Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical ExpositionDewey, John
Philosophy
Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition
Dewey, John
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
Harmony, in short, means relation, means connection, means
subordination and co-ordination, means adjustment, means a variety,
which yet is one. The Leibnizian doctrine is not a factitious product
of his imagination, nor is it a mechanical scheme for reconciling a
problem which has no existence outside of the bewildered brains of
philosophers. It is an expression of the fact that the universe is
one of order, of continuity, of unity; it is the accentuating of this
doctrine so that the very essence of reality is found in this ordered
combination; it is the special application of this principle to the
solution of many of the problems which "the mind of man is apt to
run into,"--the questions of the relation of the individual and the
universal, of freedom and necessity, of the physical and material,
of the teleological and mechanical. We may not be contented with the
doctrine as he presents it, we may think it to be rather a summary
and highly concentrated statement of the problem than its solution,
or we may object to details in the carrying out of the doctrine. But
we cannot deny that it is a genuine attempt to meet a genuine problem,
and that it contains some, if not all, of the factors required for
its adequate solution. To Leibniz must remain the glory of being the
thinker to seize upon the perfect unity and order of the universe as
its essential characteristic, and of arranging his thoughts with a view
to discovering and expressing it.
We have but to notice one point more, and our task is done so far as
it serves to make plain the standpoint from which Leibniz criticised
Locke. There is, we have seen, the greatest possible continuity and
complexity in the realm of monads. There is no break, quantitative nor
qualitative. It follows that the human soul has no gulf set between it
and what we call nature. It is only the highest, that is to say the
most active and the most representative, of all monads. It stands,
indeed, at the head of the scale, but not outside it. From the monad
which reveals its presence in that stone which with blinded eyes we
call dead, through that which acts in the plant, in the animal, up
to that of man, there is no chasm, no interruption. Nay, man himself
is but one link in the chain of spiritual beings which ends only in
God. All monads are souls; the soul of man is a monad which represents
the universe more distinctly and adequately. The law which is enfolded
in the lower monads is developed in it and forms a part of its
conscious activity. The universe, which is confusedly mirrored by the
perception of the lower monad, is clearly brought out in the conscious
apperception of man. The stone is representative of the whole world. An
all-knowing intelligence might read in it relations to every other
fact the world, might see exemplified the past history of the world,
and prefigured the events to come. For the stone is not an isolated
existence, it is an inter-organic member of a system. Change the
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