How little optimism and ethics have to expect from a real nature-philosophy is shown not only in Spinoza, but also in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)._(_42_)_ In his _Theodicée_ (1710) he tries to be fair to the optimistic world-view. He is helped in this by the fact that his nature-philosophy is much more living and adaptable than Spinoza’s. He is also determined to employ every possible device to attach an optimistic meaning to reality. He nevertheless gets no further than a laborious establishment of the conclusion that the actually existing world is the best of all possible ones. Moreover, so much of optimism as he rescues is useless for his world-view because it contains no energies which can be directed to ethical action upon the world. When he is consistent with himself he remains, like Spinoza, a prisoner within nature-philosophy. All the difficulties for ethics which Spinoza’s deterministic nature-philosophy contains within itself, are to be found also in his. Owing to the fact that he does not put the union of thought (spirit) and extension (matter) far away in the Absolute, but allows it to be realized in countless tiny individualities [pg 123] which in their totality constitute the universe—he calls them monads—his nature-philosophy corresponds to the multiform character of reality much better than Spinoza’s does. He anticipates to a considerable extent the modern nature-philosophy which is based on the cell-theory of matter. Yet he, too, remains under the spell of the way the problem is put by Descartes. He does not allow the individualities in which thought and extension are united, to enter into living relations with each other, but limits their existence to being merely forces with powers of conception. Their being consists in being conscious of the universe, more clearly some, more confusedly others, but each independent of the rest. In Spinoza there is a possibility of reaching an ethic, inasmuch as an attempt can be made to give an ethical interpretation to the mystical relation between man and the Absolute. Leibniz bars this path against himself in that he does not recognize such an abstract Absolute as the content of the universe. It is, therefore, not the result of chance that he nowhere philosophizes searchingly about ethics. In no way can an ethic be deduced from his nature-philosophy. Instead of admitting to himself this result and unfolding the problem of the relation between ethics and nature-philosophy, he weaves into his philosophy traditional dicta about ethics, and defines the Good as love to God and man. In nature-philosophy Leibniz is greater than Spinoza, because he deals with living reality more thoroughly than the latter does. In the struggle for a correct world-view, however, he is far behind him, because Spinoza, a man with a simpler mental endowment than his, recognizes the reconciliation of ethics and nature-philosophy as the central problem of world-view, and proceeds to deal with it.