejnternal constitution of some bodies, we should see also how they musj have these qualities, which would themselves be reduced to their intelligible reasons ; although it would never be in em- power to recognize them sensibly in these sensitive ideas which are a confused resultant of the actions of bodies upon us, as, now that we have the perfect analysis of green into blue and yellow, ^ and have scarcely anything more to ask in regard to it save as related to these ingredients, we are, however, incapable of analyzing the ideas of blue and yellow in our
i Cf. ante, p. 320, note 1 ; also Leibnitz's letter to Th. Burnett, without date, but written, according to Gerhardt, in 1099, G., Leibniz, philos. Schrifl.,S, 250. — Tb.
sensitive idea of green, for the very reason that it is a con- fused idea. It is much the same as we cannot analyze the idea of the teeth of the wheel, i.e. of the cause, in the percep- tion of an artificial transparency, which I have noticed among the clock-makers, made by the rapid rotation of a cog-wheel, which makes the teeth disappear, and an imaginary continu- ous transparency appear in their place, composed of the suc- cessive appearances of the teeth and their intervals, but in which the succession is so rapid that our phantasy cannot dis- tinguish it. We find then, indeed, these teeth in the distinct notion of this transparency, but not in this confused sensitive perception, whose nature is to be and to remain confused; otherwise if the confusion ceased (as if the motion were so slow that we could observe its parts and their succession) this notion, i.e. this phantasm^ of a transparency would no longer exist. And as there is no need of imagining that God for his good pleasure gives us this phantasm, and that it is independent of the movement of the teeth of the wheel and their intervals, and as, on the contrary, we conceive it to be only a confused expression of what takes place in this movement, an expression, I say, that consists in the fact that these successive things are confounded in an apparent simul- taneity : it is thus easy to think that it will be the same as regards other sensitive phantasms, of which we have not as yet so perfect an analysis, as of colors, tastes, etc. For, to speak the truth, they deserve this name phantasms rather than that of qualities or even of ideas. And it would suffice us in all respects to understand them as well as this artificial trans- parency, without its being reasonable or possible to claim a further knowledge of them; for to desire these confused phantasms to abide, and yet to distinguish therein their in- gredients by the phantasy itself, is a contradiction, is a desire to have the pleasure of being deceived by an agreeable per- spective, and to desire that at the same time the eye see the de- ception, which would destroy it. It is a case, in short, where —
nihilo plus agas Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias.^
IC/. ante, p. 445, note 1. Schaarschmidt here translates: "Phantasie- Erscheinung " ; in line 17 of this page, " Phautasievorstellung " ; in lines 24, 26, 31, "Erscheinuugen." — Tr.
But it often happens that men seek nodum in scirpo ^ and make difBculties where there are none, by demanding the impossible, and afterwards complaining of their impotence and of the limits of their light.
i failed to go through with the plan that night, and my cutting was half-hearted, so the next day i considered all the drugs that i had, and decided that i might as well do all the cough medicine i had because apparently people would get high from it and also maybe brain damage, and maybe i could mkultra myself back into that beautiful trance of suicidal poetry. i have no clue from where i remembered this, but somehow i remembered how 13 reasons why apparently inspired some kids to kill themselves, so i forced myself to watch it to try and get back to intent. it didn’t work haha, it mostly made me sad about how my family would feel, and as i look at the wikipedia page for dxm as i write this to figure out if it’s like an ssri or whatever, apparently it’s a rapid acting anti depressant for major depression, which it very much was. i got very lucky. don’t kill yourself, don’t be fascist!
§ 8. Ph. All gold is fixed is a proposition, the truth of which we cannot certainly know. For if gold signifies a species of things, distinguished by a real essence, which nature has given it, we are ignorant what particular substances are of this species. Thus, although this may be gold, we cannot affirm it with certainty. If we take gold as a body endowed with a cer- tain yellow color, malleable, fusible, heavier than any known body, it is not difficult to know what is or is not gold; but with all that, no other quality can be affirmed or denied with certainty of gold, than that which has a connection with this idea, according to a connection or incompatibility which may be discovered.^ Now fixity having no known connection with color, weight, and the other simple ideas which I have sup- posed to constitute the complex idea we have of gold, it is impossible that we can know with certainty the truth of this proposition, that all gold is fixed.
Th. We know almost as certainly that the heaviest of all bodies known here below is fixed, as we know certainly that it will be light to-morrow. This is because we have tried it a hundred thousand times ; it is an experimental certainty, and of fact, although we do not know the bond which unites the fixity with the other qualities of this body. Moreover, it is unnecessary to oppose two things which agree and amount to the same thing. When I think of a body, which is at the same time yellow, fusible, and which resists the cupel, I think of a body whose specific essence, although unknown in its interior, makes these qualities emanate from its depths, and makes itself known confusedly at least by means of them. I see nothing wrong in that, nor anything which requires you to return so often to the charge in order to attack it.
§ 10. Ph. It is enough for me now that this knowledge of the fixity of the heaviest of bodies is not known to us by the
2 According to the texts ol Gerhardt and Erdmann. Jacques and Janet read; "Que ce qui a avec cette idee une connexion ou une incompatibilite' qu'on pent dccouvrir"; i.e. than that wliicli has a discoverable connection or incompatibility with this idea. — Tr.
agreement or disagreement of ideas. And I for myself tliink that among the secondary qualities of bodies and the powers relating to them there cannot any two be named whose neces- sary coexistence or incompatibility can be known with cer- tainty, except the qualities which belong to the same sense and necessarily exclude one another, as when you can say that what is white is not black.
Th. I believe, however, that you might perhaps find them ; for example, every palpable body (or that which may be felt by touch) is visible. Every hard body makes a noise when struck in the air. The tones of strings or wires are semi-pro- portional to the weights which, cause their tension. It is true that what you ask succeeds only as far as you conceive distinct ideas united with confused sensitive ideas.
§ 11. Ph. It is not always necessary to think that bodies have their qualities by themselves independently of anything else. A piece of gold, separated from the impression and influence of every other body, would immediately lose its yellow color and weight; perhaps, also, it would become friable and lose its malleability. You know how vegetables and animals depend upon the earth, air, and sun ; how do you know whether the very distant fixed stars have not also an influence upon us?
Th. This is a very excellent remark; and if the contexture of certain bodies were known to us, we could not judge wholly of their effects without knowing the interior of those which touch and traverse them.
§ 13. Ph. Our judgment, however, may go further than our knowledge. For people sedulous in making observations can penetrate farther, and by means of certain probabilities resulting from an exact observation and by certain hints pur- posely put together, often make just conjectures regarding that which experience has not yet discovered to them ; but it is always only conjecture.
Th. But if experience justifies these consequences in a con- stant manner, do you not find that you can acquire certain propositions by this means? Certain, I say, at least as those which assert, for example, that the heaviest of our bodies is fixed and that the one which is after it the heaviest is volatile, for it seems to me that the certainty (understanding it as moral
but my lil personal story i think makes it very clear how the intent and ideation and death drive sort of work. death drive is the unconscious ideation of allure from some unexplainable place, which caused me to do self harm and drugs and watch kinda lousy teen drama in pursuit of turning flipping my life instinct into seeing suicide as something beautiful that i must do. beauty involves the rigid adherence to rules without passionate true belief - that comes later. pascal’s wager poses as a logical thing, but it only really works if there is an irrational death drive there somewhere, which makes religion alluring
or physical), but not tlie necessity (or metaphysical certainty) of these propositions which are learned by experience alone and not by analysis and the bond of ideas, is established among us and with reason.^
§ 1. Ph. There is one species of propositions which under the name of maxims or axioms pass as principles of science, and because they are self-evident, we have been contented to call them innate, although no one that I Jcnoiu of has ever tried to show the reason and ground of their extreme clearness, which forces us, so to speak, to give them our consent. It is not, however, useless to enter into this investigation and to see whether this great evidence is peculiar to these proposi- tions alone, as also to examine how far they contribute to our knowledge.
Th. This investigation is very useful and very important. But you must not suppose, sir, that it has been entirely neglected. You will find in a hundred places that the Scho- lastics have said that these propositions are evident ex ter- minis, as soon as the terms are understood, so that they were persuaded that the force of conviction was grounded in the knowledge of the terms, i.e. in the connection of their ideas. But geometers have done very much more: that is
1 Metaphysical and moral or physical certainty differ as the certainty of the truths of reason and the truths of fact. The truths of reason ground them- selves in the necessities of thought, and their certainty is accordingly absolute. The truths of fact, in Leibnitz's view, rest upon the divine choice of the best, and have an evidence merely relative and established with the aid of experi- ence ; their necessity is accordingly only hypothetical. Cf. New Essays, Bk. 11., chap. 21, § 8, Th., ante, pp. 179-180, and § 13, Th., ante, p. 183. The prin- ciple upon which the whole matter depends is the famous distinction of the medifBval scholastics between the understanding and the will of God, a prin- ciple to which Leibnitz very often recurs, especially in order to maintain the contingency of tlie world, and to escape from the universal fatalism of Spinoza. According to this principle, the understanding of God is the source of the necessary truths, and the will of God the source of the contingent truths. The distinction, however, does not solve the problem either of the contingency of the physical universe or of the moral freedom of man. — Tii.
they have undertaken very often to demonstrate them.^ Pro- clus already attributes to Thales of Miletus, one of the oldest known geometers, the wish to demonstrate the proposi- tions which Euclid has since assumed as evident.^ It is said that ApoUonius has demonstrated other axioms, and Proclus has also done so. The late ]\Ir. Eoberval, already eighty years old or thereabouts, intended to publish the new ele- ments of geometry of which I think I have already spoken to you.* Perhaps the "New Elements" of Arnauld, which at that time made some stir, had contributed thereto.^ He exhibited specimens of them in the Koyal Academy of Sciences, and some found fault that assuming this axiom, if equal mag-
1 Leibnitz frequently refers, botli in tlie New Essays and elsewiiere, to the demonstrability of the axiom.s, and the thought was evidently a favorite one with him. It is a weighty thought, too ; for all real advance in specula- tive and truly and lastingly constructive thinking rests upon just this " work- ing-over of the notions," as Herbart expresses it, this deeper penetration into their real meaning and content, and its exposition in the simplest possible intelligible forms. — Tr.
2 Proclus cites Thales of Miletus in prop. XV., theor. VIII., of his In primum Euclidis Elementorum lib. Cornmentarii, ex recog. G. Friedlein, p. 299. Thales, c. 624r-c. 5.50 B.C., was the founder of the Greek geometry, astron- omy, and philosophy. For his geometry, c/. G. J. Allman, Greek Geometry from Thales to Euelid, Dublin, 1889 ; for his philosophy, c/. Zeller, Philos. d. Griech., I., 1 [Vol. 1], 180-196, 5th ed., Leipzig, 1892. — Tr.
* The work of Antoine Arnauld, 1612-1694, here referred to is the Noiweaux Siemens de G4omitrie, Paris, 1661, mentioned among the most prominent books of that time by Ch. Wolf in his Eurzer Unterrieht v. d. vornehmsten math. Sehrift., Wien, 1763. Arnauld was an excellent mathematician, an able philosopher and theologian, a celebrated controversialist, and the indefatigable champion and mouthpiece of the Jansenists against the Jesuits. A zealous Catholic, he repeatedly tried to convert Leibnitz to that faith. Leibnitz's correspondence with him contains important matter regarding his own philos- ophy. It was originally edited and published by C. L. Grotefend, Brief wechsel z. Leibniz, Arnauld u. d. Landgrafen Ernst v. Hessen-Eheinfels aus d. Hand- schriften der Konigl. Bibliothek z. Hannover, Hanover, 1846, and was re- printed conformably to Grotefend's text by Janet, CEavres philos. de Leibniz, Vol. 1, pp. 577-691, and, with a new comparison of the original Mss., by Ger- hardt, Leibniz, philos. Sehrift., Vol. 2, pp. 11-138; ef. also his Einleitung, ib. p. 6 sq., and Vol. 1, p. 65, and for Leibnitz's first letter, unanswered, to Ar- nauld, ib. 68-82 (Grotefend, op. cit. 137 sq.).
Arnauld's (Euvres completes, with a life by Larriere, appeared at Paris and Lausanne, 1775-1783, 45 vols.. Vols. 38-40 containing the philosophical works. Of these the most important are : Des vraies et desfausses idees, 1683, directed against Malebrauche, in which Arnauld develops his doctrine of perception and attacks the theory of representative ideas, on which cf. Hamilton's Keid, 8th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 295-298, Vol. 2, pp. 823 b, 963; Reflexions pjhilos. et thdolor/. sur le nouveau systeme de la nature et de la grace du P. Malebranche, 1685-
niiudes are added to equals, equals arise therefrom, he demon- strated this other which is considered equally evident: if equals are taken from equal magnitudes, equals remain. It was said he should have assumed both or demonstrated both. But I was not of that opinion, and I believed that it was always so much gained to have diminished the number of the axioms. Addition is no doubt anterior to subtraction and more simple, because the two terms are employed in addition in the same way, which is not the case in subtraction. Arnauld did the opposite of Eoberval. He assumed still more than Euclid. As for the maxims, they are sometimes taken as established propositions whether evident or not. That may be well for beginners whom scrupulousness holds back; but when the establishment of science is the question, it is a dif- ferent matter. Thus it is that they are often taken in ethics and even among the logicians in their topics, in some of which there is a good supply, but a part of which contain enough of them vague and obscure. For the rest, T said a long time since publicly and privately that it is important to demon- strate all our secondary axioms, which we ordinarily use, by reducing them to the primitive or immediate and indemon- strable axioms, which I recently and elsewhere called the identicals.
the allure of religion, anorexia, and the final part of the title, fascism: i guess we have to talk about red scare
§ 2. Ph. Knowledge is self-evident when the agreement or disagreement of ideas is immediately perceived. § 3. But there are truths, not recognized as axioms, which are none the less self-evident. Let us see if the four species of agree- ment of which we spoke not long since (chap. 1, § 3, and chap. 3, § 7), viz. : identity, connection, relation, and real ex- istence, furnish us with them. § 4. As for identity or diver- sity, we have as many evident propositions, as we have dis- tinct ideas, for we can deny both, as in saying viati is not a horse, red is not blue. Further the statement zohat is, is, is as evident as the statement a man is a man.
Th. It is true, and I have already remarked that it is as evident to say ecthetically in particular A is A, as to say in
1686 ; Objections contre Descartes ; and La Logique ou I'Art de Penser, or the celebrated Port Royal Logic, 1662, written in conjunction with Nicole (c/. infra, p. 530, note 1), the best specimen of the logic of the Cartesian school. It has been translated into English most admirably by Prof. Thos. Spencer Baynes. — Tr.
general : it is what it is. But to deny the subjects of different ideas one of another is not always certain, as I have already remarked; as if any one wished to say, the trilateral (or that which has three sides) is not a triangle, because, in fact, tri- laterality is not triangularity ; again, if any one had said : the pearls of Slusius ^ (of which I spoke to you not long since) are not the lines of the cubic parabola, he would have been mis- taken, and yet that would have appeared evident to many people. The late Mr. Hardy, ^ ConseillerauChatelet de Paris, an excellent geometer and orientalist and well versed in the ancient geometers, who has published the commentary of Marinus on the Data of Euclid, was so prepossessed with the fact that the oblique section of the cone called an ellipse is different from the oblique section of the cylinder, that the demonstration of Serenus ^ appeared to him paralogistic, and I could gain nothing against him by my remonstrances : as he was nearly as old as Roberval, when I saw him, and I was a very young man, a difference which could give me very little persuasive power as regards him, although in other respects I was on very good terms with him. This example may show in passing what prepossession may do even in the case of clever people, for he was truly prepossessed, and Hardy is spoken of
2 Claude Hardy, born near the close of the sixteenth century, died in 1678, was a barrister by profession, and became in 1626 " Conseiller au Cliatelet de Paris." He was acquainted with not less than thirty-six ancient and modern languages, and made a profound study of mathematics. Descartes chose him as one of his judges in his controversy with Fermat, in 1698, over Fermat's De maximis et minimis. Hardy published the Data JEuclidis, Greek text, with Latin trans., together with the commentary of Marinus, the Neo-Platonist {cf. Zeller, Fhilos. d. Griech., IH., 2 [Vol. 6], 8.33, 3d ed., 1881), who lived in the fifth century, and was a disciple and the successor of Proclus (cf. ante, p. 108, note 2), at Paris, 1625, 4to. Leibnitz speaks of Hardy as an " homme de me'rite, grand ge'ometre, et grand orientaliste," cf. Dutens, 5, 610.— Te.
8 Serenus of Antissa, in the island of Lesbos, a Greek geometer, who lived in the fourth century, was the author of two treatises, De Sectione Cylindri et Coni, Hbri duo, which, according to Brunet, appeared, together with the Comes of ApoUonius of Perga, the Lemmas of Pappus of Alexandria, and the commentaries of Eutocius of Ascalonita, at Bonn, 15f)6, fol., reprinted at Pis- toja, 1696, fol., and afterwards edited and published by Halley, Oxford, 1710, fol. Hardy could not have seen either of the last two editions, since he died in 1678, but possibly he may have been acquainted with that of 1566 ; and, if not, then, as Schaarschmidt says, he must refer to Mersenne's Synopsis, Paris, 1644, which contains, pp. 276-312, an abridgment of ApoUonius and Serenus. — Tr.
with esteem in the letters of Descartes/ But I brought him forward only to show how we may be mistaken in denying one idea of another, if we have not thoroughly enough examined them where it is necessary.
§ 5. Ph. As regards connection or coexistence, we have very few self-evident propositions; there are, however, some, and it appears to me that this is a self-evident proposition : two bodies cannot be in the same place.
Th. Many Christians contest the point with you, as I have already remarked, and even Aristotle and those who after him admit real and exact condensations, reducing one and the same entire body into a smaller place than it before filled, and those who, as the late Mr. Comenius ^ has done in a little book writ- ten expressly for the purpose, claim to overthrow^ modern natural philosophy by the experiment of the air-gun, cannot be expected to agree therewith. If you take the body as the impenetrable mass, your statement will be true, because it will be identical or nearly so; but that the real body is such will be denied you. At least it will be said that God could
1 Schaarschmidt thinks that Leibnitz here confounded Hardy with Eoberval, whom he had mentioned just before. Descartes frequently mentions Hardy in his letters, c/., lor example, Pt. I., epist. Ill, Ft. II., epist. 61, 98, 101, 108, Pt. HI., epist. 34, 60, 63, etc. ; he also corresponded with him, and doubtless valued him highly, as witness his choice of him as arbiter in his controversy with Fermat, but he nowhere in his letters appears expressly to praise him; while he speaks thus of Eoberval in Lilj. HI., epist. 56, ad Fermatium: " qui procul dubio inter primarios seculi uostri geometras censeri debet." — Tr.
in the same way that i forced myself to watch 13 reasons why when i wanted to want to kill myself, i forced myself to listen to red scare when i wanted to want to starve myself
2 Johu Amos Comenius, 1592-1(;71, the last bishop of the old Moravian and Bohemian Brethren, devoted himself chiefly to the reform and regulation of public education and instruction, and wrote many works on pedagogy, which he collected and published under the title Opera didactica omnia, Amsterdam, 16.57, 4 vols., fol. He also did some work in pliysical science, publishing his Disquisilio de caloris et frigoris nuUn'a, Amsterdam, 1659, 12mo, which the writer in Michaud, Biofi. Univ., 9, 345, says is the only one of his physical works deserving to be in demand, and his Physicmad lumen divinum refor- matse synopsis, Leipsig, 1033, and Amsterdam, 1643, Eng. trans., London, 1651, which is, perhaps, the book to which Leibnitz here refers. For Leibnitz's esti- mate of a portion of the writings of Comenius, cf. Dutens, 5, 181. For an account of his life .and work, cf. S. S. Laurie, Comenius. His Life and Educa- tional Works, 4th ed. (Pitt Press Series), Cambridge, Univ. Press, 1893; also a reprint of the same, with five portraits, a somewhat extended and annotated biljliography, and pliotograpliic reproductions of pages from early editions of Comenius' works, publislied by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1893. — Tr.
8 Gerhardt reads "reserver," probably a Ms. or typographical error; Erd- miuin, Jacques, and Janet read " renverser," which, as the context requires, llie translation follows. — Tr.
make it otherwise, so that this impenetrability will be ad- mitted only as conformed to the natural order of things which God has established and of which experiment assures us, although elsewhere it would be necessary to admit that it is also very conformable to reason.
§ 6. Ph. As for the relations of the modes, mathematicians have formed many axioms upon the one relation of equality, like that of which you have just spoken, that if equals be taken from equals the remainders are equal. But it is not less evident, I think, that one and one are equal to two, and that if from the five fingers of one hand you take away two and then two others from the five fingers of the other hand, the number of the fingers remaining will be equal.
TJi. That one and one make two, is not properly a truth, but it is the definition of tioo; although it is true and evident that it is the definition of a possible thing. As for the axiom of Euclid applied to the fingers of the hand, I willingly admit that it is as easy to conceive what you say of the fingers as to see it in the case of A and B ; but in order not to do often the same thing, you observe it generally, and afterwards it is sufficient to make subsumptions. Otherwise, it is as if you preferred calculation by particular numbers to universal rules, which would be obtaining less than is possible. Tor it is of more account to solve the general problem : to find two num- bers whose sum makes a given number, and whose difference also makes a given number, than merely to seek two numbers whose sum makes ten, and whose difference makes six. For if I proceed in this second problem according to the method of numerical algebra, mixed with the literal (specieuse), the calculation will be as follows : a 4- & = 10, and a — b = 6 ; of which by adding together the right side to the right, and the left side to the left, I produce the result, a + b +a — b = 10-1-6, i.e. (since +6 and —6 cancel each other) 2a = 16 or a = 8. Subtracting the right side from the right, and the left from the left (since to take away o — 6 is to add —a + b) I produce the result a + b — a + b = 10 — 6, i.e. 2 6 = 4 or 6 = 2. Thus, I shall in truth have the a and & I ask for, which are 8 and 2, which satisfy the problem, i.e. whose sum is 10 and whose difference is 6 ; but I have not thereby the general method for any other numbers, which we might wish
or be able to put in the place of 10 or 6, a method which I could, however, find with the same facility as these two num- bers 8 and 2, by putting x and v in the place of the numbers 10 and 6. For proceeding tlie same as before we shall have a _j- 6 -(- a — & = a; + V, i.e. 2 a = a; + 1) or a = -1^ a; + V, and we shall also have a + 6— a + 6 = a; — i), i.e. 2'b = x — v or 6 = \x— V. This calculation gives this theorem or general canon, that when two numbers are required whose sum and differ- ence are given, you have only to take as the greater of the required numbers, half of the sum made from the given sum and difference ; and for the less of the required numbers, half of the difference between the given sum and difference. You see also that I might have dispensed with the letters, if I had treated the numbers as letters, i.e. if instead of putting 2a = 16 and 26 = 4, I had written 2a = 10 + 6 and 26 = 10 - 6, which would have given me a = \ (10 + 6) and h = \ (10 — 6) . Thus, in the particular calculation itself 1 should have had the general calculation, taking these symbols 10 and 6 as general numbers, as if they were the letters x and v ; in order to have a truth or method more general, and taking these same charac- ters 10 and 6 also for the numbers they ordinarily signify, I shall have a sensible example which may serve, indeed, as a proof. And as Vieta ^ has substituted letters for numbers for the sake of greater generality, I have desired to reintroduce the numerical characters, since they are more serviceable in algebra (specieuse) even than the letters. I have found this of much use in large calculations for avoiding errors and even
1 Fi'an9ois Viete, 1540-1603, better known by the Latin form of his name, Vieta, was a distinguished French mathematician, who is often regarded as tlie founder of modern algebra, because of his introduction of the general use of letters as symbols of undetermined, and therefore general, quantities, thus opening up the way for the higher mathematical analysis, afterwards carried on by Descartes and others. To him is also due tlie iuveution of the different simple transformations now used in the solution of equations, such as adding to or subtracting from the members of an equation the same quantity, or mul- tiplying or dividing them by the same quantity. He first enounced the princi- ple of homogeneity or the principle that all the quantities in an equation should be of one kind, — lines, surfaces, solids, or supersolids, — a principle which, after three centuries of controversy, has now been adopted generally by mathemati- cians. His various mathematical writings, wliich, being a man of wealth, he printed at his own expense and distributed among the scholars of Europe, were collected and edited by F. van Sehooten, Professor of Mathematics at Leyden, aided by J. Golius and Mersenne, and published under the title of Opera mathemaiica, Leyden, lfi46, 1 vol., fol. — Te.
in tlie application of proofs, sucli as the casting away of the nines in the midst of the computation without waiting for the result, when there are only numbers instead of letters; which may often be when you employ skill in the positions, so that the suppositions are found true in the particular case, besides the use there is of seeing the connections and orders which the letters alone cannot always make the mind discern so well, as I have elsewhere shown, after I found that the good cltur- acteristic is one of the greatest aids of the human mind.
§ 7. Ph. As for real existence which I had counted as the fourth species of existence which may be noticed in ideas, it can furnish us no axiom, for we have not indeed a demonstra- tive knowledge of beings outside us, God alone excepted.
Th. We can always say that this proposition I exist, is of the highest evidence, being a proposition which cannot be proved by any other, or rather an immediate truth. And to say I think, therefore I am, is not properly to prove existence by thought, since to think and to be thinking is the same thing; and to say, I am thinking, is already to say, / am. You can, however, exclude this proposition from the number of the axi- oms with some reason, for it is a proposition of fact, based upon an immediate experience, and it is not a necessary prop- osition, whose necessity is seen in the immediate agreement of ideas. On the contrary, it is only God who sees how these two terms, J and existence are united, i.e. why I exist. But if the axiom is taken more generally as an immediate or non- provable truth, we may say that this proposition, / am, is an axiom, and in every case we may be assured that it is a primi- tive truth, or rather unum^ ex primis cognitis inter terminos com- plexes, i.e. that it is one of the first known statements which is understood in the natural order of our knowledge, for it may be that a man has never thought expressly of forming tliis proposition, which, however, is innate to him.
i’ve had a relationship with food of course aaaaaaaa i forgot where i was going
§ 8. Ph. [I have always believed that the axioms have little influence upon the other parts of our knowledge. But you have disabused me, since you have indeed shown an important use of identical propositions. Suffer me, however, sir, to set before you still what I have in mind upon this article, for your explanations may also serve to make others return from their error.] § 8. It is a celebrated rule in the schools that
all reasoning comes from things already known and admitted, ex praecognitis et praeconcessis. This rule seems to cause these maxims to be regarded as truths known to the mind before the others, and the other parts of our knowledge as truths dependent upon the axioms. § 9. [I think I have shown (Book I., chap. 1) that these axioms are not the first known, the child knowing much sooner that the rod which I show him is not the sugar he has tasted, than all the axioms you please. But you have distinguished between particular knowledge or experiences of facts and the princijDles of a universal and necessary knowledge (and herein I admit that it is necessary to recur to axioms) as also between the natural and accidental order].
Th. I have also added that in the natural order the state- ment, that a thing is what it is, is prior to the statement that it is not another; for the question here does not concern the history of our discoveries, which is different in different men, but the connection and natural order of truths, which is always the same.^ But your remark, viz. : that what the child sees is only a fact, deserves still more reflection ; for the expe- riences of the senses do not give truths absolutely certain (as yon have often yourself, sir, observed not long since), nor are they exempt from all danger of illusion. For if it is allow- able to make fictions metaphysically possible, sugar might imperceptibly be changed into a rod, in order to punish the child who has been naughty, as water is changed into wine with us on Christmas eve, if it has been well prepared {mori- gene)^ But in all cases the pain (you will say) that the rod inflicts will never be the pleasure the sugar gives. I reply that the child will take it into his head as late to make an express proposition about this, as to notice this axiom, that you can-
1 Leibnitz here calls attention to a very important distinction, viz. : the dis- tinction between the liiatorical and the natural or logical order of our knowl- edge. The genesis of our knowledge, its gradual rise in the course of our lives, is always a matter of individual experience, tlie experience of no two indi- viduals being x>recisely alike ; while the natural or logical order and connec- tion of truths, being grounded in reason, is always the same for all. Leibnitz's remark further suggests that the origin of a principle or truth is not its justification, a common fallacy in much of the investigation of the present day, and that the ultimate criteria of truth are philosophical, not historical. Gf. Bowne, Metaphysics, pp. 13 sq., New York: Harper and Bros., 1882. — Tk.
2 Duncan, Philos. WJis. of Leihniiz, p. .'154, translates: "rectified." — Tk.
not truly say that what is is not at the same time, although he can very well perceive the difference of the pleasure and the pain, as well as the difference between perceiving and not perceiving.
§ 10. Ph. There are, however, a number of other truths as self-evident as these maxims. For example, that one and two are equal to three, is as evideiit a proposition as that axiom which states : that the ivhole is equal to the sum of all its parts.
Th. You appear to have forgotten, sir, that I have shown you more than once that the statement one and two is three is only the definition of the term three, so that to say that one and two is equal to three, is to say that a thing is equal to itself. As for this axiom, that the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts, Euclid makes no express use of it. This axiom also needs limitation, for it must be added that these parts must not themselves have a common part, for seven and eight are parts of twelve, but they make more than twelve. The bust and the trunk taken together are more than the man, in that the thorax is common to them both. But Euclid says, that the whole is greater than its part, a statement which is wholly trustworthy. And the statement that the body is greater than the trunk, differs from the axiom of Euclid only in this, that this axiom is limited to what is exactly necessary : but in exemplifying it and clothing the body you make the intelligible become also sensible, for the statement that a given whole is larger than a given part, is in fact the proposition that a whole is larger than its part, but the features of which are embellished with some coloring or addition : it is as if he who says A B says A. Thus it is not necessary here to oppose the axiom and the example as different truths in this regard, but to consider the axiom as embodied in the example and rendering it true. It is a different matter, if the evidence is not observed in the example itself, and when the affirmation of the example is a consequence, and not merely a subsump- tion of the universal proposition, as may occur indeed in the case of the axioms.
Ph. Our clever author says here : I should like to ask these gentlemen who maintain that all other knowledge (not of fact) depends upon general principles innate and self-evident, what principle they need to prove that two and two are four 7 for
we know (according to liim) tlie trutli of this kind of proposi- tions without recourse to any proof. What do you say about it, sir?
anyway, the last thing which clicked about fascism, especially in the modern moment, that’s all i can talk about, is that it kinda works through the identification with evil. the problem with things that are good, is that they can’t identify with good, because then they are no longer humble. truth is aligned with evil, because only evil can understand and vocalize that it is evil. this past week i wrote like 2 lines of code and i don’t think i made any commits haha i got sucked into minecraft, anyway i listened to a bunch of podcasts so my examples are a bit outdated, but like the kanye heil hitler song. this song works so well unlike all the other schizo things he does because of course jesus wouldn’t identify himself as jesus, that doesn’t work, or gandhi, i don’t really know my kanye lore… but being the villain being self-aware of your evil and doing it anyway, that makes you much more evil
Th. I say that I was awaiting you there well prepared. That two and two are four is not a truth at once immediate, supposing that four signifies three and one. We can then demonstrate it, and in this way : — ■
Axiom. — Putting equal things in their place, the equality remains. Demonstration. — 2 and 2 is 2 and 1 and 1 (by def. 1) 2 + 2
4 Then (by the axiom) 2 and 2 is 4. Which was to be demonstrated.
I might, instead of saying tliat 2 and 2 is 2 and 1 and 1, say that 2 and 2 is equal to 2 and 1 and 1, and thus with the others. But it may be understood throughout in order to shorten the process; and tliat, in Yirtue of another axiom whicli states that a thing is equal to itself, or that what is the same, is equal.
Ph. [This demonstration, as little necessary as it is in rela- tion to its too well known conclusion, serves to show how truths depend on definitions and axioms. Thus I foresee what reply you will make to many objections that are made against the use of axioms. You object that there will be an innu- merable multitude of principles ; but this is when you reckon among the principles the corollaries which follow from the definitions by tlie aid of some axiom. And since the defini- tions or ideas are innumerahle, so also will the principles be in this sense, supposing also with you that the undemonstra- ble principles are the identical axioms. They become innu- merable also by exemplification, but at bottom you can reckon A is A and B is B as one and the same principle differently clothed.
Th. Further, this difference of degrees in the evidence makes me disagree with your distinguished author that all
these truths called principles and which pass as self-evident, because they are so near the indemonstrable primitive ax- ioms, are entirely independent and incapable of receiving the one from the other any light or proof. For they may always be reduced either to axioms, themselves, or to other truths nearer the axioms, as this truth, that two and two make four, has shown you. And I just told you how Eoberval diminished the number of Euclid's axioms, by sometimes reducing one to another.
§ 11. Ph. This judicious writer, who has furnished an occa- sion for our conferences, agrees that maxims have their use, but he believes that it is rather that of closing the mouth of the obstinate, than of establishing the sciences. I should be very glad, said he, if you "would sho"w me some one of these sciences built upon these general axioms which cannot be shown to be sustained as well without axioms.
Til. Geometry is, without doubt, one of these sciences. Euclid expressly employs axioms in demonstration, and this axiom: that two homogeneous magnitudes are equal lohen one is neither larger nor smaller than the other, is the basis of the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes respecting the size of curvilinears. Archimedes employed axioms of which Euclid had no need; for example, of two lines, each of which is con- cave always on the same side, that which encloses the other is the greater. We cannot also dispense with the identical ax- ioms in geometry, as, for example, the principle of contradic- tion, or the demonstrations "which lead to the impossible. And as for the other axioms, which are demonstrable, we may dispense with them, absolutely speaking, and draw conclu- sions immediately from the identicals and from the defini- tions; but the prolixity of the demonstrations, and the end- less repetitions into which you would then fall, would cause a horrible confusion, if it were always necessary to begin alj ovo; while by assuming the mean propositions, already proved, we easily pass much farther. This assumption of truths already known is useful, especially as regards the ax- ioms, for they recur so often that geometers are compelled to make use of them constantly without citing them ; so that we should be mistaken in thinking that they are not there, because we do not perhaps always see them quoted in the margin,
Ph. But he objects to the example from theology. For the knowledge of this holy religion came to us from revelation (says our author), and without this aid the maxims would never have been able to make us know it. The light comes to us then from the things themselves, or immediately from the infallible veracity of God.
evil is kinda a positive feedback loop, where good is negative feedback
Th. It is as if I said, medicine is based upon experience, reason then is of no use therein. Christian theology, which is the true medicine for souls, is based upon revelation which corresponds to experience ; but to make of it a perfect body, we must unite therewith natural theology, which is drawn from the axioms of eternal reason. Is not this principle indeed that veracity is an attribute of God, upon which you acknowledge that the certainty of revelation is based, a maxim taken from natural theology?^
Ph. Our author wishes to distinguish between the means of acquiring knowledge and of teaching it, or rather between teaching and communicating. After schools had been erected and professors established to teach the sciences that others had found out, these professors availed themselves of these max- ims in order to impress the sciences upon the minds of their scholars, and to convince them by means of the axioms of cer- tain particular truths ; while the particular truths have served the first discoverers in finding the truth without the general maxims.
Th. I wish that this pretended procedure had been justified for us by examples of some particular truths. But rightly considering things, we shall not find it practised in the estab- lishment of the sciences. And if the discoverer finds only a particular truth, he is only half a discoverer. If Pythagoras ^
1 Locke, without discussing its possibility or its method, assumes a special source of religion in an immediate revelation of God to the soul of man, and rests the truth of this revelation upon the " unerring veracity " of God. Cf. Philos. Wks., Vol. 2, p. 209, Bohn's ed. Leibnitz, who elsewhere discusses to a certain extent both the possibility and the method of revelation, and admits its possibility, and also its actuality, especially as regards those things which are beyond the limits of our finite experience, emphasizes the rational element in theology by calling attention to the fact that revelation presupposes a nat- ural idea of God, philosophically derived and including the attribute of verac- ity, to which it may appeal and by which its character and claims to authority must be judged. — Tr.
2 Cf. mite, p. 379, note 1. On his life and philosophy, cf. Zeller, Philos. d. Oriech., 6th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 296 sq. For his mathematical work, cf. G. J.
had only observed that the triangle whose sides an^ 3, 4, 5, has the property of the equality of t"he square on the hypothenuse with those on the sides (i.e. that 9 + IG = l',j), would he on that account have been the discoverer of this great truth which includes all right-angled triangles, and which has passed into a maxim with the geometers? It is true that often an exam- ple, seen by chance, serves as the occasion which suggests to a clever man the search for general truth, but it is still very often no easy matter to find it; besides, this path of discovery is not the best nor the most employed by those who proceed in an orderly and methodical way, and they make use of it only upon the occasions when better methods fall short. In the same way, some have thought that Archimedes found the quadrature of the parabola by weighing a piece of wood cut parabolically, and that this particular experiment caused him to discover the general truth ; but those who know the pene- tration of this great man see clearly that he had no need of such an aid. Moreover, if this empirical way of particular truths had been the occasion of all the discoveries, it would not have been sufficient to give them; and the discoverers themselves have been delighted with observing the maxims and the general truths if they have been able to attain them, otherwise their discoveries would have been very imperfect. All that may then be attributed to the schools and to the pro- fessors, is that they have collected and arranged the maxims and other general truths: and would God they had done so still more and with more care and choice, the sciences would not be found so scattered and so confused. For the rest I admit, that there is often some difference between the method we use in teaching the sciences and that which has produced their discovery : but this is not the point in question. Some- times, as I have already observed, chance has given occasion for discovery. If we had noticed these occasions, and had preserved the memory of them for posterity (which would have been very useful), this detail would have been a very con- siderable part of the history of the arts, but it would not liave
Allman, Oreeh Geometry from Thales to Euclid, Dublin, 1889, and, by the same author, Pythagorean Geometry, being the mathematical part of the article " Pythagoras " in the Encyclop. Brit., 9th ed., Vol. 20, pp. 146-149 CAmer. ed.) . — Tr.
been proper to make systems, of them. Sometimes also dis- coverers have proceeded rationally to the truth, but by ex- tended circuits. I find that in matters of importance authors would have rendered service to the public, if they had been willing sincerely to indicate in their writings the traces of their experiments ; but if the system of science should be built upon that foundation, it would be as if in a finished house you wished to preserve all the apparatus which ^ the architect re- quired in building it. Good methods of teaching are all such that by their means science could certainly have been discov- ered; and then if they are not empirical, i.e. if the truths are taught by reasons or by proofs drawn from ideas, it will always be by axioms, theorems, canons, and such other general propo- sitions. The case is different when the truths are apJiorisms like those of Hippocrates,^ i.e. truths of fact either general, or
1 Gerhardt reads " done," manifestly a manuscript or a typographical error. Erdmann, Jacques, and Janet read "dont," wMcli the translation follows. — Tr.
2 Hippocrates of Cos, 460-375 B.C., the " Father of iXIedicine," was. the first to base the practice of medicine on the observation of nature and the principles of an inductive philosophy. Though descended from a family of priest-physi- cians, he put aside all its traditions and prejudices, gave himself up to the study of the natural history of disease in the living subject, and treated it always as subject to natural laws. He placed especial emphasis on sympto- raology and dietetics. Tlie two chief modern critical editions of his writings, or those ascribed to him, are E. Littre, CEuvres completes d' Hippocrate, 10 vols., Paris, 1839-61, and F. Z. Ermerins, Hippocratis et aliorum medicorum veterum rellquice, 3 vols., Utrecht, 1859-64. The 'A-^opto-^oi — Aphorisms — are accepted as absolutely genuine by Littre, but rejected as spurious by Ermerins. The Greek text with French trans, is found in Littre', op. cit., Vol. 4, pp. 396 sq. ; with Latin trans., in Ermerins, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 397 sq. For an English translation, cf. F. Adams, Genuine Wks. of Hippocrates (Sydenham Soc.),2 vols., London, 1849, Vol. 2, p. 685.
in any case, when you have a politician like trump, the reason why people can identify with him is because he doesn’t lie. i hate the leopard eating face meme because it understands fascism from a liberal viewpoint and totally doesn’t get it. when all the parties appear as basically demonic, the appeal of the fascist is that they have a poetic truth on their side. elect a king; more taxes, less bread. fascists know they are evil, they want to be evil; they are not being duped, you’re being duped
In this connection I may add that Professor Schaarschmidt of Bonn Uni- versity has kindly informed me that the phrase o-iif^Trvoia wivTa cited by Leibnitz from Hippocrates, cf. ante, p. 48 (ad fin.) is to be found in the Hepi Tpo(fiii9, § 23, Littre', (Etivres d'Hip>pocratc,'Vo\. 9, p. 106, where it runs thus: Biippoia (lia, JiiMJTi'oiii nia, Juniraflea Trii'Ta- K.T.A. Profossor Schaarschmidt thinks that Leib- nitz probably read: fup.7ri'oia Trai'Ta, — conspirantia omnia, — omitting fita and ^vjxjtaeia, and took ^vfLTtvoia for an adjective, while it is in the text a substan- tive meaning concordance, — conspiratio, — a usage which sometimes occurs, (/. Stephanus, Thesau. Ling. Grsec, Vol. 3, p. 416, C; or that he quoted from memory, as he often does. Suhttvovs — conspirans — as an epithet of the universe occurs in Plutarch, De fato, 2, 574, E: t6 <(iv'(rei Siou(e:o-«oi rdvSe rhv Koa-fj-oy, au^Tvi^ovv, Koi av^iTTadri, avTov aijriZ ofra, i.e. "that the worM is governed by Nature, and that it conspires, consents, and is compatible with itself." Plutarch's Morals, Eng. trans., by several hands, corrected and revised by \f. W. Goodwin, Ph.D., Vol, 5, p. 308, Boston : Little, Brown & Co., 1870. — Tr,
at least true most frequently, learned by observation or based on experience, and for wliicli there are no reasons immedi- ately convincing. But the question here is not about this, for these truths are not known by the connection of ideas.
Ph. Here is the manner in which our ingenious author con- ceives that the need of maxims has been introduced. The schools having established disputation as the touchstone of the ability of people, they adjudged the victory to the one who holds the field of battle and speaks the last word. But in order to furnish means of convincing the obstinate, it was necessary to establish maxims.
Til. The schools of philosophy had done better, no doubt, to unite practice with theory, as do the schools of medicine, chemistry, and mathematics ; and to give the prize to the one who had done the best, especially in ethics, rather than to the one who had spoken the best. Yet as there are matters in which discourse itself is an effect and sometimes the sole effect and masterpiece which can make known the ability of a man, as in metaphysical matters, we have had reason on some occasions to judge of the ability of people by their suc- cess in the conferences. We know, indeed, that at the begin- ning of the Reformation the Protestants challenged their adversaries to come to colloquies and discussions, and some- times upon the success of these discussions the public con- cluded for the reform. We know, also, how much the art of speaking and of giving birth and force to reasons, and, if it may be so called, the art of discussion, can accomplish in a council of state and of war, a court of justice, a medical con- sultation, and even in a conversation. And we are obliged to recur to this means and to content ourselves with words instead of acts on those occasions, for this very reason that the question then concerns an event or future fact where it would be too late to learn the truth by the effect. Thus the art of discussion or of contending by reasons (whereby I here understand the quotation of authorities and examples) is very great and very important; but unfortunately it is very badly managed, and for this reason also often reaches no conclusion or a bad one. It is for this reason that I have more than once intended to remark upon the colloquies of theologians, accounts of whom we have, in order to show the defects which
sense so far as possible; and then it may be that the excep- tion itself has its sub-exceptions, i.e. its replications, and that the replication has its duplications, etc., but at tlie end of the reckoning, all these exceptions and sub-exceptions, clearly de- termined, and joined with the rule, must achieve universality. Of this jurisprudence furnishes very remarkable examples. But if these kinds of rules, loaded with exceptions and sub- exceptions, should enter into academic disputes, it would always be necessary to dispute pen in hand, holding as a pirotocol what is said by both sides. And this would be more necessary elsewhere, in disputing constantly pro forma by means of many syllogisms, mixed from time to time with dis- tinctions, which the best memory in the world must confound. But we are not kept from giving ourselves this trouble, from pushing sufficiently the formal syllogisms and from registering them, in order to discover the truth when it is without recom- pense, and we should not indeed succeed therein, if we wished, unless the distinctions are excluded or better regulated.
Ph. It is, however, true, as our author observes, that the scholastic method having been introduced also into conversa- tions outside the schools, in order to shut the mouths of iavillers, has produced a bad effect. For, provided we have nediate ideas, we may have the connection without the aid of ;he maxims and before they have been produced, and that vould be sufficient for sincere and tractable people. But the nethod of the schools having authorized and encouraged men n opposing and resisting evident truths until they are reduced to contradict themselves or to fight established principles, it is no wonder that in ordinary conversation they are not ashamed to do what in the schools is a subject of glory and counted a virtue. The author adds that reasonable people, among the rest of the world, who are not yet corrupted by education, will find it very difficult to believe that such a method has ever been followed by persons who make a pro- fession of loving truth, and who pass their lives in studying religion or nature. I shall not inquire here (says he) how this method of instructing is fitted to turn away the minds of young people from the love of and sincere search for the truth, or rather to make them doubt if there really is any truth in the world, or at least any which deserves their
adherence. But what I strongly think (he adds) is this, that excepting those places which have admitted the Peripatetic philosophy into their schools, where it has reigned many cen- turies without teaching the world anything but the art of dis- putation, these maxims are nowhere regarded as the foundations of the sciences nor as important aids to advancement in the knowledge of things.
Th. Your clever author will have it that the schools alone have been led to form maxims ; but it is the general and very rational instinct of the human race. You can infer this from the proverbs which are in use among all nations, and which are usually only maxims which the public acknowledge. But when persons of judgment make a statement which appears to us contrary to the truth, we must do them the justice to sus- pect that there is a greater defect in their expressions than in their sentiments : a procedure confirmed here in our author, of whose motive animating him against the maxims, I begin to catch a glimpse. Cavilling, as well as the desire to be con- vinced in order to yield, exists as really in ordinary discourse, where there is no question of exercise, as in the schools ; else- where most frequently they have the better grace to suppress the majors which are understood, and to be contented with enthymemes, and indeed without forming premises it is suffi- cient often to use the simple medius terminus or mediate idea, the mind understanding sufficiently its connection withoiit ex- pressing it.^ And this is satisfactory when this bond is incon- testable ; but you, sir, will also agree with me that often we go too fast in assumption, and that paralogisms arise so that it would very often be better to have regard for certainty, in expressing ourselves, than to prefer thereto brevity and elegance. But the prejudice of your author against maxims
' Ordinarily in argumentation we omit one ot the premises, usually the major, as easily understood and too clearly manifest to require statement. Sometimes, hut less commonly, we omit the minor premise, and occasionally the conclusion, as in epigrams and other forms of wit, the wliole point of which very often consists in making apparent the unexpressed truth. Leib- nitz emphasizes the sufficiency of the middle term — medius terminus — or mediate idea, because through it, the common term in the premises expressing the particular reason in the given case, the conclusion is reached, whence the middle term is sometimes called the argument. The mind having grasped the particular reason expressed in this term, can easily supply the rest of the argu- ment, and, if necessary, state it in due syllogistic form. — Tb. 2i
made him reject altogether their utility for the establishment of the truth, and goes as far as to make them accomplices with disorders in conversation. It is true that young people accustomed to academic exercises in which they are occupied a little too much with exercise and not enough in drawing from the exercise the greatest fruit it should have, viz. : knowledge, have some difficulty in emancipating themselves therefrom in the world. And one of their cavillings is not to wish to yield themselves to the truth save when it has beeu rendered entirely palpable to them, though sincerity and indeed civility should compel them not to wait for these ex- tremes, which make them disagreeable and give a bad opinion of them. It must also be admitted that it is a vice with which men of letters are often found infected. Biit the fault is not in wishing to reduce truths to maxims, but in wishing to do it unseasonably and needlessly, for the human mind sees much at a glance, and it is to restrain it that we wish to compel it to stop at every step it takes and to express all that it thinks. It is precisely as if when making his account with a merchant or host one should compel him to reckon the whole with the fingers in order to be more certain of it. And to make that demand he must be either stupid or capricious. In fact, sometimes we find that Petronius had reason for saying aclolescentes in scholis stuUissimos fieri,^ that young people sometimes become stupid and even harebrained in places, which ought to be schools of wisdom; corruptio optimi pessima.'^ But still oftener they become vain, blundering, and confused, whimsical, troublesome, and that often depends on the dis- position of their masters. Por the rest, I find that there are far greater faults in conversation than that of demanding too much clearness. For usually we fall into the opposite vice and neither give nor ask for enough of it. If the one is troublesome, the other is hurtful and dangerous.
walter benjamin said the thing about fascists aestheticizing politics, and communists politicizing art. how does this fit in?
1 Petronius, Satyricon, chap. 1: "Et ideo ego adolescentulos existimo in scholis stultissimos fieri, quia nihil ex iis, quaj in usu habemus, aut audiunt, aut vident," etc. — Tr.
2 The phrase is not found in any classical author. It was perhaps suggested by Aristotle, Politics, A, 2, 1289", 39: i.-iy*,, yip t^v ^ei- t^s ttpi-Itiis koI 96iotot.)! [TroAiTetds] TTapeKBaa-iv elirai xetpiVrrji', thus translated by Jowctt, The PoHHcs of Aristotle, A^ol. 1, p. 109, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1885 : " That which is the perversion of the first and most divine [government] is necessarily the worst." — Tr.
§ 12. Ph. The use of maxims is sometimes also, when attached to false notions, vague and uncertain ; for then the maxims serve to confirm us in our errors, and even to prove contradictions. For example, he who with Descartes^ forms an idea of what he calls body, as of a thing which is nothing but extension, may demonstrate easily by this maxim what is, is, that there is no vacuum, i.e. space without body. Por he knows his own idea, he knows that it is what it is and not another idea; thus extension, body, and space being with him three words signifying one and the same thing, it is also as true for him to say, that space is body, as to say that body is body. § 13. But another for whom body signifies a solid extension, will conclude in the same way that to say : that space is not a body is as certain as any proposition we can prove by this maxim: it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Th. The bad use of maxims should not cause their general use to be censured ; all truths are liable to this disadvantage, that, by uniting them with falsehoods, false or even contradic- tory conclusions may be drawn. And in this example there is but little need of these identical axioms to which is im- puted the cause of the error and contradiction. This would be seen if the argument of those who concluded from their definitions, that space is body, or that space is not body, were reduced to form. There is, indeed, something exces- sive in this inference : body is extended and solid, then exten- sion, i.e. the extended is not body, and extension is not a corporeal thing; for I have already remarked that there are superfluous expressions of ideas, or those which do not mul- tiply things, as if some one said, by triquetrum I mean a trilateral triangle, and concluded therefrom that every trilat- eral is not a triangle. Thus a Cartesian might say that the idea of a solid extension is of this same nature, i.e. that it is superfluous ; as in reality, taking extension as something sub- stantial, every extension will be solid, or rather every exten- sion will be corporeal. As for the vacuum, a Cartesian will be right in concluding from his idea or form of idea that there is none, supposing his idea to be valid ; but another will not be
1 Cf. Princip. Philos., II., §§ 1, 4, 11, Veitch's trans., pp. 2:j2, 23T, 8th ed., Edinburgh, 1881. — Tk.
right in concluding at once from his form that there may be a vacuum, as in reality, although I am not for the Cartesian view, I nevertheless think there is no vacuum,^ and I find that in this example a worse use is made of ideas than of maxims.
§ 15. Ph. It seems at least that from such use as you would make of maxims in verbal propositions they cannot give us the least knowledge of substances existing outside us.
Th. I am altogether of another opinion. For examjjle, this maxim that nature proceeds by the shortest paths, or at least by the most definite, suffices alone to give a reason for nearly the whole of optics, catoptric and dioptric, i.e. of what takes place outside us in the action of light, as I have formerly shown ^ and Molyneux has strongly approved in his Dioptric, which is a very excellent book.^
Ph.. It is maintained, however, that when use is made of identical principles to prove propositions in which there are words signifying complex ideas as man or virtue, their use is extremely dangerous, and invites men to regard or receive falsehood as manifest truth. And this is because men think that when the same terms are retained the propositions re- volve about the same things, although the ideas which these terms signify are different; so that men taking the words for the things, as they usually do, these maxinis commonly serve to prove contradictory propositions.
Th. How unjust to blame the poor maxims for that which should be imputed to the bad use of terms and to their equiv- ocations. By the same reasoning you will blame the syllo- gisms because they conclude badly when the terms are equiv- ocal. But the syllogism is innocent, because in reality there are then four terms contrary to the rules of the syllogism. By the same reasoning you would also blame the calculations of arithmeticians, or of algebraists, because by putting Xfor F or by taking a for b by inadvertence, they draw therefrom false and contradictory conclusions.
i guess the aestheticization of politics is like the attempt to make politics from being the pragmatic, ugly allocation of resources, into a beautiful poetic thing. instead of the bureaucrat, you have the fuhrer. i think that this is why we see that liberalism also tends towards fascism, and in nostalgic communism. in liberalism, there is the idealization of procedure, and principles. i’ve been watching the west wing recently, and it’s so perfect, i’m just obsessed with the season 2 character of ainsley hayes, the autistic republican lawyer who just has a strong sense of civic duty that the democratic president couldn’t help but personally invite into the white house counsel, teaching the staff about the importance of bipartisanship. this show is so good as a critical watch for understanding the tendency towards liberal fascism, in my opinion. and of course, i think that when communism loses the plot of historical materialism, it’s very quick for it to slide into magacommunism. communism is not about just owning liberals or having a superficial understanding of colonialism, imperialism, the west, etc… i don’t want to act like this is a very serious strand of the left, it’s not, but of course it is a thing
1 Cf. ante, p. 16, and Neto Essays, Bk. II,, chap, i, ante, pp. 125-127; also Descartes, Princip. Philos., 11., §§ 16 sq., Veitoh's trans., pp. 241 sq. — Tb.
2 Leibnitz probably refers to his article Unicuin opti.cm catoptricx et di- optrical principimn, luiblished in the "Acta Erud. Lips.," June, 1682, pp. 186- 190, and found in Dutens, 3, 145-150. — Tk.
^ Cf. ante, p. 138, note 1. Molyneux's Bioptrica nova was for a long time the chief worlt on Oiitics. — Tr.
§ 19. Ph. I should think at least tliat maxims are of little use ■when we have clear and distinct ideas ; and others will have it indeed that then they are absolutely of no use, and maintain that any one who in these instances cannot discern truth and falsehood without these kinds of maxims, will not be able to do so by their agency ; and our author (§§ 16, 17) shows indeed that they are of no use in deciding whether such a one is a man or not.
Th. If the truths are very simple and evident, and closely approaching the identicals and the definitions, there is but little need of expressly employing maxims to draw from them these truths, for the mind virtually employs them and makes its conclusion all at once without intermediate ideas. But without axioms and theorems already known, mathema- ticians would have much trouble in advancing; for in long processes of reasoning (consequences), it is well to stop from time to time, and to set up, as it were, military columns in the midst of the road, which will serve furthermore to indi- cate it to others. Otherwise these long roads will be too inconvenient, and will appear even confused and obscure, while we are unable to discern anything, or to point out what place we are in. It is like going to sea without a compass in a dark night, seeing neither bottom, shore, nor stars; it is like travelling in vast moors in which there are neither trees nor hills nor streams; it is like a linked chain destined for the measurement of lengths, in which there are some hundreds of links, perfectly alike, without a distinction of a bead, or of coarser grains or of larger links or other divisions which might indicate the feet, fathoms, perches, etc. The mind which loves unity in multiplicity then joins together some of the consequences to form fronar them mediate conclusions, and this is the use of maxims and theorems. By this means there is more pleasure, more light, more memory, more application and less repetition. If some analyst in calculating should choose not to assume these two geometrical maxims, that the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the two squares of the sides about the right angle, and that the corresponding sides of similar triangles are proportional, thinking that, because we have the demonstration of these two theorems by the con- nection of the ideas they contain, he can pass them by easily
by putting the ideas themselves in their place, he will find himself far removed from his reckoning. But that you may not think, sir, that the proper use of these maxims is confined to the limits of the mathematical sciences alone, you will find that its use is not less in jurisprudence, and one of the prin- cipal means of rendering it easier, and of looking at its vast ocean as upon a geographical map, is to reduce a multitude of particular decisions to more general principles. For exam- ple, you will find that a multitude of laws, of Digests, of actions or exceptions, of those which are called in factum,^ depend on this maxim, ne quis alterius damno fiat locupletior,^ let no one profit by the injury which might happen to an- other, a principle which should, however, be expressed with a little more precision. It is true that there is a great distinc- tion to be made between the rules of law. I speak of good ones, and not of certain brocards (brocardicaY introduced by the doctors which are vague and obscure ; although these rules also might often become good and useful, if reformed, while with their infinite distinctions {cum suis fallentiis) they serve only to confuse. Now good rules are either aphorisms or maxims, and under maxims I include both axioms and theo- rems. If these are cq:)liorisms which are formed by induction and observation, and not by reason a priori and which clever people have made after a review of established law, this text of the jurisconsult Paulus in the title of the Digests, which speaks of the rules of law, has place : non ex regida jus sumi,
1 Of. Digest., Lib. XLIV., Tit. VII., 25, Ulpianus, lib. singul. Regularum: "§ 1. — In factum actio dicitur, qualis est (exempli gratia) actio quae datur patrono adversus libertum, a quo contra ediotum prietoris in jus vocatus est." — Tr.
2 For a similar expression, cf. Digest., Lib. L., Tit. XVII., 206, Pomponius, lib. 9, ex variis Lectionibus : *' Jure naturre sequum est, neminem cnm alterius detrimento et injuria fieri locupletiorem " ; Digest., Lib. XII., Tit. VI., 14; also Lib. XXIII., Tit. III., (>, Pomponius, lib. 14 ad Sabiuum, § 2: ". . . quia bono et aequo uon conveniat, aut lucrari aliquem cum damno alterius, aut damnum seutire per alterius lucrum " ; Lib. XIV., Tit. III., 17, § 4, ad fin. — Tr.
3 Cf. Letter 11, to Kestner, Jan. 30, 1711, § 2 (Dutens, 4, Pt. III., 264, also Kortholt, Leihnit. epist. ad diversos, Lips. 1734-1742, 3, 251)': "Brocardica qna3 vocant, vel sunt ipsa solida juris principia, vel regulae, qusedam topica) : priora necessaria sunt : posteriores utiles forent, si satis exaniinatai, explica- taeque baberentur : pertinent enim fere ad facti quEestionem, artemque conji- ciendi, ad qnam refero etiam interpretandi artifloium." Cf. also Leibnitz's Nova methodvs diseendm docendisque jurisprudentiiB, Pt. II., § 25, Dutens, 4, Pt. III., 188-189. — Tr.
sed ex jure quod est regulam fieri,''- i.e. we draw rules froni a law already known, in order the better to remember them, but we do not establish the law upon these rules. But there are fundamental maxims constituting the law itself and forming actions, exceptions, replications, etc., which, when they are taught by pure reason, and do not arise from the arbitrary power of the state, constitute natural law; and such is the rule of which I have just spoken, which forbids tortious profit. There are also rules whose exceptions are rare, and which consequently pass as universal. Such is the rule of the Institutes of the Emperor Justinian in § 2 of the title Actions, which declares that when the question concerns corporeal things, the actor does not possess, except in a single case which the emperor states is indicated in the Digests; but he leaves us to search for it. It is true that some read instead of sane uno casu, sane nonuno;'^ and from one case you can sometimes make many. Among the physicians the late Mr. Earner,^ who, in giving us his Prodromus, made us hope for a new Sennertus,* or system of medicine accommodated
the politicization of art is something which is quite difficult, because it’s very easy for one’s attempt to politicize art to further its beauty. this is not what should occur. i understand art to basically be lavish expenditure of superabundant energy, whatever you get from bataille. so the politicization of art is the attempt to do politics with art, turning it from pure expenditure into useful praxis. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES can one understand the politicization of art as simply putting political ideas and messages into art. in my understanding, propoganda reproduces microfascism or something like that. instead, the politicization of art is really turning making art into a kind of doing of politics. so an example of what could be the politicization of art might be the film the substance. i feel like feminist films that are about how beauty is death often fail in that they convey their idea through the story. what i think is really powerful about body horror in this feminist context is that in order to actually see the film, you need to inside yourself destroy the part of you that forces you to look away from ugly hideous women. instead of just lecturing you, in order to engage with the film you need to take part in its political project
1 Cf. Digest., Lib. L., Tit. XVH., 1. Paulus [lib. 16 ad Plautium] : " Regula est, quae rem, quse est, breviter enarrat. Non ut ex regula jus sumatur, sed ex jure, quod est, regula fiat." Gerhardt's text omits tbe name Paulus, and Ms footnote states that there is a gap in the Ms. — Tr.
2 Of. Sandars, Inst, of Justinian, Lib. IV., Tit. VL, De actionibus, § 2, ad fin- (p. 431, 8th ed., London, 1888) : "Quod genus actionis in coutroversiis rerum eorporalium proditum non est, nam in Ms is agit qui non possidet ; ei vero qui possidet, non est actio prodita per quam neget rem actoris esse. Sane uno casu, qui possidet, nibilominus actoris partes obtinet, sieut in latioribus Digestorum libris opportunius apparebit." The reading "sane uno casu" is adopted and followed by the modern editors. The references to the Digests are, according to Sandars, Lib. VIII., 5, 2, Lib. XXXIX., 1, 15, ed. Mommsen, Berlin: Weidmann, 1870, pp. 267, 378. — Tk.
' Jacob Earner, 1641-1686, a German physician, was professor of chemistry at Padua, and of philosophy and medicine at Leipzig, and the author or com- piler of a large number of works which give a sufficiently faithful account of the medicine and especially the chemistry of his time, wholly occupied as it was in the chimerical search for the philosopher's stone. His Prodromus Sen- nerti novi, Augustae Vindelicorum, 1674, 4to, was published as the prospectus of a proposed, but never completed, work, which, like that of Sennert, should cover the history of medicine from the earliest times to his own day. — Te.
* Daniel Sennert, 1572-1637, a celebrated German physician, was professor of medicine in the University of Wittemberg from 1602-1637, and introduced into its curriculum the teaching of chemistry, in spite of strong and continued opposition from those who thought it useless. He disputed the doctrine of the soul held by the Schoolmen, and by maintaining the immateriality of the souls of animals raised against himself many adversaries, among whom was Honora-
to tlie new discoveries or views, advances the opinion tliat the method which physicians ordinarily observe in their systems of practice is to explain the art of healing by treating of one disease after another following the order of the parts of the body human or other, without having given universal precepts of practice common to many diseases and symptoms, and that this involves them in an infinite number of repetitions; so that we might suppress, in his view, three-quarters of Senner- tus, and abridge the science infinitely by universal propositions, and especially by those with which agrees the KadoXov Trpwrov of Aristotle,^ i.e. which are reciprocal, or approach thereto. I think there is reason in advising this method, especially as regards the precepts wherein medicine is ratiocinative ; but in proportion as it is empirical, it is not so easy nor so certain to form universal propositions. Further, there are usually complications in particular diseases, which form, as it were, an imitation of substances, so that a disease is like a plant or an animal, which demands a history by itself, i.e. they are modes or forms of being with which agrees what we have said of bodies or substantial things, a quartan ^ fever being as diffi- cult to examine thoroughly as gold or quicksilver. Thus it is well, without detriment to the u.niversal precepts, to seek in the
tus Fabri, who accused him of blasphemy and impiety, because he had not seen the bearing of his reasonings. Sennert protested that he had never main- tained the immortality of the souls of animals, but it was a strict consequence of his principle.
In his Tnstitutiones medicx et de oricjine animarum in hrutis, Witteraherg, 1611, 4to, Sennert endeavored to unite for the first time the principles of Galen (c/. ante, p. 407, note 1) with those of Paracelsus, 1493-1541. His Opera omnia, ed. novissima, Lugduni, 1676, 6 vols., fol. Sprengel says he was "the most celebrated of all the conciliators of the seventeenth century," "a man who united to immense erudition and to a perfect knowledge of the ancients great credulity, a taste little refined, and a weak judgment." — Tr.
1 Aristotle limited scientific consideration to tliat which is universally or for the most part valid. His Kae6Kov jrpiToi- is the universal in its original and proper sense, as the essential attribute of individual things in which alone it has any realization, and whose essence consists in just this realization of the universal in them. This universal is conceived of as the cause, and as such becomes the middle term in the syllogism, and constitutes the absolutely essen- tial element in logical demonstration, in the absence of which the reasoning has no validity. Cf. Wallace, Outlines of the Philos. of Aristotle, 3d ed., §§ 23, 32-34, pp. 47, 64 ; Zeller, Philos. d. Griech. II. 2 [Vol. 4] , 304 sq., 3d ed. ; Prantl, Oeseh. d. Lor/ik, 1, 104 sq., 119 sq. ; Windelband, A Hist, of Philos., trans, by J. H. Tufts, Ph.D., 133-143. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893. — Tk.
different kinds of diseases methods of healing, and remedies which satisfy" many symptoms and complications of causes, and especially to gather together those ■which experience has approved. This Sennertus has not suthcieutly done, for com- petent judges have remarked that the compositions of the receipts he proposes are often made more ex ingenio by estimate than authorized by experience, as would be neces- sary if one would be more certain of his case. I think then that the better course would be to unite these two ways, and not to complain of repetitions in a matter so delicate and so important as is medicine, wherein I find that we lack what we have in too large measure in my view in jurisprudence, i.e. books of particular cases, and repertories of observations already made. For I think that a thousandth part of the hooks of the jurisconsults would suffice us, but that we would have none too many in the matter of medicine, if we had thou- sands more of well-detailed observations. The fact is, juris- prudence is wholly based upon reasons in regard to which nothing is expressly indicated by laws or by customs. For we can always derive it either from law or, in default of this, from natural right by means of the reason. The laws of each country are finished and determined, or may become so ; while in medicine, the principles of experience, i.e. the ob- servations, cannot be too greatly multiplied in order to give more opportunity to the reason to decipher what nature only half allows us to know. For the rest, I do not know any one who employs the axioms in the way that the clever author of whom you speak does (§§ 16, 17), as if any one, in order to demonstrate to a child that a negro is a man, availed himself of the principle what is, is, by saying : a negro has a rational soul; now the rational soul and man is the same thing, and consequently if having a rational soul he were not a man, it would be false that what is, is, or rather one and the same thing would be or would not be at the same time. For with- out employing these maxims, which are not in season here, and do not enter directly into the reasoning, as they also do not advance it in any respect, everybody will be content to reason thus: a negro has a rational soul, whoever has a rational soul is a man, therefore the negro is a man. And if any one assuming that there is no rational soul if it does not
appear to us, coBcluded that infants just bom and imbeciles do not belong to the human species (as, in fact, the author states that he has conversed with very reasonable persons who made this denial), I do not think that the bad use of the maxim, that it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be, would delude them, nor that they think of it even in drawing this conclusion. The source of their error would be an exten- sion of the principle of our author, which denies that there is anything in the soul of which it is not conscious, while these gentlemen would proceed as far as to deny the soul itself, when others did not perceive it.
i think that’s more or less what i wanted to convey here, this is a start at least
Ph. I believe, indeed, that reasonable persons have not been disinclined to employ identical axioms in the way of which we have just spoken. § 2. It also seems that these purely identical maxims are only trifling iiropositions or nugato- rice, as the schools indeed call them. I should not be content to say that they seem thus, did not your surprising example of the demonstration of conversion by the agency of the identi- cals -^ make me proceed, bridle in hand, thenceforth, when contempt for anything is the question. But I shall tell you that what you allege in their favor proclaims them wholly trifling; viz. : (§ 3) you recognize at first sight that they con- tain no instruction unless to show a man sometimes the ab- surdity in which he is involved.
Th. Do you count that as nothing, sir, and do you not recog- nize that to reduce a proposition to absurdity is to demonstrate its contradictory? I indeed believe that you will instruct no man by telling him that he must not deny and affirm the same thing at the same time, but you instruct him by showing him by the force of the consequence, that he does this without thinking of it. It is difficult, in my opinion, always to pass
from these apagogical demonstrations, i.e. demonstrations which reduce to absurdity, and to prove everything by the ostensives,^ as they are called; and geometers, who are very curious on this point, have tried it sufficiently. Proclus speaks of it from time to time, when he sees that certain ancient geome- ters, coming after Euclid, have found a demonstration more direct (as they think) than his. But the silence of this an- cient commentator sui3(iciently shows that they did not always accomplish it.
§ 3. Ph. You will at least admit, sir, that a million proposi- tions may be formed at little expense, but also of very little use; for is it not trifling to remark, for example, that the oyster is the oyster, and that it is false to deny it, or to say that the oyster is not the oyster? As to which our author agreeably says that a man who would make this oyster some- times the subject, sometimes the attribute, or the predicatum, would justly be like a monkey who should amuse himself by throwing one oyster from one hand to the other, which pro- ceeding could altogether as well satisfy the hunger of the monkey as these propositions are capable of satisfying the understanding of man.
Th. I find that this author, as full of intelligence as gifted with judgment, has every reason in the world for speaking against those who would so use them. But you certainly see how the identicals must be employed to render them useful; viz. . by showing by force of consequences and definitions that other truths which you wish to establish reduce to them.
§ 4. Ph. I know it and I see clearly that thay may be applied with much stronger reason to propositions which appear trifling and on many occasions are so, wherein a part of the complex idea is affirmed of the object of this idea, as in the statement : lead is a metal. In the mind of a man who is acquainted with the meaning of these terms and who knows that lead signifies a very heavy fusible and malleable body, there is this use alone, that in saying metal, you indicate to him at once many simple ideas instead of enumerating them one by one. § 5. The same is true when part of the defini-
^ I.e. direct demonstrations, a term used as the opposite of the indirect or apagoffioal demonstrations, which show the truth of a thing by proving the absurdity of denying it. — Tb.
tion is affirmed of the thing defined; as in the statement: all gold is fusible, supi^osing you have defined gold as a yellow, heavy, fusible, and malleable body. Again, to say that the triangle has three sides, that man is an animal, that a palfrey (2>alefroy, an old French word) is an animal which neighs, serves to define the words, but not to teach anything besides the definition. But we learn something from the statement that man has a notion of God and that opium plunges him into sleep.
Th. Besides what I have said of the identicals which are wholly so, we shall find that these semi-identicals have also a particular use. For example, a toise man is always a man; that gives us the knowledge that he is not infallible, that he is mortal, etc. Some one in danger needs a pistol-ball, and lacks the lead to found it in the form he has ; a friend says to him : remember that the silvej- you have in your purse is fusible; this friend will not teach him a quality of the silver, but will make him think of a use he may make of it, in order to have pistol-balls in this pressing need. A large part of moral truths and of the most beautiful sentences of authors is of this nature : they very often teach us nothing, but they make us think at the right time of what we know. That iambic senarius of the Latin tragedy, —
which might be expressed thus, although less prettily: that which may hapjien to one, may happen to everybody, only makes us remember the human condition, quod nihil humani a nobis alienum initare debemus."^ This rule of the jurisconsults : qui jure suo utitur, nemini facit injuriam ^ (he who uses his
i forgot if i mentioned how i did not do any work this week, but i did no work this week. alas…
1 PuWilius Syrus, in Seneca, De Tranquillitate, chap. 11. — Tr.
^ Cf. Terence, Heauton. 1. 1. 23-25: " Homo sum; humani nihil a me alie- num puto." — Tr.
3 Scliaarschmidt states that this rule of the jurisconsults comes from the "Rerjulx et priecepta juris," which were customarily appended to the older editions of the Institntiones. Tlie exact phrase does not occur in the Corpus Juris Civilis ; hut cf. Digest, Lib. XXXIX., Tit. II., 24, ad fin-, where Trebatius says : " non teneri me damni infecti : neque enim existimari, operis mei vitio damnum tibi dari in ea re, in qua jure meo usus sum " ; ib. 26 : " Proeulus ait, cum quis jure quid in suo faceret," etc.; Digest, Lib. L., Tit. XVII., 55, where (iaius says: " Nullus videtur dolo facere, qui suo jure utitur " ; ih. 129, where Paulus says : " Nihil dolo creditor facit, qui suum recipit." — Tr.
own right, injures no one) appears trifling. But it is very useful on certain occasions and makes one justly think of what is necessary. If, for instance, any one raised his house as far as he is allowed by the statutes and usages, and by so doing deprived his neighbor of some view, he would pay this neighbor at once, according to this rule of law, if he ventured to complain. For the rest, propositions of fact, or experiences, like that which states that opium is a narcotic, carry us farther than the truths of pure reason, which can never make us go beyond that which is in our distinct ideas. ^ As for this propo- sition, that every man has a notion of God, it is from the reason, since notion signifies idea. For the idea of God, ac- cording to my view, is innate in all men : but if this notion signifies an idea in which you actually think it, it is a propo- sition of fact which depends on the history of the human race. § 7. Finally, to say that a triangle has three sides is not so identical as it seems, for a little attention is required to see that a polygon must have as many angles as sides; it would also have an additional side, if the polygon were not supposed to be closed.
§ 9. Ph. It seems that the general propositions concerning substances are for the most part trifling, if they are certain. He who knows the meanings of the words : substance, man, animal, form, soul, vegetative, sensitive, rational, will form from them many indubitable but useless propositions, partic- ularly about the soul, of which we often speak without know- ing what it really is. Every one may see an infinite number of propositions, reasonings, and conclusions of this nature in the books of metaphysics, scholastic theology, and a certain kind of physics, the reading of which will teach him nothing more of God, spirits, and bodies than he knew before having run through these books.
Th. It is true, that abstracts of metaphysics and such other books of this character as are commonly seen, teach only words. To say, for example, that metaphysics is the science of being in general, which explains the principles and affec- tions emanating from it; that the principles of being are
1 Truths of fact furnish occasion for inductive conclusions which enlarge our knowledge ; while truths of reason can only be exijlicated, or made clearer as to their already existing content. — Tr.
essence and existence; that the affections are either primi- tive, viz. : unity, truth, the good, or derivative, viz. : iden- tity, diversity, simplicity, complexity, etc., and, in speaking of each of these terms, to give only vague notions and verbal distinctions is indeed to abuse the name of science. But we must render this justice to the more profound Scholastics, like Suarez ^ (whom Grotius valued so highly) and admit that there is sometimes in them discussions of value, as upon the continuum, the infinite, the contingent, the reality of abstracts, the principles of individuation, the origo et vacuum formarum, the soul and its faculties, the concurrence of God with his creatures, etc., and even in ethics, upon the nature of the will and the principles of justice ; in a word, we must admit that there is still some gold in these scoriae, but it is only enlightened persons who can profit from it; and to load the youth with the rubbish of inutilities, because there is some- thing of value here and there, would be badly to dispose of the most precious of all things, time. For the rest, we are not wholly destitute of general propositions regarding sub- stances which are certain, and deserve to be known ; there are grand and beautiful truths concerning God and the soul which
1 Francisco Suarez, 1548-1617, a famous Jesuit and a distinguished philoso- pher, theologian, and philosophical jurist, was " the last great Scholastic." In philosophy he was a moderate Thomist. As a theologian, he advocated the system known as " cougruism." In his Tractatus de legibus ac Deo legislatore, reprinted, London, 1679, wherein he was to a certain extent the forerunner of Grotius and Pufendorf, he maintained tlie theory of conditional obedience to authority. For an account of his views on natural law and sovereignty, cf. Larousse, Grande Diet. Univ. de XIX' Steele, Vol. 14, pp. 1164c-1165a; for his "congruism," ibid., Vol. 4, p. 934 a. His Opera omnia, 23 vols., fol., ap- peared at Mainz and Lyons, 1630 sq., Venice, 1640, new revised ed., 26 vols., 8vo, Besangou and Paris, 1856-62. The most important of his works are, per- haps, the Disputationes metaphysieie, 1605, and the Tract, de leg., cited above. For an account of his philosophy, cf. Stiickl, Gesch. de Philos. d. Mittelalters, III. [Vol. 4] , 634 /»]., and K. Werner, Suarez u. d. Scholastik d. letzten Jahr- hunderte, Regeusburg, 1861.
Huig van Groot — Latin, Hugo Grotius — cf. ante, p. 285, note 1, one of the founders of the philosophy of law, in his theological writings occasionally cites Suarez as au authority ; cf., for example. Opera omnia iheologica, Amsterdam, 1679, Vol. 4, pp. 206, a, 50, 621, a, 64 ; and in his Kpistolm ad Gallos, epist. 154 ad Joa. Cordesium, p. 335, ed. Leipzig, 1674, and new ed. 1684, also Epistolm quotquot reperiri potuerunt, epist. 329, p. 118, Amsterdam, 1687, praises him thus: " Quorsum tantus Suarezii eontemtus? hominis, si quid recte judico, in philosophia cui hoc tempore connexa est scholastica, tantse subtilitatis, ut vix quemquam habeat parem? " — Tr.
however, i think that a friend wanted me to start doing my radio show again, and i think that’s a fun project, so i’m thinking about doing it next weekend! and then i thought that if i learn how to livestream on stream.place in order to do radio, then i might as well also look into doing programming livestream for xcvr! of course i imagine nobody would check in on me, but i feel like the potential of being watched and having a streaming schedule might encourage me to to work more on weeks where i feel like kinda shit. so! i’m thinking that i might mess around with livestreaming this week, and expect on my twitter i’ll post about when my radio show will be (probably on next saturday)
our clever author has taught either in his own right or in part after others. We have perhaps added something also thereto. And as for general knowledge concerning bodies, considerable additions are being made to what Aristotle left, and it should be said that physics, even general jihysics, has become much more real than it was heretofore. As for real metaphysics, we are beginning, as it were, to establish it, and we find important truths grounded in reason and coniirmed by experience, which belong to substances in general. I hope, also, that I have advanced a little the general knowledge of the soul and of spirits. Such a metaphysic was the demand of Aristotle, it is the science which he called ZrjTovfjLevrj, the desired (la desirie) or that which he sought, which must be as regards the other theoretic sciences what the science of happi- ness is to the arts which it needs, and what the architect is to the workmen. This is why Aristotle said that the other sciences depend upon metaphysics as the most general science and must derive from it their principles, demonstrated by it.-' You must know also that true ethics is to metaphysics what practice is to theory, because upon the doctrine of substances in common depends the knowledge of spirits and particularly of God and the soul which gives a proper meaning to justice and virtue. For as I have elsewhere ^ remarked, if there were neither providence nor a future life, the wise man would be more limited in the practice of virtue, for he would refer everything merely to his present satisfaction, and even this satisfaction, which appears already in Socrates, in the em- peror Marcus Aurelius, in Epictetus and other ancients,^
' Cf. Aristotle, Metaphys., A, 2, 982o-983», the object ol which is to prove the dependence of the other sciences upon metaphysics, and in which the term {ijTj;i. frequently occurs in this specific sense; cf. especially 982'', 7, 8: ef iniv-
Tiav ovv Tiiiv fiprifjL€v(jji' eTTL Tr)v avTrjV en-tor^J/xTji' n-t'iTTei to ^i^TOvfJievov ovofxa. For the
^ Leibnitz refers perhaps to what lie said in New Ussays, Bk. I., chap. 2, § 2, Th.- (2), anie, pp. 86-87; or in the Preface to his Codex juris rjentium diplomaticus, § 13 (Dutens, 4, Pt. III., 29B) : "Ut vero nniversali demonstra- tione conficiatur, omne honestum esse utile, et omne turpe damnosuni, assu- menda est immortalitas animse, et rector universi Dens," etc. — Tr.
^ Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121-180, the noblest of the Roman Emperors, whose Meditations or Thoughts exhibit the Stoic philosophy at its best on tlie moral and religious side, and present a morality nearer to that of the New Testament than that of any other pagan writer. Eds. of the Greek Text Ti eis aixoi/by J. M. Schultz, Leipzig, 1802, reprinted by Tauohnitz, 1821, and
would not be so -well grounded always without these beautiful and grand views which the order and harmony of the universe open for us even in a future without limits; otherwise the tranquillity of the soul would be only what is called a forced patience, so that we may say that natural theology, comprising two parts, theoretical and practical, contains altogether real metaphysics and the most perfect ethics.-'
§ 12. Ph. There is doubtless knowledge which is far re-
by J. Stich, Leipzig, 1882. Eng. trans., The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelhis Antoninus, by Geo. Long, revised ed. in Bobn's Class. Library ; also Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 18B4. On his life and pbilosophy, cf. Zeller, Philos. d. Griech., III., 1 [Vol. 5], 754-763, 3d ed., 1880; Capes, titoicism (in series of " Chief Anct. Philosophies," pub. by the Soc. for promoting Chris- tian Knowledge), chap. 13, pp. 200-239, London, 1880; F. W. Farrar, Seekers after God, pp. 2.57-317, London, Macmillan & Co., 1877.
Epictetus, the date of whose birth and death is unknown, lived in Rome under Nero, 54-68, and his successors, and, when Domitiau in 94 banished all philosophers from the Imperial City, went to Nicopolis in Epirus, and there taught till his death, which appears to have occurred in the reign of Trajan, 98-117, or shortly after. At first a slave, but afterwards a freedman, he repre- sented Stoicism in the cottage, while in Aurelius we see it on the throne. He left no writings, but his discourses, Aiarpi^aC, were carefully taken down as far as possible in his own words as he uttered them, by his pupil and admirer Arrian. The best ed. is that by Schweighauser, 6 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1799- 1800. Eng. trans., Tlie Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheiridion and Fragments, by Geo. Long, in Bohn's Class. Library; also byT. W. Higginson, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865. On his life and philosophy, cf. Zeller, Philos. d. Griech., III., 1 [Vol. 5] , 738-754, 3d ed., 1880 ; Capes, Stoicism, chap. 12, pp. 180-199; Farrar, Seekers after God, pp. 180-256, London, 1877. — Tr.
1 The old scholasticism made natural theology a part of metaphysics, which included besides natural theology, ontology, cosmology, and psychology. Cf. Thos. Aquinas, Summa Theol., Pt. I., Quest. 1, Art. 1, ad fin. : " Unde theo- logia, quEe ad saeram doctrinam pertinet, differt secundum genus ab ilia theo- logia quae pars philosophise ponitur." Leibnitz, in a writing without place or date, which Gerhardt {Leibniz, philos. Schrift., 4, 268, note *■*) thinks was undoubtedly addressed to the Duchess Sophie, says (G. op. cit., 4, 292, and Foucher de Careil, Nouvelles lettres et opuscules de Leibniz inddits, Paris, 1857, p. 25) : "En effect la metaphysique est la thfologie uaturelle, et le meme Dieu qui est la source de tous les biens, est aussi le principe de toutes les con- noissanees." Cf. also Biscours de metaphys., § 28, G. 4, 453.
rot politics now!
Leibnitz finds the source of ethical truths in natural theology, because God, the idea of whom is the subject of natural theology, is also the object of man's highest moral aspiration and effort, so far as lie seeks lovingly to comprehend him, a point of view from which Leibnitz sought to develop the ethical con- ceptions published under the title of Definitiones ethicm, G. 7, 73 sq., Erdmann, 670, trans. Duncan, Philos. Wks. of Leibnitz, 130, and which controls the thought-development in the Preface to the Codex juris gentium diplomaticus, cf. § 13, Dutens, 4, Pt. III., 296, in the Thdodicie, Preface, G. 6, 26-28, E.469, Jacques, 2, 3^, Janet, 2, 3-4, and in the Discours de metaphys., §§ 2-4, 35-37, G. 4, 427-430, 460-463. — Tr.
moved from being trifling or purely verbal. But this last seems to be that in which two abstracts are affirmed the one of the other; for example, that parsimony is frugality, that gratitude is justice; and however specious these and other propositions sometimes appear at first sight, yet when we press their force, we find that it all amounts to nothing else than the signification of the terms.
Th. But the significations of terms, i.e. definitions united with identical axioms, express the principles of all demonstra- tions: and as these definitions can make known at the same time the ideas and their possibility, it is plain that what depends on them is not always purely verbal. As for the example that gratitude is justice, or rather a part of justice, it is not to be despised, for it shows that what is called actio ingrati,^ or the complaint which can be made against the ungrateful, should be less neglected in the tribunals. The Eomans received this action against the Liberti,' or freedmen, and still to-day it should have place as regards the revocation of gifts. For the rest, I have already said elsewhere ^ that abstract ideas also may be attributed to one another, the genus to the species, as in the statements : duration is a continuity, virtue is a habit; but universal justice is not only a virtue, but it is indeed the complete ethical virtue.
§ 1. Ph. We have hitherto considered only the essences of things, and as our mind knows them only by abstraction, by detaching them from every particular existence, other than that which is in our understanding, they give us absolutely no knowledge of any real existence. And the universal prop-
2 Gerhardt, Erdmann, and Janet read "les libertes"; Jacques reads "les lib^re's." — Tr.
^Locke's title Is, "Of our knowledge of existence," Philos. Works, Vol. 2, p.228, Bohn'sed. — Tk. 2 K
ositions of which we may have a certain knowledge, do not relate to existence. Further, every time we attribute anything to an individual of a genus or a species by a proposition, which would not be certain if the same were attributed to the genus or species in general, the proposition belongs only to the exist- ence and makes known only an accidental union in the things existing in particular, as when we say, such a man is learned.
Th. Very well, and it is in this sense that the philosophers ■also, distinguishing so often between what is essence and what existence, refer to existence everything which is accidental or contingent. Very often we do not even know whether the uni- versal propositions, which we know only by experience, are not perhaps accidental also, because our experience is limited; as in the countries where water is not frozen, this proposition which will be formed about it, that water is always in a fluid state, is not essential, and we know it by coming into colder countries. But we may take the accidental in a more limited sense, so that there will be, as it were, a mean between it and the essential ; and this mean is the natural (le naturel), i.e. that which does not belong to the thing necessarily, but which, nevertheless, agrees with it of itself if nothing prevents. Thus, some one might maintain that it is not indeed essen- tial, but that it is at least natural, for water to remain fluid. We might maintain this, I say, but it is not, however, a demonstrated fact, and perhaps the inhabitants of the moon, if there are any, would have reason to believe the statement no less grounded that it is natural for water to be frozen. There are other cases, however, where the natural is less doubtful ; for example, a ray of light always continues straight in the same medium unless it accidentally meets some surface which reflects it. For the rest, Aristotle was accustomed to refer to matter the source of accidental things ; ^ but then we must understand thereby secondary matter, i.e. the heap or mass of bodies.
§ 2. Ph. I have already ^ remarked, following the excellent English author who wrote the Essay concerning Understand- ing, that we know our existence by intuition, that of Ood by
Of. MeiClphyS., E, 2, 1027°, 14: aia-re t; vK-q eo-Tttt aiTia rj ivSexofievri Trapa to m €jrl t6 ito\v a\Au>s roi) <ru/A^e^Tj<dTos. — Tr.
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demonstration, and that of other things by sensation. § 3. ■ Now this intuition which makes known our existence to our- selves, makes it known to us witli an evidence complete, incapable of being proved and having no need of proof; so that even when I attempt to doubt all things, this doubt itself does not allow me to doubt my own existence. In iine, we have on this point the highest degree of certainty that can be imagined.
Th. I am entirely agreed as to all this. And I add that the immediate apperception of our existence and of our thoughts furnishes us the first truths a posteriori, or of fact, i.e. theirs* experiences, as the identical propositions contain the first truths a priori, or of reason, i.e. the first lights Qes premieres lumih-es).^ Both are incapable of proof, and may be called immediate; the former, because they are immediate between the understanding and its object; the latter, because they are intermediate between the subject and the predicate.
§ 1. Ph. God having given to our soul the faculties with which it is adorned, has not left himself without a witness ; for the senses, perception, and the reason furnish us manifest proofs of his existence.
Th. God has not only given the soul faculties suitable for knowing him, but he has also impressed upon it characters which indicate him, although the soul needs faculties to per- ceive these characters. But I do not wish to repeat the discus- sions we have already had upon ideas and innate truths, among which I reckon the idea of God and the truth of his existence. Let us come rather to the fact.
Ph. Now, although the existence of God is the truth most easily proved by the reason, and its evidence equals, if I am not mistaken, that of mathematical demonstrations, it yet demands attention. It needs at once only reflection upon
1 Sohaarschmidt translates : "die ersten Erleuchtungen aus dem Innern," i.e. the first illuminations from within. — Te.
ourselves and our own indubitable existence. § 2. Thus I sup- pose that every one knows that something actually exists, and that thus there is a real being. If there is any one who can doubt his own existence, I declare that I do not speak to him. § 3. We know also by an intuitive knowledge that iare nothing can- not produce a real being. Whence it follows, with mathemat- ical evidence, that something has existed from all eternity, since everything which has a beginning must have been produced by something else. § 4. Now every being which draws its existence from another, draws also from it all it has, and all its faculties. The eternal source of all beings is then also the principle of all their powers, so that this eternal being must be also all-powerful. § 5. Further, man finds in himself knowledge. There is, then, an intelligent being. Now it is im- possible for a thing absolutely destitute of knowledge and per- ception to produce an intelligent being, and it is contrary to the idea of matter, deprived of thought, to produce it of itself. The source of things is then intelligent, and there has been an intelligent being from all eternity. § 6. An eternal, very power- ful, and very intelligent being is what we call Ood. If, how- ever, any one were found so unreasonable as to suppose that man is the only being having knowledge and wisdom, but that, nevertheless, he has been formed by pure chance, and that it is this same principle, blind and without knowledge, which carries on all the rest of the universe, I shall advise him to examine at his leisure the wholly solid and emphatic censure of Cicero ("De Legibus," lib. 2). Certainly, he says, no one could be so foolishly arrogant as to think that he has within himself an understanding and reason, and yet that there is no intelligence governing the heavens and all this vast universe.* From what I have just said it clearly follows that we have a more certain knowledge of God than of anything else outside us. Th. I assure you, sir, with perfect sincerity, that I am ex- tremely sorry to be obliged to say something against this demonstration ; but I do it solely in order to give you an op- portunity to fill up the void. It is principally in the part
1 Cicero, De Leg., Bk. 11., chap. 7 : " Quid est enim verius, quam nerainem esse oportere tain stulte arrogautem, ut in se rationem et mentem piitet inesse, in coelo mundoque non pntet? Avit ut ea quae vix summa ingeuii ratioue com- prehendat, nulla ratione moveri putet? " — Tr.
where you conelnde (§ 3) that something has existed from all eternity. I find therein some ambiguity, if tliat means that there never Jias been any time in which nothing existed. I admit it, and it follows truly from the preceding propositions by an inference wholly mathematical. For if there had always been nothing, there would always have been nothing, nothing being unable to produce a being ; then we ourselves should not be, which is contrary to the first truth of experience. But the consequence appears at once, that by the statement that some- thing has existed from all eternity, you mean an eternal thing. But it does not at all follow in virtue of what you have hitherto advanced, that if there has always been some- thing, there has always been a certain thing, i.e. an eternal being. For certain opponents will say that I have been pro- duced by other things, and these things by others. Further, if some admit eternal beings (as the Epicureans their atoms) they will not think themselves compelled for that reason to admit an eternal being who is the only source of all the others. For if they should admit that this which gives exist- ence, gives also the other qualities and powers of the thing, they will deny that a single thing gives existence to the others, and they will say also that in each thing many others must concur. Thus we shall not reach by this alone a source of all the powers. Yet it is very reasonable to judge that there is one, and also that the universe is governed with wis- dom. But when we believe matter susceptible of thought, we may be disposed to believe that it is not impossible that it may produce something. At least it will be difficult to bring forward a proof which does not show at the same time that it is wholly incapable of it; and, assuming that our thought comes from a thinking being, may we take it as admitted, without prejudice to the demonstration, that this must be God?
§ 7. Ph. I do not doubt that the excellent man from whom I have borrowed this demonstration is capable of perfecting it; and I shall try to influence him to do so, since he could scarcely render a greater service to the public. You also de- sire it. This makes me think that you do not consider it necessary, in order to shut the mouths of atheists, to make everything revolve upon the existence of the idea of God in
us, as some do, who attach themselves too strongly to this favorite discovery even to rejecting all other demonstrations of the existence of God,* or at least attempting to weaken them and forbidding to employ them as if they were weak or false ; although at bottom they are proofs which show us so clearly and in a manner so convincing the existence of this sovereign being by the consideration of our own existence, and of the sensible parts of the universe, that I think no wise man ought to resist them.
Th. Although I am for innate ideas, and in particular for that of God, I do not think that the demonstrations of the Cartesians drawn from the idea of God are perfect. I have shown fully elsewhere ^ (in the "Actes de Leipsic," and in the "Memoires de Trevoux") that what Descartes has bor- rowed from Anselm, * Archbishop of Canterbury, is very beau-
1 Descartes relied mainly, and Spinoza exclusively, on the ontological or a priori argument for the proof of God's existence. Spinoza's system, in fact, did not admit the possibility of any other argument, since God is the only sub- stance and all other things are merely modes, accidents, or expressions of that substance. Of. Descartes, Meditations, III. and V., Veitoh's trans., pp. 115 ,15., 143 sq., Princip. Philos., Ft. I., §§ 13 sq., Veitch, pp. 198 sq., Discours de la Methode, Pt. IV., Veitch, pp. 34 sq. ; Spinoza, Ethica, Pt. I., ed. Van Vloten and Land, Vol. 1, pp. 39 sq., trans. Elwes, Vol. 2, pp. 45 sq.; letter to De Vries, V. V. & L., 2, 34, trans. E. 2, 315. Also on Descartes, Windelband, Hist, of Philos., trans, by Tufts, 392-3, 405 ; on Spinoza, ibid., 401, 407-10. Leibnitz, while seek- ing to correct and complete the ontological argument, makes the teleological form of the a posteriori argument, in his doctrine of monads and their pre- established harmony, one of the constituent principles of his system. Pf. Con- fessio naturm contra atheistas, 1668, Gerhardt, 4, 105-109, Erdmann, 45-47, Dutens, 1, 5-8; Principes de la nature et de la grace, §§ 11 sq., 6. 6, 603, E. 716, trans. Duncan, 214, Monadologie, §§ .38 sq., G. 6, 613, E. 708, trans. D., 223. Leibnitz's doctrine of monads demands the existence of God as its necessary ground and complement. Cf. ante, p. .363, note 1. He regarded all the argu- ments for God's existence as valuable and urged men to perfect them. Cf. infra, p. 505, note 2. On his doctrine, cf. Windelband, op. cit., 420^25. — Tr.
2 Leibnitz means the Med. de Cog., Ver. et Id., published in the ''Acta Erud. Lips.," Nov., 1684, and found in Gerhardt, 4, 422, Erdmann, 79, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 14, Janet, 2, 514 (in French), trans. Duncan, 27 ; and the De la demon- stration Cartesienne, etc., published in the " Me'moires de Tre'voux," 1701, G. 4, 405, E. 177, Dutens, 2, Pt. I., 254, Janet, 2, 568, trans. Duncan, 1,36.— Tr.
8 Anselm, 1033-1109, archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 till his death, and the real founder of the Christian Scholasticism of the Middle Age, was a dis- tinguished philosopher and theologian, whose fame rests chiefly upon his onto- logical or a priori argument for the existence of God, and his theory of the incarnation and atonement. His Opera are found in Migne, Patrol. Ctir, Compl., Vol. 155. The most important for philosophy are the Cur Deus Homo ?, the Monologium, and the Proslogiam. The two latter, with Gaunilo's
tiful and really very ingenious, but that tliere is still a gap therein to be filled. This celebrated archbishop, who was ■without doubt one of the most able men of his time, congratu- lates himself, not without reason, for having discovered a means of proving the existence of God a priori, by means of its own notion, without recurring to its effects. And this is very nearly the force of his argument : God is the greatest, or (as Descartes says) the most perfect of beings, or rather a being of supreme grandeur and perfection, including all de- grees thereof. That is the notion of God. See now how existence follows from this notion. To exist is something more than not to exist, or rather, existence adds a degree to grandeur and perfection, and as Descartes states it, existence is itself a perfection. Therefore this degree of grandeur and perfection, or rather this perfection which consists in exist- ence, is in this supreme all-great, all-perfect being : for otherwise some degree would be wanting to it, contrary to its definition. Consequently this supreme being exists. The Scholastics, not excepting even their Doctor Angelicus,' have misunder-
refutation of the Proslogium, entitled Liher pro insipiente, and Anselra's reply, Liber apologeticus, were edited by C. Haas, Tiibingen, 1863. There is a French trans., with notes, of the Mi>noloqiuin and Proslogium by Bouchitte', Le Rationalisme Chretien, Paris, 1842; and an English trans, of the Pros- logium and Lib. apologet. in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Vol. 8 [1851], pp. 529 sq., 704 sq., and of the Cur Deus Homo ?, ibid., Vol. 11 [1854] , pp. 729 sq., 12 [1855], 52 s}. His ontological argument is found in the Proslogium and the Liber apologeticus. An excellent account of it is given in Ueberweg-Heinze, Gesch. d. Philos., 7th ed., Berlin, 1888, Vol. 2, p. 152 sq., Eng. trans, from 4th German ed., New York, 1871, Vol. 1, pp. 38:3-86. Cf. also Windelband, Hist, of Philos., trans, by Tufts, pp. 291-294; Miilford, The Republic of God, pp. 4, 6, 4th ed., Boston, 1882. For further account of Anselm's life and philosophy, cf.Yla.sse, Anselm von Canterbury, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1843, 1852 (ontolog. argt. in Vol. 2, pp. 233-286) ; Stockl, Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters, 1,151-20S; Haure'au, Histoire de la Philos. Scholastique, Paris, 1872-80, 1, 265-87.
For expositions and criticisms of the ontological argument, cf. Kant, Krit. d. r. Vernunft., ed. Rosenkranz and Schubert, 2, 462-470, ed. Harteiistein, 1838, 2, 45B-4(k, 1867, 3, 405-411, ed. Kirchraan, Leipzig, 1877, 1, 476-483, trans. Miiller, 1 vol. ed., 509-518; E. Caird, TJie Philos. of Kant, (ihisgow, 1877, 630, 642, The Crit. Philos. of Kant, New York, 1889, 2, 110, 120; Hegel, Vorlesungen ii. d. Beweise vom Dasein Gottes, in his Philos. d. Relig., Auhang, 2, 357 .sq., 2d ed., Berlin, 1840 ; Dorner, C7iri.s(. Glnubenslehre, 1, 201 sq., Eng. trans., 1, 214 sq. ; Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Relig., 2, 271 sq., 2d ed., Berlin, 1884, Eng. trans., 3, 271 sq. — TR.
'■ Le. Thomas Aquinas, 1225 or 1227-1274. For his critique of the ontologi- cal argument, cf. Sumiyia theolnrjiie. Ft. I., Quest. 2, Article 1 ; Contra gen- i*!,Bk. L, chap. 11; and Stocld, Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mi I tp la Iters, H., 1 [Vol.
stood this argument, and have taken it as a paralogism; in which respect they were altogether wrong, and Descartes, who studied qiiite a long time the scholastic philosophy at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, had great reason for re-establish- ing it. It is not a paralogism, but it is an imperfect ^ demon- stration, which assumes something tliat must still be proved in order to render it matlrematically evident; that is, it is tacitly assumed that this idea of the all-great or all-perfect being is possible, and implies no contradiction. And it is already something that by this remark it is proved that, assuming that God is possible, he exists, which is the privilege of divinity alone. We have the right to ]ires"ume the possi- bility of every being, and especially that of God, until some one proves the contrary. So that this metaphysical argument already gives a morally demonstrative conclusion, which de- clares that according to the present state of our knowledge we must judge that God exists, and act in conformity thereto. But it is to be desired, nevertheless, that clever men achieve the demonstration with the strictness of a mathematical proof, and I think I have elsewhere ^ said something that may serve this end. The other argument of Descartes, which under- takes to prove the existence of God because the idea of him is in our soul, and must have come from the original, is still less conclusive. Por in the first place this argument has this de- fect, in common with the preceding, that it assumes that there is in us such an idea, i.e. that God is possible. Por what Descartes alleges, that in speaking of God we know what we