It only remains briefly to apply these conceptions to some specific questions of moral actions. Locke asks whether there are practical innate ideas, and denies them, as he denies theoretical. Leibniz, in replying, recognizes two kinds of "innate" practical principles, one of which is to be referred to the class of instincts, the other to that of maxims. Primarily, and probably wholly in almost all men, moral truths take the rank of instincts alone. All men aim at the Good; it is impossible to think of man wilfully seeking his own evil. The methods, the means of reaching this Good, are implanted in men as instincts. These instincts, when brought to the light of reason and examined, become _maxims_ of action; they lose their particular and impulsive character, and become universal and deliberate principles. Thus Leibniz is enabled to answer the various objections which are always brought against any "intuitive" theory of moral actions,--the variability of men's moral beliefs and conduct in different countries and at different times. Common instincts, but at first instincts only, are present in all men whenever and wherever they live. These instincts may readily be "resisted by men's passions, obscured by prejudice, and changed by custom." The moral instincts are always the basis of moral action, but "custom, tradition, education" become mixed with them. Even when so confounded, however, the instinct will generally prevail, and custom is, upon the whole, on the side of right rather than wrong, so that Leibniz thinks there is a sense in which all men have one common morality. But these moral instincts, even when pure, are not ethical science. This is innate, Leibniz says, only in the sense in which arithmetic is innate,--it depends upon demonstrations which reason furnishes. Leibniz does not, then, oppose intuitive and demonstrative, as sometimes happens. Morality is _practically_ intuitive in the sense that all men tend to aim at the Good, and have an instinctive feeling of what makes towards the Good. It is _theoretically_ demonstrative, since it does not become a science until Reason has an insight into the nature of the Good, and ascertains the fixed laws which are tributary to it. Moral principles are _not_ intuitive in the sense that they are immediately discovered as separate principles by some one power of the soul called "conscience." Moral laws are intuitive, he says, "as the _consequences_ of our own development and our true well-being." Here we may well leave the matter. What is to be said in detail of Leibniz's ethics will find its congenial home in what we have to say of his theology. CHAPTER VII. MATTER AND ITS RELATION TO SPIRIT.