] Substance and
Causality
: Spinoza.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
This forced him to the artificial hypotheses of the vortex theory, by which he aimed to give a physical ground for the Copernican view of the world (popular exposition by Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondesi 1686).
The grounds on which this doctrine was displaced by the Newtonian theory of gravitation are no longer philosophical, but purely physical in their nature.
Chap. 2, $ 31. ] Substance and Causality : Galileo, Descartes. 411
itself, and explains all others. And the question as to the nature of this fundamental relation was answered by the principle of math ematical equality, which, in turn, passed over into that of metaphysi cal identity. So much motion in the cause, so much in the effect also. Descartes formulated this as the law of the conservation of motion in Nature. The sum of motion in Nature remains always the same : what a body loses in motion it gives to another. As regards the amount of motion, there is in Nature nothing new, especially no impulse from the spiritual world. ' Even for the king dom of organisms this principle was carried through, at least as a postulate, though as yet with very weak grounds. Animals, also, are machines whose motions are evoked and determined by the mechanism of the nervous system. Descartes thought of this mechanism more precisely (and with him Hobbes and Spinoza) as a motion of finest (gaseous) substances, the so-called spirit us ani- males,* and sought the point of transition from the sensory to the motor nervous system in man, in a part of the brain which has no correlative, i. e. is a single and not a j>aired organ, the pineal gland or eonarium.
The other part of the task proved much more difficult : namely, that of understanding the mental life without any relation to the corporeal world. Easy and clear to perception as was the action of one body upon another, it did not yield a mode of representing an incorporeal connection between different minds, that could be used scientifically. Spinoza, for example, expressed the general meta physical postulate very energetically, when he promised in entering upon the third book of the Ethics, that he would treat the actions and desires of man as if lines, surfaces, and bodies were the subject of discussion ; for the important thing is neither to asperse them nor to deride them, but to understand them. But the solution of this problem was limited in advance to investigating the causal connec tion between the activities of consciousness in the individual mind : dualism demanded a psychology free from all physiological constitu ents. It is all the more characteristic of the predominance of the spirit of natural science in the seventeenth century, that it attained this psychology demanded by the theory, only in the most limited degree. And even the beginnings toward this are ruled by the endeavour to apply the methodical principle of mechanics, which
1 Henoe Hobbes excluded from physics the Aristotelian and ThomUtic concep tion of the unmoved mover, while Descartes, who in this point also proceeded mure metaphysically, made motion to have been communicated to matter at the beginning by God.
* An inheritance from the physiological psychology of the (ireeks, in particu lar from that of the l'eripatetics.
412 Tlie Renaissance: Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
was celebrating its triumphs in the theory of outer experience, to the comprehension of the inner world also.
For just as the investigation of Nature from Galileo to Newton directed its energies toward finding out the simple fundamental form of corporeal motion, to which all complex structures of outer experience could be reduced, so Descartes desired to establish the fundamental forms of psychical motion, out of which the multiplic ity of inner experiences would become explicable. In the theoreti cal domain this seemed attained by establishing the immediately evident truths (the innate ideas) ; in the practical field there grew out of this demand the new problem of a statics and a mechanics of the movements of feeling (Gemuthsbewegungen) . In this spirit Des cartes and Spinoza produced their natural history of the emotions (Affecte) and passions,1 the latter author by combining the thoughts of the former with those of Hobbes. Thus Descartes derives the whole host of particular passions, as species and sub-species, from the six fundamental forms of wonder (admiratio), love, and hate, desire {disir), pleasure and pain [or joy and sadness, Lust und
Unlust~\ (lostitia — tristitia) ; thus Spinoza develops his system of the emotions out of desire, pleasure, and pain (appetitus, Icetitia,
by pointing out the ideational processes in connection with which these emotions have become transferred from their original object, the self-preservation of the individual, to other " ideas. "
A peculiar side-attitude is taken in this regard by the two English thinkers. For Bacon and Hobbes, a mechanical conception of the mental is the more natural in proportion as they endeavour to draw the mental more closely into the circle of the physical. Both, that regard the empirical psychical life, and therefore, also, the sphere of consciousness which in Descartes' system was to have nothing to do with the corporeal world, as something which essen tially belongs thereto on the other hand, there set over against the whole world of perception rather something spiritual [spirit ual in the religious sense, Geistliches'] than something mental or intellectual [Geistiges]. Ideas and volitions as they are known by experience are held to be at bottom activities of the body also, and
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology. But according to this view the natural science theory cannot be characterised much otherwise than as an
Descartes, Lts Passions de VAme Spinoza, Eth. III. , and Tract. Brev. II. fl. Cl. below, No.
tristitia)
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Chat. 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Descartes, Hobbet. 413
anthropological materialism; for it aims to understand the entire series of empirical psychical activities as a mechanical process con nected with the bodily functions. This problem was propounded by Bacon ; Hobbes attempted to solve and in doing so became the father of the so-called associational psychology. With the same
sensualism as Campanella, of whose deductions his own frequently remind us, — especially with regard to the mechanism of ideas, — he seeks to show that sense-impressions give the only ele ments of consciousness, and that by their combination and trans formation memory and thought also come about. In the practical domain the impulse toward self-preservation and the feelings of pleasure and pain which arise in connection with impressions are then characterised analogously as the elements out of which all other feelings and activities of will arise. Hobbes, too, projected thus "natural history" of the emotions and passions, and this was not without influence upon that of Spinoza, whose theory of the emotions always looking towards the other attribute [i. e.
extension].
From these presuppositions of method the denial of the freedom
of the will in the sense of indeterminism followed with inexorable consistency for Hobbes and for Spinoza. Both attempted — and Spinoza did in the baldest form that can be conceived — to exhibit the strict necessity which prevails even in the course of the process of motivation they are types of determinism. For Spinoza, there for? , there no freedom in the psychological sense. Freedom can mean only, on the one hand, metaphysically, the absolute Being of the deity determined by nothing but itself, and, on the other hand, ethically, the ideal of the overcoming of the passions through reason.
In this became already evident that in the presence of the facts of psychology, that absolute separation between the corporeal and the mental world which metaphysics demanded was not to be maintained. But Descartes himself met quite the same experience. The nature of the mind itself might, indeed, explain the clear and distinct ideas and the forms of the rational will which resulted from these, but could not explain the obscure and confused ideas,
and the emotions and passions connected with them. These present themselves rather as a disturbance of the mind1 (perturbationes animi), and since this perturbation which gives occasion for the
This the interest, not only ethical, but also theoretical, which induced Des cartes to treat atates psychologically so different aa emotions and passions, from the same point of Tiew and in one line. Cf. for the following Pmston$ it Am*, L. and Med*. V. and VI.
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414 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
abuse of freedom (cf. above, § 30, 5) cannot be due to God, its origin must be sought ultimately in an influence exercised by tin body. In the disturbances of the feeling there is, therefore, for Descartes an indubitable fact, which cannot be explained from the fundamental metaphysical principles of his system. Here, there fore, the philosopher sees himself forced to recognise an exceptwmi relation, and he adjusts this for himself in a way that had been foreshadowed by the anthropology of the Victorines (cf. § 24, 2) The nature (natura) of man, he teaches, consists in the inner union of two heterogeneous substances, a mind and a body, and this marvel lous (i. e. metaphysically incomprehensible) union has been *o arranged by God's will that in this single case the conscious and the spatial substances act upon each other. Animals remain, for Descartes, bodies ; their " sensations " are only nervous movements, out of which stimulations of the motor system arise in accordance with the reflex mechanism. In the human body, however, the mental substance is present at the same time, and in consequence of this co-existence the storm of the animal spirits in the pineal gland excites a disturbance in the mental substance also, which manifests itself in the latter as an unclear and indistinct idea, •>. as sense-perception, as emotion, or as passion. 1
With the disciples, the systematic impulse was greater than with the master. They found in this influxus physicus between mind and body the vulnerable point in the Cartesian philosophy, and ex erted themselves to set aside the exception which the philosopher had been obliged to assert in the anthropological facts. This, how ever, did not go on without effecting a new, and in a certain sense regressive, alteration in the conception of causality, in that the metaphysical moment once more gained preponderance over the me chanical. The immanent causal processes of the spatial and of the conscious worlds were regarded as intelligible in themselves ; but the transcendent causal process from one of these worlds into the other formed a problem. No difficulty was found in the idea that one motion transformed itself into another or that one function of
1 On this Descartes then builds his Ethics. In such perturbations the mind occupies a passive attitude, and it is its task to free itself from these in clear and distinct knowledge. Spinoza carried out this intellectualistic morals in an extremely grand and impressive manner (Elk. IV. and V. ). The antithesis of an active and passive attitude of the finite mind is indeed gained from the stand point of his metaphysics only artificially (Sth. III. , Def. 2) : but he carried through with compelling consistency the thought, that the overcoming of Um passions follows from a knowledge of them, from the insight into the necessary divine system of all things ; he taught that human nature must perfect itself in the blessedness of the active emotions which consist only in the activity of the pure impulse toward knowledge ( Kth. V. 15 ff. ), and thus set up an ideal of life which reaches the height of the Greek ttupl*.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Geulincx. 415
consciousness — for example, a thought — should pass over into an other: but it seemed impossible to understand how sensation should come out of motion, or motion out of will. Physical and logical caus ality seemed to offer no difficulty ; so much the greater was that presented by psycho-physical causality. In the case of the latter the consciousness dawned that the relation of equality or identity between cause and effect, by means of which mechanical and logi cal dependence seemed intelligible, does not exist. Hence an inquiry must here be made for the principle by which the two ele ments of the causal relation, cause and effect, which do not in them selves belong together, are connected with each other. 1 Where this principle was to be sought could not be a matter of doubt for the disciples of Descartes : God, who produced the union of the two substances in man's nature, has also so arranged them that the functions of the one substance are followed by the corresponding functions of the other. But on this account these functions in their causal relation to one another are not properly, and in their own nature, efficient causes, but only occasions in connection with which the consequences determined by divine contrivance appear in the other substance, — not causae efflcientes, but causa: occasionales. The true "cause" for the causal connection between stimuli and sensations, and between purposes and bodily movements, is God.
Such considerations are multiplied in the whole development of the Cartesian school. Clauberg brings them into use for the theory of perceptions, Cordemoy for that of purposive motion ; their full development is attained in the " Ethics " of Geulincx. Yet in the latter author doubt is not entirely excluded as to whether God's causality in this connection is regarded as a special intervention in each individual case, or as a general and permanent arrangement. In some passages, indeed, the former is the case,1 but the spirit of the doctrine, taken as a whole, doubtless involves the latter. Geu lincx expresses himself most clearly in the illustration of the clocks:' as two clocks which have been made alike by the same artificer continue to move in perfect harmony, " absque ulla causalitate qua alterum hoc in altero causat, sed propter meram dependentiam, qua utrumque ab eadem arte et simili industria constitutum est," so the
> That the fundamental difficulty in all causal relations was in this actually •tumbled upon, first became clear at a later time through Hume. Cf. f 34.
' Kor example, in the analogy of the child in the cradle, Eth. 123. It seems, bnides, that the first edition of the Ethics (16(16), in fact, introduced more the dnu tz maehina, while the annotations added in the second edition (1676) pre sent throughout the profounder view.
• Kth. , p. 134, note 19.
il6 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV
corresponding functions of mind and body follow each other in accordance with the world-order once determined by God. 1
8. This anthropological rationale of Occasionalism fits from the beginning into a more general metaphysical course of thought. The Cartesian system already contained the premises for the inference that in the case of all that takes place in finite substances, the effi cient principle derives, not from these substances themselves, but from the deity. Thinking in minds takes place by means of the inborn ideas which God has given them; to the corporeal world he has communicated a quantum of motion which changes only in its dis tribution among the individual corpuscles, but in the case of the individual body it is, so to speak, only temporarily concealed Minds can create new ideas as little as bodies can create new mo tion ; the sole cause is God.
The Cartesians had all the more occasion to emphasise the sole causality of God, as their doctrine encountered violent contradiction in the orthodoxy of both Confessions, and became involved in the theological controversies of the time. Friend and foe had quickly recognised the relationship of Cartesianism with the doctrine of Augustine;1 and while on this account the Jansenists and thk
Fathers of the Oratory, who lived in the Augustinian-Scotist atmos phere, were friendly to the new philosophy, the orthodox Peripa tetics, and especially the Jesuits, made war upon it all the more violently. Thus the old opposition between Augustianism and Thorn- ism came out in the controversy over Cartesianism. The conse quence was that the Cartesians brought into the foreground as far as possible those elements in which their doctrine was allied to the Augustinian. * So Louis de la Forge * attempted to prove the com plete identity of Cartesianism with the doctrine of the Church Father, and emphasised especially the fact that according to both thinkers the sole ground of all that takes place in bodies as well as minds is God. Just this was later designated by Malebranche* as the sure mark of a Christian philosophy, while the most dangerous
1 If,"therefore, Leibniz, when he later claimed for his "pre-established har mony (Eclairc. 2 and 3) this same analogy in frequent use at that time, charac terised the Cartesian conception by an immediate dependence of the two clocks upon one another, and the Occasionalistic by a constantly renewed regulation of the clocks on the part of the clock-maker, this was applicable at most to some passages In the first edition of the Ethics of Geulincx.
1 Kinship and opposition apply also to still other points. Descartes and the priests of the Oratory (Gibieuf, Malebranche) are at one against Thomism in the Augustinian and Scotist doctrine of the boundless freedom of the deity ; they maintain again that the good is good because God so willed it, not per u (cf. § 26, 2, 3), etc.
• Trait, de VEtpr. Hum. , Prtf. * Becherche, VI. 2, 3.
Chu\ 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Occasionalism. 417
error of heathen philosophy consists in the assumption of metaphys ical self-subsistence and capacity for spontaneous action on the part of finite things.
With Geulincx, likewise, all finite things are deprived of the causal moment or element of substantiality. In this he proceeds from the principle ' that one can himself do that only of which he knows how it is done. From this it follows in the anthropological field, that the mind cannot be the cause of the bodily movements — no one knows how he sets to work even but to raise his arm ; it follows farther in the cosmological field, that bodies which have no ideas whatever cannot operate at all, and finally, for the theory of knowledge, that the cause of perceptions is to be sought not in the finite mind — for this does not know how it comes to perceive — nor in bodies; therefore it is to be sought only in God. He pro duces in us a world of ideas which in its wealth of qualities is much richer and more beautiful than the actual corporeal world itself. "
The e piste mological motif finds finally with Malebranche * a still more profound apprehension. Cartesian dualism makes a direct
« knowledge of the body by mind absolutely impossible : such a knowl edge is excluded not only because no utfluxus physicus is possible between the two, but also because, in view of the total heterogeneity of the two substances, it is not possible to see how even an idea of the one is thinkable in the other. In this respect, also, mediation is possible only through the deity, and Malebranche takes refuge in the Neo- Platonic world of Ideas in God. Man does not know bodies ; he knows their Ideas in God. This intelligible corporeal world in God is, on the one hand, the archetype of the actual corporeal world cre ated by God, and on the other hand, the archetype of those ideas which God has communicated to us of this actual corporeal world. Our knowledge is like the actual bodies, just as two magnitudes which are equal to a third are equal also to each other. In this sense Malebranche understood that philosophy teaches that we behold ail things in God.
9. Quite different was the solution which Spinoza gave to the Occasional istic problems. The explanation of any mode of the one attribute by a mode of the other was excluded by the conception of
» Bth. . p. 113; Met. , p. 26.
» The remnant of self-activity In finite beings thai remain* in the system of
Grulinex consists in the immanent mental activity of man. I'f. Kth. 121 f. The "sutology," or intpertio mi, Is, therefore, not only the epistemological ■carting-point of the syntern, but also It* ethical conclusion. Man nan nothing to do in the outer world. I'M nihil valet, ibi nihil relis. The highest virtue la a modest contentment, submission to tJod'n will — humility, deiperiw tut.
• Btch. HI. 2.
418 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Pabt IV.
the attribute as he had denned it (see above, No. 5) ; it held of the attribute as of substance,1 in se est et per se concipitur. Accordingly there could be no question of the dependence of the spatial upon consciousness, or vice versa; the appearance of such a dependence which presents itself in the anthropological facts needed, therefore, another explanation, and as a matter of course this was to be sought by the aid of his conception of God. If, however, the doctrine that God is the sole cause of all that takes place is for this reason found also with Spinoza, his agreement with the Occasionalists exists only in the motive and the word, but not in the meaning or spirit of the doctrine. For according to Geulincx and Malebranche, God is the creator ; according to Spinoza, he is the universal essence or nature of things ; according to the former, God creates the world by his will ; according to the latter, the world follows necessarily from the nature of God [or is the necessary consequence of the nature of God]. In spite of the likeness in the word causa, therefore, the causal rela tion is really thought here in a sense entirely different from that which it has there. With Spinoza it means not, " God creates the world," but, " he is the world. "
Spinoza always expresses his conception of real dependence, of causality, by the word " follow " (sequi, consequi) and by the addi tion, " as from the definition of a triangle the equality of the sum of its angles to two right angles follows. " The dependence of the
world upon God therefore, thought as mathematical consequence. 1 This conception of the causal relation has thus completely stripped off the empirical mark of " producing " or " creating " which played so important a part with the Occasionalists, and replaces the percep tional idea of active operation with the logico-mathematical relation of ground and consequent [or reason and consequent Grand und Folge~\. Spinozism a consistent identification of the relation of cause and effect with that of ground and consequent. The causality of the deity therefore, not in time, but eternal, that is, timeless and true knowledge consideration of things sub quadam ceterni- talis specie. This conception of the relation of dependence resulted of itself from the conception of the deity as the universal essence or nature from this nature all its modifications follow timelessly, just as all propositions of geometry follow from the nature of space. The geometrical method knows no other causality than that of the " eternal consequence " for rationalism, only that form of depend ence which peculiar to thought itself, namely, the logical proced-
u Eth. I. , Prop. 10.
Cf. Schopenhauer, Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vorn zureichenden
Qrunde, ch. 6. [Fourfold Soot, etc. , Bohn Lib. ]
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] Substance and Causality : Spinoza. 419
lire of the consequent from its antecedent reason, passes as in itself intelligible, and on this account as the schema also for events or cosmic processes : ' real dependence also should be conceived neither mechanically nor teleologically, but only logico-mathematically.
But now, as in geometry, all follows indeed from the nature of space, and yet each particular relation is fixed by other particular determinations, so, too, in the Spinozistic metaphysics the neces sary procedure of things forth from God consists in the determina tion of every individual finite entity by other finite things. The sum of finite things and the modes of each attribute form a chain of strict determination, a chain without beginning and without end. The necessity of the divine nature rules in all ; but no mode is nearer to the deity, or farther from the deity, than is any other. In this the thought of Nicolaus Cusanus of the incommensurability of the finite with the infinite asserts itself — no series of stages of emana tion leads from God down to the world : everything finite is deter mined again by the finite, but in all God is the sole ground of their essence or nature.
If this is the case, the unity of essence must appear also in the relation of the attributes, however strictly these may be separated qualitatively and causally. It is still the same divine essence which exists here in the form of extension, and there in the form of con sciousness. The two attributes are then necessarily so related to each other that to every mode of the one a definite mode of the other corresponds. This correspondence or parallelism of the attri butes solves the enigma of the connection of the two worlds: ideas are determined only by ideas, and motions only by motions ; but it is the like cosmic content of the divine essence which forms the con nection of the one class, and also that of the other ; the same con tent is in the attribute of consciousness as in the attribute of extension. This relation is presented by Spinoza in accordance with the scholastic conceptions of the esse in intellect u and the esse m re. The same that exists in the attribute of consciousness as object (objective), as the content of our ideas, exists in the attribute of extension as something actual, independent of any idea or mental representation
1 Spinoza's pantheism has therefore the closest resemblance to the scholastic mystical Jtealium of Scotus Erigena (cf. $ 23, 1), only that in the latter'i system it Is still more the case that the logical relation of the general to the particular forms the only schema ; from this resulted, in his case, the emanistic •haracter which is lacking in Spinoza.
1 But neither of these two modes of existence is more original than the other, or forms a prototype for the other : both express equally the nature of God (nprimere). Hence an idealistic interpretation of Spinoza is as incorrwt as a materialistic, although both might he developed out of hi* system.
(formaliter). *
420 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
Spinoza's conception, then, is this : every finite thing as a mode of the divine essence, e. g. man, exists in like measure in both attri butes, as mind and as body: and each of its particular functions belongs also in like measure to both attributes, as idea and as motion. As idea, it is determined by the connection of ideas, as motion by that of motions ; but in both, the content is the same by virtue of the correspondence of the attributes. The human mind it the idea (Idee) of the human body, both as a whole and in detail. 1
10. The conclusion of this movement of thought which had passed through so many divarifications was reached in the meta physical system of Leibniz, —a system which is equalled by none in the entire history of philosophy in all-sidedness of motives and in power of adjustment and combination. It owes this importance not only to the extensive learning and the harmonising mind of its author, but especially to the circumstance that he was at home in the ideas of ancient and mediaeval philosophy with as deep and fine an understanding of their significance as he had for the conceptions formed by the modern study of Nature. * Only the inventor of the differential calculus, who had as much understanding for Plato and Aristotle as for Descartes and Spinoza, who knew and appreciated Thomas and Duns Scotus as well as Bacon and Hobbes, —only he could become the creator of the " pre-established harmony. "
The reconciliation of the mechanical and the teleological views of the world, and with this the uniting of the scientific and the religious interests of his time, was the leading motive in the thought of Leib niz. He wished to see the mechanical explanation of Nature, the formulation of which in its scientific conceptions he himself essen tially furthered, carried through to its full extent, and at the same time he cast about for thoughts by the aid of which the purposeful living character of the universe might nevertheless remain compre hensible. The attempt must therefore be made — an attempt for which there were already intimations in the doctrine of Descartes — to see whether the whole mechanical course of events could not be ultimately traced back to efficient causes, whose purposeful nature should afford an import and meaning to their working taken as a whole. The whole philosophical development of Leibniz has the aim to substitute for the corpuscles, " entelechies," and to win back for the indifferent God of the geometrical method the rights of the Platonic curia. The ultimate goal of his philosophy is to under-
1 The difficulties which arose in this connection from self-consciousness, and thoBe also from the postulate of the countless attributes, Spinoza did not solve : cf. the correspondence with Tschirnhausen, Op. II. 219 f.
a Cf. Sy>t. Noun. 10.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Leibniz. 421
stand the mechanism of the cosmic processes as the means and phe nomenal form by which the living content or import of the world realises itself. For this reason he could no longer think " cause " as only "Being," could no longer think God merely as ens perfectissi- mum, could no longer think " substance " as characterised merely by an attribute of unchangeable existence, and could no longer think its states merely as modifications, determinations, or specifications of such a fundamental quality: cosmic processes or change l>ecame again for him active working (Wirken); substances took on the meaning of forces,1 and the philosophical conception of God also had, for its essential characteristic, creative force. This was Leib niz' fundamental thought, that this creative force evinces itself in the mechanical system of motions.
Leibniz attained this dynamical standpoint first in his theory of motion, and in a way which of itself required that the same stand point should be carried over into metaphysics. ' The mechanical
of inertia and the process begun by Galileo of resolving motion into infinitely small impulses, which together formed the starting-point for the authoritative investigations in natural science by Huyghens and Newton, led Leibniz to the principle of the infini tesimal calculus, to his conception of the " vis viva, " and es pecially, to the insight that the essential nature of bodies, in which the ground of motion is to be sought, consists not in extension, nor yet in their mass (impenetrability), but in their capacity to do work, — in force. But if substance is force, it is super-spatial and iwi- materiai. On this account Leibniz finds himself compelled to think even corporeal substance as immaterial force. Bodies are, in their essential nature, force; their spatial form, their property of filling space and their motion are effects of this force. The substance of bodies is metaphysical. 1 In connection with Leibniz' doctrine of
knowledge this purports that rational, clear, and distinct cognition apprehends bodies as force, while sensuous, obscure, and confused cognition apprehends them as spatial structures. Hence, for Leib niz, space is neither identical with bodies (as in Descartes), nor the presupposition for them (as with Newton), but a force-product of substances, a phenomenon bene fundatum, an order of co-existence, —
1 La substance eat un Ctre capable (Taction. Prine. de la Nat. etde la Orttee, L CI. Sgsl. Xouv. 2t. , " Force primitive. "
» Sy*. Nout. 3.
1 With thin the co-ordination of the two attribute*, exunsio and mgitatio, waa again abolished ; the world of consciousness U the truly actual, the world of extension is phenomenon. Leibniz nets the intelligible world of substances over against the phenomena of the senses or material world in a completely Tlalonic fashion (. Vow*. Eu. IV. 3). Cf. J 33 I.
problem
422 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
not an absolute reality, but an ens mentale. 1 And the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of time. From this it follows further, that the laws of mechanics which refer to these spatial manifestations of bodies are not rational, not " geometrical " truths, but truths which relate to matters of fact, and are contingent. They could be thought otherwise [i. e. the opposite is not inconceivable]. Their ground is not logical necessity, but — purposiveness or appropriate ness. They are lois de convenance ; and have their roots in the choix de la sagesse. - God chose them because the purpose of the world would be best fulfilled in the form determined by them. If bodies are machines, they are such in the sense that machines are purpos- ively constructed works. 3
11. Thus again in Leibniz, but in a maturer form than in Neo- Platonism, life becomes the principle for explaining Nature ; his doctrine is vitalism. But life is variety, and at the same time unity. The mechanical theory led Leibniz to the conception of infinitely many individual forces, metaphysical points/ as likewise to the idea of their continuous connection. He had originally leaned toward the atomic theory of Democritus and the nominalistic meta physics ; the Occasionalist movement, and above all, the system of Spinoza, made him familiar with the thought of the All-unity ; and he found the solution, as Nicolaus Cusanus and Giordano Bruno had found it before, in the principle of the identity of the part with the whole. Each force is the world-force, the cosmic force, but in a peculiar phase ; every substance is the world-substance, but in par ticular form. Hence Leibniz gives to the conception of substance just this meaning: it is unity in plurality? This means that every substance in every state " represents " the multitude of other sub stances, and to the nature of " representing " belongs always the unifying of a manifold. '
With these thoughts are united, in the system of Leibniz, the
1 Cf. chiefly the correspondence
8 Princ. 11.
* Syst. Now. 11.
• Leibniz is here served a very good turn (cf. op. cit. ) by the ambiguity in
with des Bosses. • lb. 3.
the word " representation " (which applies also to the German " vorstellen " [and to the English "representation"]), in accordance with which the word means, on the one hand, to supply the place of or serve as a symbol of, and on the other"hand, the function of consciousness. That every substance "repre sents the rest means, therefore, on the one hand, that all is contained in all (Leibniz cites the ancient aviirrota rdvra and also the omnia ubique of the Renaissance), and on the other hand, that each substance "perceives" all the rest. The deeper sense and justification of this ambiguity lies in the fact that we cannot form any clear and distinct idea whatever of the unifying of a manifold, except after the pattern of that kind of connection which we expe rience within ourselves in the function of consciousness ("synthesis" in Kant's phraseology) .
« Monad. 13-16.
Chap. 2, § 81. ] Substance and Causality : Leibniz. 423
postulates which had been current in the metaphysical movement since Descartes; namely, that of the isolation of substances with reference to one another, and that of the correspondence of their functions having its origin in the common world-ground. Both motifs are most perfectly brought out in the Monadology. Leibniz calls his force-substance monad, — an expression which might have come to him along various lines of Renaissance tradition. Each monad is with reference to the rest a perfectly independent being, which can neither experience nor exercise influence. The monads "have no windows," and this " windowlessness " is to a certain extent the expression of their "metaphysical impenetrability. "1 But this quality of being completely closed to outward influence receives first of all a positive expression from Leibniz in his declaration that the monad is a purely internal principle : * substance is hence a force of immanent activity : the monad is not physical, but psychical in its nature. Its states are representations ( Vorstellungen) , and the principle of its activity is desire (appit it ion), the "tendency" to pass over from one representation to another. * "
Each monad is nevertheless, on the other hand, a
world " ; it contains the whole universe as a representation within itself; in this consists the living unity of all things. But each is also an individual, distinct from all others. For there are no two substances in the world alike. 4 If now the monads are not distin guished by the content which they represent, — for this is the same with all,* — their difference can be sought only in their mode of representing this content, and Leibniz declares that the difference between the monads consists only in the different degree of clearness and distinctness with which they " represent " the universe. Descartes' epistemological criterion thus becomes a metaphysical predicate by reason of the fact that Leibniz, like Duns Scotus (cf. p. 331), con ceives of the antithesis of distinct and confused as an antithesis in the force of representation or in intensity. Hence the monad is re garded as active in so far as it represents clearly and distinctly, as passive in so far as it represents obscurely and confusedly :* hence, also, its impulse (appMition) is directed toward passing from obscure
• Monad. 7. Cf. Kmst. Xouv. 14, 17.
• M»*ad. II.
• Lelbnix expressed this as the prineipium idrntitatis inditrerntbilium
i Monad. »).
• Here, to be rare. Leibniz overlooked the fact that no real content in reached
in thin ayatem of mutual representation of aubatanrea. The monad a represents the monad* A, c, d, . . . x. But what ia the monad 6 ? It in in turn the repre sentation of the monads a, c, . x. The same true for c, and so on in imtmilHrn.
Monad 49.
• lb. 15-19.
mirror of the
•
rf,
. .
is
424 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
to clear representations, and the "clearing up" of its own content is the goal of its life. To this above-mentioned intensity of the repre sentations Leibniz applies the mechanical principle of infinitely small impulses: he calls these infinitely small constituent parts of the representative life of the monads petite* perceptions,1 and needs this hypothesis to explain the fact, that according to his doctrine the monad evidently has very many more representations than it is con scious of (cf. below, § 33). In the language of to-day the petite* per ceptions would be unconscious mental states ( YorsteUungen).
Of such differences in degree of clearness and distinctness there are infinitely many, and in accordance with the law of continuity — natura non facit saltum — the monads form an uninterrupted graded series, a great system of development, which rises from the "simple" monads to souls and minds. 1 The lowest monads, which represent only obscurely and confusedly, i. e. unconsciously, are therefore only passive ; they form matter. The highest monad, which represents the universe with perfect clearness and distinctness, — just for this reason there is but one such, — and is accordingly pure activity, is called the central monad — God. Inasmuch as each of these monads lives out its own nature, they all harmonise completely with each other at every moment * by virtue of the sameness of their content, and from this arises the appearance of the action of one substance upon others. This relation is the harmonie prikablie des substances — h. doctrine in which the principle of correspondence, introduced by Geulincx and Spinoza for tne relation of the two attributes, appears extended to the totality of all substances. Here as there, however, the principle as carried out involves the uninterrupted determination in the activity of all substances, the strict necessity of all that takes place, and excludes all chance and all freedom in the sense of uncaused action. Leibniz also "rescues the conception of freedom for finite substances only in the ethical meaning of a control of reason over the senses and passions. 4
The pre-established harmony — this relationship of substances in their Being and life — needs, however, a unity as the ground of its explanations, and this can be sought only in the central monad God, who created the finite substances, gave to each its own content
i lb. 21.
1 Princ. 4. In this connection the "soul" is conceived of as the central mi mail of an organism, in that it represents most distinctly the monads consti tuting this, and accordingly only with a lesser degree of distinctness the rest of the universe. Monad. 61
Stint. Now. 14.
Ko magis est libertas quo magi* agitur ex ratione, etc. Leibniz, De Libert. {Op. , Erd. e<l. , 669).
4»
ft.
Chap. 2, § 32. J Natural Right. 425
in a particular grade of representative intensity, and thereby so arranged all the monads that they should harmonise throughout.
And in this necessary process in which their life unfolds, realise the end of the creative Universal Spirit in the whole mechanical determination of the series of their representations. This relation of mechanism to teleology makes its way finally, also, into the epistemological principles of Leibniz. The deity and the other monads sustain the same relation to each other as the infinite and finite substances sustain in the system of Descartes. But for the rationalistic conception of things, only the infinite is a necessity of thought, while the finite, on the contrary, is something " contin gent," in the sense that it might also be thought otherwise, that the opposite contains no contradiction (cf. above, § 30, 7). Thus the antithesis of eternal and necessary truths takes on metaphysical significance : only God's Being is an eternal truth; he exists, accord ing to the principle of contradiction, with logical or absolute necessity. Finite things, however, are contingent ; they exist only in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, by virtue of their determina tion by another; the world and all that belongs to it has only conditioned, hypothetical necessity. This contingency of the world,
Leibniz, in agreement with Duns Scotus,1 traces back to the will of God. The world might have been otherwise ; that it is as it is, it
owes to the choice which God made between the many ]>ossibilities. ' Thus in Leibniz all threads of the old and the new metaphysics run together. With the aid of the conceptions formed in the school
of mechanics he formulated the presages of the philosophy of the Renaissance into a systematic structure, where the ideas of Greece found their home in the midst of the knowledge acquired by modern investigation.
§ 32. Natural Bight
The Philosophy of Right of the Renaissance was also dependent, on the one hand, upon the stimulus of Humanism, and on the other, upon the needs of modern life. The former element is shown not only in the dependence upon ancient literature, but also in the re vival of the ancient conception of the state, and in the attachment to its traditions; the latter make their appearance as a theoreti cal generalisation of those interests, in connection with which the
1 The relations of Leibniz to the greatest of the Scholastics are to be recog nized not only In this point, but also in many others ; though as yet they have unfortunately not found the consideration or treatment that they deserve.
* Cf„ however, in addition, below, ) 35.
Chap. 2, $ 31. ] Substance and Causality : Galileo, Descartes. 411
itself, and explains all others. And the question as to the nature of this fundamental relation was answered by the principle of math ematical equality, which, in turn, passed over into that of metaphysi cal identity. So much motion in the cause, so much in the effect also. Descartes formulated this as the law of the conservation of motion in Nature. The sum of motion in Nature remains always the same : what a body loses in motion it gives to another. As regards the amount of motion, there is in Nature nothing new, especially no impulse from the spiritual world. ' Even for the king dom of organisms this principle was carried through, at least as a postulate, though as yet with very weak grounds. Animals, also, are machines whose motions are evoked and determined by the mechanism of the nervous system. Descartes thought of this mechanism more precisely (and with him Hobbes and Spinoza) as a motion of finest (gaseous) substances, the so-called spirit us ani- males,* and sought the point of transition from the sensory to the motor nervous system in man, in a part of the brain which has no correlative, i. e. is a single and not a j>aired organ, the pineal gland or eonarium.
The other part of the task proved much more difficult : namely, that of understanding the mental life without any relation to the corporeal world. Easy and clear to perception as was the action of one body upon another, it did not yield a mode of representing an incorporeal connection between different minds, that could be used scientifically. Spinoza, for example, expressed the general meta physical postulate very energetically, when he promised in entering upon the third book of the Ethics, that he would treat the actions and desires of man as if lines, surfaces, and bodies were the subject of discussion ; for the important thing is neither to asperse them nor to deride them, but to understand them. But the solution of this problem was limited in advance to investigating the causal connec tion between the activities of consciousness in the individual mind : dualism demanded a psychology free from all physiological constitu ents. It is all the more characteristic of the predominance of the spirit of natural science in the seventeenth century, that it attained this psychology demanded by the theory, only in the most limited degree. And even the beginnings toward this are ruled by the endeavour to apply the methodical principle of mechanics, which
1 Henoe Hobbes excluded from physics the Aristotelian and ThomUtic concep tion of the unmoved mover, while Descartes, who in this point also proceeded mure metaphysically, made motion to have been communicated to matter at the beginning by God.
* An inheritance from the physiological psychology of the (ireeks, in particu lar from that of the l'eripatetics.
412 Tlie Renaissance: Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
was celebrating its triumphs in the theory of outer experience, to the comprehension of the inner world also.
For just as the investigation of Nature from Galileo to Newton directed its energies toward finding out the simple fundamental form of corporeal motion, to which all complex structures of outer experience could be reduced, so Descartes desired to establish the fundamental forms of psychical motion, out of which the multiplic ity of inner experiences would become explicable. In the theoreti cal domain this seemed attained by establishing the immediately evident truths (the innate ideas) ; in the practical field there grew out of this demand the new problem of a statics and a mechanics of the movements of feeling (Gemuthsbewegungen) . In this spirit Des cartes and Spinoza produced their natural history of the emotions (Affecte) and passions,1 the latter author by combining the thoughts of the former with those of Hobbes. Thus Descartes derives the whole host of particular passions, as species and sub-species, from the six fundamental forms of wonder (admiratio), love, and hate, desire {disir), pleasure and pain [or joy and sadness, Lust und
Unlust~\ (lostitia — tristitia) ; thus Spinoza develops his system of the emotions out of desire, pleasure, and pain (appetitus, Icetitia,
by pointing out the ideational processes in connection with which these emotions have become transferred from their original object, the self-preservation of the individual, to other " ideas. "
A peculiar side-attitude is taken in this regard by the two English thinkers. For Bacon and Hobbes, a mechanical conception of the mental is the more natural in proportion as they endeavour to draw the mental more closely into the circle of the physical. Both, that regard the empirical psychical life, and therefore, also, the sphere of consciousness which in Descartes' system was to have nothing to do with the corporeal world, as something which essen tially belongs thereto on the other hand, there set over against the whole world of perception rather something spiritual [spirit ual in the religious sense, Geistliches'] than something mental or intellectual [Geistiges]. Ideas and volitions as they are known by experience are held to be at bottom activities of the body also, and
besides these we speak yet of an immortal soul (spiraculum), of spiritual world and of the divine mind or spirit, this should fall to the province of theology. But according to this view the natural science theory cannot be characterised much otherwise than as an
Descartes, Lts Passions de VAme Spinoza, Eth. III. , and Tract. Brev. II. fl. Cl. below, No.
tristitia)
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Chat. 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Descartes, Hobbet. 413
anthropological materialism; for it aims to understand the entire series of empirical psychical activities as a mechanical process con nected with the bodily functions. This problem was propounded by Bacon ; Hobbes attempted to solve and in doing so became the father of the so-called associational psychology. With the same
sensualism as Campanella, of whose deductions his own frequently remind us, — especially with regard to the mechanism of ideas, — he seeks to show that sense-impressions give the only ele ments of consciousness, and that by their combination and trans formation memory and thought also come about. In the practical domain the impulse toward self-preservation and the feelings of pleasure and pain which arise in connection with impressions are then characterised analogously as the elements out of which all other feelings and activities of will arise. Hobbes, too, projected thus "natural history" of the emotions and passions, and this was not without influence upon that of Spinoza, whose theory of the emotions always looking towards the other attribute [i. e.
extension].
From these presuppositions of method the denial of the freedom
of the will in the sense of indeterminism followed with inexorable consistency for Hobbes and for Spinoza. Both attempted — and Spinoza did in the baldest form that can be conceived — to exhibit the strict necessity which prevails even in the course of the process of motivation they are types of determinism. For Spinoza, there for? , there no freedom in the psychological sense. Freedom can mean only, on the one hand, metaphysically, the absolute Being of the deity determined by nothing but itself, and, on the other hand, ethically, the ideal of the overcoming of the passions through reason.
In this became already evident that in the presence of the facts of psychology, that absolute separation between the corporeal and the mental world which metaphysics demanded was not to be maintained. But Descartes himself met quite the same experience. The nature of the mind itself might, indeed, explain the clear and distinct ideas and the forms of the rational will which resulted from these, but could not explain the obscure and confused ideas,
and the emotions and passions connected with them. These present themselves rather as a disturbance of the mind1 (perturbationes animi), and since this perturbation which gives occasion for the
This the interest, not only ethical, but also theoretical, which induced Des cartes to treat atates psychologically so different aa emotions and passions, from the same point of Tiew and in one line. Cf. for the following Pmston$ it Am*, L. and Med*. V. and VI.
outspoken
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it
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414 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
abuse of freedom (cf. above, § 30, 5) cannot be due to God, its origin must be sought ultimately in an influence exercised by tin body. In the disturbances of the feeling there is, therefore, for Descartes an indubitable fact, which cannot be explained from the fundamental metaphysical principles of his system. Here, there fore, the philosopher sees himself forced to recognise an exceptwmi relation, and he adjusts this for himself in a way that had been foreshadowed by the anthropology of the Victorines (cf. § 24, 2) The nature (natura) of man, he teaches, consists in the inner union of two heterogeneous substances, a mind and a body, and this marvel lous (i. e. metaphysically incomprehensible) union has been *o arranged by God's will that in this single case the conscious and the spatial substances act upon each other. Animals remain, for Descartes, bodies ; their " sensations " are only nervous movements, out of which stimulations of the motor system arise in accordance with the reflex mechanism. In the human body, however, the mental substance is present at the same time, and in consequence of this co-existence the storm of the animal spirits in the pineal gland excites a disturbance in the mental substance also, which manifests itself in the latter as an unclear and indistinct idea, •>. as sense-perception, as emotion, or as passion. 1
With the disciples, the systematic impulse was greater than with the master. They found in this influxus physicus between mind and body the vulnerable point in the Cartesian philosophy, and ex erted themselves to set aside the exception which the philosopher had been obliged to assert in the anthropological facts. This, how ever, did not go on without effecting a new, and in a certain sense regressive, alteration in the conception of causality, in that the metaphysical moment once more gained preponderance over the me chanical. The immanent causal processes of the spatial and of the conscious worlds were regarded as intelligible in themselves ; but the transcendent causal process from one of these worlds into the other formed a problem. No difficulty was found in the idea that one motion transformed itself into another or that one function of
1 On this Descartes then builds his Ethics. In such perturbations the mind occupies a passive attitude, and it is its task to free itself from these in clear and distinct knowledge. Spinoza carried out this intellectualistic morals in an extremely grand and impressive manner (Elk. IV. and V. ). The antithesis of an active and passive attitude of the finite mind is indeed gained from the stand point of his metaphysics only artificially (Sth. III. , Def. 2) : but he carried through with compelling consistency the thought, that the overcoming of Um passions follows from a knowledge of them, from the insight into the necessary divine system of all things ; he taught that human nature must perfect itself in the blessedness of the active emotions which consist only in the activity of the pure impulse toward knowledge ( Kth. V. 15 ff. ), and thus set up an ideal of life which reaches the height of the Greek ttupl*.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Geulincx. 415
consciousness — for example, a thought — should pass over into an other: but it seemed impossible to understand how sensation should come out of motion, or motion out of will. Physical and logical caus ality seemed to offer no difficulty ; so much the greater was that presented by psycho-physical causality. In the case of the latter the consciousness dawned that the relation of equality or identity between cause and effect, by means of which mechanical and logi cal dependence seemed intelligible, does not exist. Hence an inquiry must here be made for the principle by which the two ele ments of the causal relation, cause and effect, which do not in them selves belong together, are connected with each other. 1 Where this principle was to be sought could not be a matter of doubt for the disciples of Descartes : God, who produced the union of the two substances in man's nature, has also so arranged them that the functions of the one substance are followed by the corresponding functions of the other. But on this account these functions in their causal relation to one another are not properly, and in their own nature, efficient causes, but only occasions in connection with which the consequences determined by divine contrivance appear in the other substance, — not causae efflcientes, but causa: occasionales. The true "cause" for the causal connection between stimuli and sensations, and between purposes and bodily movements, is God.
Such considerations are multiplied in the whole development of the Cartesian school. Clauberg brings them into use for the theory of perceptions, Cordemoy for that of purposive motion ; their full development is attained in the " Ethics " of Geulincx. Yet in the latter author doubt is not entirely excluded as to whether God's causality in this connection is regarded as a special intervention in each individual case, or as a general and permanent arrangement. In some passages, indeed, the former is the case,1 but the spirit of the doctrine, taken as a whole, doubtless involves the latter. Geu lincx expresses himself most clearly in the illustration of the clocks:' as two clocks which have been made alike by the same artificer continue to move in perfect harmony, " absque ulla causalitate qua alterum hoc in altero causat, sed propter meram dependentiam, qua utrumque ab eadem arte et simili industria constitutum est," so the
> That the fundamental difficulty in all causal relations was in this actually •tumbled upon, first became clear at a later time through Hume. Cf. f 34.
' Kor example, in the analogy of the child in the cradle, Eth. 123. It seems, bnides, that the first edition of the Ethics (16(16), in fact, introduced more the dnu tz maehina, while the annotations added in the second edition (1676) pre sent throughout the profounder view.
• Kth. , p. 134, note 19.
il6 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV
corresponding functions of mind and body follow each other in accordance with the world-order once determined by God. 1
8. This anthropological rationale of Occasionalism fits from the beginning into a more general metaphysical course of thought. The Cartesian system already contained the premises for the inference that in the case of all that takes place in finite substances, the effi cient principle derives, not from these substances themselves, but from the deity. Thinking in minds takes place by means of the inborn ideas which God has given them; to the corporeal world he has communicated a quantum of motion which changes only in its dis tribution among the individual corpuscles, but in the case of the individual body it is, so to speak, only temporarily concealed Minds can create new ideas as little as bodies can create new mo tion ; the sole cause is God.
The Cartesians had all the more occasion to emphasise the sole causality of God, as their doctrine encountered violent contradiction in the orthodoxy of both Confessions, and became involved in the theological controversies of the time. Friend and foe had quickly recognised the relationship of Cartesianism with the doctrine of Augustine;1 and while on this account the Jansenists and thk
Fathers of the Oratory, who lived in the Augustinian-Scotist atmos phere, were friendly to the new philosophy, the orthodox Peripa tetics, and especially the Jesuits, made war upon it all the more violently. Thus the old opposition between Augustianism and Thorn- ism came out in the controversy over Cartesianism. The conse quence was that the Cartesians brought into the foreground as far as possible those elements in which their doctrine was allied to the Augustinian. * So Louis de la Forge * attempted to prove the com plete identity of Cartesianism with the doctrine of the Church Father, and emphasised especially the fact that according to both thinkers the sole ground of all that takes place in bodies as well as minds is God. Just this was later designated by Malebranche* as the sure mark of a Christian philosophy, while the most dangerous
1 If,"therefore, Leibniz, when he later claimed for his "pre-established har mony (Eclairc. 2 and 3) this same analogy in frequent use at that time, charac terised the Cartesian conception by an immediate dependence of the two clocks upon one another, and the Occasionalistic by a constantly renewed regulation of the clocks on the part of the clock-maker, this was applicable at most to some passages In the first edition of the Ethics of Geulincx.
1 Kinship and opposition apply also to still other points. Descartes and the priests of the Oratory (Gibieuf, Malebranche) are at one against Thomism in the Augustinian and Scotist doctrine of the boundless freedom of the deity ; they maintain again that the good is good because God so willed it, not per u (cf. § 26, 2, 3), etc.
• Trait, de VEtpr. Hum. , Prtf. * Becherche, VI. 2, 3.
Chu\ 2, §31. ] Substance and Causality : Occasionalism. 417
error of heathen philosophy consists in the assumption of metaphys ical self-subsistence and capacity for spontaneous action on the part of finite things.
With Geulincx, likewise, all finite things are deprived of the causal moment or element of substantiality. In this he proceeds from the principle ' that one can himself do that only of which he knows how it is done. From this it follows in the anthropological field, that the mind cannot be the cause of the bodily movements — no one knows how he sets to work even but to raise his arm ; it follows farther in the cosmological field, that bodies which have no ideas whatever cannot operate at all, and finally, for the theory of knowledge, that the cause of perceptions is to be sought not in the finite mind — for this does not know how it comes to perceive — nor in bodies; therefore it is to be sought only in God. He pro duces in us a world of ideas which in its wealth of qualities is much richer and more beautiful than the actual corporeal world itself. "
The e piste mological motif finds finally with Malebranche * a still more profound apprehension. Cartesian dualism makes a direct
« knowledge of the body by mind absolutely impossible : such a knowl edge is excluded not only because no utfluxus physicus is possible between the two, but also because, in view of the total heterogeneity of the two substances, it is not possible to see how even an idea of the one is thinkable in the other. In this respect, also, mediation is possible only through the deity, and Malebranche takes refuge in the Neo- Platonic world of Ideas in God. Man does not know bodies ; he knows their Ideas in God. This intelligible corporeal world in God is, on the one hand, the archetype of the actual corporeal world cre ated by God, and on the other hand, the archetype of those ideas which God has communicated to us of this actual corporeal world. Our knowledge is like the actual bodies, just as two magnitudes which are equal to a third are equal also to each other. In this sense Malebranche understood that philosophy teaches that we behold ail things in God.
9. Quite different was the solution which Spinoza gave to the Occasional istic problems. The explanation of any mode of the one attribute by a mode of the other was excluded by the conception of
» Bth. . p. 113; Met. , p. 26.
» The remnant of self-activity In finite beings thai remain* in the system of
Grulinex consists in the immanent mental activity of man. I'f. Kth. 121 f. The "sutology," or intpertio mi, Is, therefore, not only the epistemological ■carting-point of the syntern, but also It* ethical conclusion. Man nan nothing to do in the outer world. I'M nihil valet, ibi nihil relis. The highest virtue la a modest contentment, submission to tJod'n will — humility, deiperiw tut.
• Btch. HI. 2.
418 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Pabt IV.
the attribute as he had denned it (see above, No. 5) ; it held of the attribute as of substance,1 in se est et per se concipitur. Accordingly there could be no question of the dependence of the spatial upon consciousness, or vice versa; the appearance of such a dependence which presents itself in the anthropological facts needed, therefore, another explanation, and as a matter of course this was to be sought by the aid of his conception of God. If, however, the doctrine that God is the sole cause of all that takes place is for this reason found also with Spinoza, his agreement with the Occasionalists exists only in the motive and the word, but not in the meaning or spirit of the doctrine. For according to Geulincx and Malebranche, God is the creator ; according to Spinoza, he is the universal essence or nature of things ; according to the former, God creates the world by his will ; according to the latter, the world follows necessarily from the nature of God [or is the necessary consequence of the nature of God]. In spite of the likeness in the word causa, therefore, the causal rela tion is really thought here in a sense entirely different from that which it has there. With Spinoza it means not, " God creates the world," but, " he is the world. "
Spinoza always expresses his conception of real dependence, of causality, by the word " follow " (sequi, consequi) and by the addi tion, " as from the definition of a triangle the equality of the sum of its angles to two right angles follows. " The dependence of the
world upon God therefore, thought as mathematical consequence. 1 This conception of the causal relation has thus completely stripped off the empirical mark of " producing " or " creating " which played so important a part with the Occasionalists, and replaces the percep tional idea of active operation with the logico-mathematical relation of ground and consequent [or reason and consequent Grand und Folge~\. Spinozism a consistent identification of the relation of cause and effect with that of ground and consequent. The causality of the deity therefore, not in time, but eternal, that is, timeless and true knowledge consideration of things sub quadam ceterni- talis specie. This conception of the relation of dependence resulted of itself from the conception of the deity as the universal essence or nature from this nature all its modifications follow timelessly, just as all propositions of geometry follow from the nature of space. The geometrical method knows no other causality than that of the " eternal consequence " for rationalism, only that form of depend ence which peculiar to thought itself, namely, the logical proced-
u Eth. I. , Prop. 10.
Cf. Schopenhauer, Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vorn zureichenden
Qrunde, ch. 6. [Fourfold Soot, etc. , Bohn Lib. ]
ai
is
is,
:
is ;a
is
is
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;
;
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Chat. 2, § 31 .
] Substance and Causality : Spinoza. 419
lire of the consequent from its antecedent reason, passes as in itself intelligible, and on this account as the schema also for events or cosmic processes : ' real dependence also should be conceived neither mechanically nor teleologically, but only logico-mathematically.
But now, as in geometry, all follows indeed from the nature of space, and yet each particular relation is fixed by other particular determinations, so, too, in the Spinozistic metaphysics the neces sary procedure of things forth from God consists in the determina tion of every individual finite entity by other finite things. The sum of finite things and the modes of each attribute form a chain of strict determination, a chain without beginning and without end. The necessity of the divine nature rules in all ; but no mode is nearer to the deity, or farther from the deity, than is any other. In this the thought of Nicolaus Cusanus of the incommensurability of the finite with the infinite asserts itself — no series of stages of emana tion leads from God down to the world : everything finite is deter mined again by the finite, but in all God is the sole ground of their essence or nature.
If this is the case, the unity of essence must appear also in the relation of the attributes, however strictly these may be separated qualitatively and causally. It is still the same divine essence which exists here in the form of extension, and there in the form of con sciousness. The two attributes are then necessarily so related to each other that to every mode of the one a definite mode of the other corresponds. This correspondence or parallelism of the attri butes solves the enigma of the connection of the two worlds: ideas are determined only by ideas, and motions only by motions ; but it is the like cosmic content of the divine essence which forms the con nection of the one class, and also that of the other ; the same con tent is in the attribute of consciousness as in the attribute of extension. This relation is presented by Spinoza in accordance with the scholastic conceptions of the esse in intellect u and the esse m re. The same that exists in the attribute of consciousness as object (objective), as the content of our ideas, exists in the attribute of extension as something actual, independent of any idea or mental representation
1 Spinoza's pantheism has therefore the closest resemblance to the scholastic mystical Jtealium of Scotus Erigena (cf. $ 23, 1), only that in the latter'i system it Is still more the case that the logical relation of the general to the particular forms the only schema ; from this resulted, in his case, the emanistic •haracter which is lacking in Spinoza.
1 But neither of these two modes of existence is more original than the other, or forms a prototype for the other : both express equally the nature of God (nprimere). Hence an idealistic interpretation of Spinoza is as incorrwt as a materialistic, although both might he developed out of hi* system.
(formaliter). *
420 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
Spinoza's conception, then, is this : every finite thing as a mode of the divine essence, e. g. man, exists in like measure in both attri butes, as mind and as body: and each of its particular functions belongs also in like measure to both attributes, as idea and as motion. As idea, it is determined by the connection of ideas, as motion by that of motions ; but in both, the content is the same by virtue of the correspondence of the attributes. The human mind it the idea (Idee) of the human body, both as a whole and in detail. 1
10. The conclusion of this movement of thought which had passed through so many divarifications was reached in the meta physical system of Leibniz, —a system which is equalled by none in the entire history of philosophy in all-sidedness of motives and in power of adjustment and combination. It owes this importance not only to the extensive learning and the harmonising mind of its author, but especially to the circumstance that he was at home in the ideas of ancient and mediaeval philosophy with as deep and fine an understanding of their significance as he had for the conceptions formed by the modern study of Nature. * Only the inventor of the differential calculus, who had as much understanding for Plato and Aristotle as for Descartes and Spinoza, who knew and appreciated Thomas and Duns Scotus as well as Bacon and Hobbes, —only he could become the creator of the " pre-established harmony. "
The reconciliation of the mechanical and the teleological views of the world, and with this the uniting of the scientific and the religious interests of his time, was the leading motive in the thought of Leib niz. He wished to see the mechanical explanation of Nature, the formulation of which in its scientific conceptions he himself essen tially furthered, carried through to its full extent, and at the same time he cast about for thoughts by the aid of which the purposeful living character of the universe might nevertheless remain compre hensible. The attempt must therefore be made — an attempt for which there were already intimations in the doctrine of Descartes — to see whether the whole mechanical course of events could not be ultimately traced back to efficient causes, whose purposeful nature should afford an import and meaning to their working taken as a whole. The whole philosophical development of Leibniz has the aim to substitute for the corpuscles, " entelechies," and to win back for the indifferent God of the geometrical method the rights of the Platonic curia. The ultimate goal of his philosophy is to under-
1 The difficulties which arose in this connection from self-consciousness, and thoBe also from the postulate of the countless attributes, Spinoza did not solve : cf. the correspondence with Tschirnhausen, Op. II. 219 f.
a Cf. Sy>t. Noun. 10.
Chap. 2, § 31. ] Substance and Causality : Leibniz. 421
stand the mechanism of the cosmic processes as the means and phe nomenal form by which the living content or import of the world realises itself. For this reason he could no longer think " cause " as only "Being," could no longer think God merely as ens perfectissi- mum, could no longer think " substance " as characterised merely by an attribute of unchangeable existence, and could no longer think its states merely as modifications, determinations, or specifications of such a fundamental quality: cosmic processes or change l>ecame again for him active working (Wirken); substances took on the meaning of forces,1 and the philosophical conception of God also had, for its essential characteristic, creative force. This was Leib niz' fundamental thought, that this creative force evinces itself in the mechanical system of motions.
Leibniz attained this dynamical standpoint first in his theory of motion, and in a way which of itself required that the same stand point should be carried over into metaphysics. ' The mechanical
of inertia and the process begun by Galileo of resolving motion into infinitely small impulses, which together formed the starting-point for the authoritative investigations in natural science by Huyghens and Newton, led Leibniz to the principle of the infini tesimal calculus, to his conception of the " vis viva, " and es pecially, to the insight that the essential nature of bodies, in which the ground of motion is to be sought, consists not in extension, nor yet in their mass (impenetrability), but in their capacity to do work, — in force. But if substance is force, it is super-spatial and iwi- materiai. On this account Leibniz finds himself compelled to think even corporeal substance as immaterial force. Bodies are, in their essential nature, force; their spatial form, their property of filling space and their motion are effects of this force. The substance of bodies is metaphysical. 1 In connection with Leibniz' doctrine of
knowledge this purports that rational, clear, and distinct cognition apprehends bodies as force, while sensuous, obscure, and confused cognition apprehends them as spatial structures. Hence, for Leib niz, space is neither identical with bodies (as in Descartes), nor the presupposition for them (as with Newton), but a force-product of substances, a phenomenon bene fundatum, an order of co-existence, —
1 La substance eat un Ctre capable (Taction. Prine. de la Nat. etde la Orttee, L CI. Sgsl. Xouv. 2t. , " Force primitive. "
» Sy*. Nout. 3.
1 With thin the co-ordination of the two attribute*, exunsio and mgitatio, waa again abolished ; the world of consciousness U the truly actual, the world of extension is phenomenon. Leibniz nets the intelligible world of substances over against the phenomena of the senses or material world in a completely Tlalonic fashion (. Vow*. Eu. IV. 3). Cf. J 33 I.
problem
422 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
not an absolute reality, but an ens mentale. 1 And the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of time. From this it follows further, that the laws of mechanics which refer to these spatial manifestations of bodies are not rational, not " geometrical " truths, but truths which relate to matters of fact, and are contingent. They could be thought otherwise [i. e. the opposite is not inconceivable]. Their ground is not logical necessity, but — purposiveness or appropriate ness. They are lois de convenance ; and have their roots in the choix de la sagesse. - God chose them because the purpose of the world would be best fulfilled in the form determined by them. If bodies are machines, they are such in the sense that machines are purpos- ively constructed works. 3
11. Thus again in Leibniz, but in a maturer form than in Neo- Platonism, life becomes the principle for explaining Nature ; his doctrine is vitalism. But life is variety, and at the same time unity. The mechanical theory led Leibniz to the conception of infinitely many individual forces, metaphysical points/ as likewise to the idea of their continuous connection. He had originally leaned toward the atomic theory of Democritus and the nominalistic meta physics ; the Occasionalist movement, and above all, the system of Spinoza, made him familiar with the thought of the All-unity ; and he found the solution, as Nicolaus Cusanus and Giordano Bruno had found it before, in the principle of the identity of the part with the whole. Each force is the world-force, the cosmic force, but in a peculiar phase ; every substance is the world-substance, but in par ticular form. Hence Leibniz gives to the conception of substance just this meaning: it is unity in plurality? This means that every substance in every state " represents " the multitude of other sub stances, and to the nature of " representing " belongs always the unifying of a manifold. '
With these thoughts are united, in the system of Leibniz, the
1 Cf. chiefly the correspondence
8 Princ. 11.
* Syst. Now. 11.
• Leibniz is here served a very good turn (cf. op. cit. ) by the ambiguity in
with des Bosses. • lb. 3.
the word " representation " (which applies also to the German " vorstellen " [and to the English "representation"]), in accordance with which the word means, on the one hand, to supply the place of or serve as a symbol of, and on the other"hand, the function of consciousness. That every substance "repre sents the rest means, therefore, on the one hand, that all is contained in all (Leibniz cites the ancient aviirrota rdvra and also the omnia ubique of the Renaissance), and on the other hand, that each substance "perceives" all the rest. The deeper sense and justification of this ambiguity lies in the fact that we cannot form any clear and distinct idea whatever of the unifying of a manifold, except after the pattern of that kind of connection which we expe rience within ourselves in the function of consciousness ("synthesis" in Kant's phraseology) .
« Monad. 13-16.
Chap. 2, § 81. ] Substance and Causality : Leibniz. 423
postulates which had been current in the metaphysical movement since Descartes; namely, that of the isolation of substances with reference to one another, and that of the correspondence of their functions having its origin in the common world-ground. Both motifs are most perfectly brought out in the Monadology. Leibniz calls his force-substance monad, — an expression which might have come to him along various lines of Renaissance tradition. Each monad is with reference to the rest a perfectly independent being, which can neither experience nor exercise influence. The monads "have no windows," and this " windowlessness " is to a certain extent the expression of their "metaphysical impenetrability. "1 But this quality of being completely closed to outward influence receives first of all a positive expression from Leibniz in his declaration that the monad is a purely internal principle : * substance is hence a force of immanent activity : the monad is not physical, but psychical in its nature. Its states are representations ( Vorstellungen) , and the principle of its activity is desire (appit it ion), the "tendency" to pass over from one representation to another. * "
Each monad is nevertheless, on the other hand, a
world " ; it contains the whole universe as a representation within itself; in this consists the living unity of all things. But each is also an individual, distinct from all others. For there are no two substances in the world alike. 4 If now the monads are not distin guished by the content which they represent, — for this is the same with all,* — their difference can be sought only in their mode of representing this content, and Leibniz declares that the difference between the monads consists only in the different degree of clearness and distinctness with which they " represent " the universe. Descartes' epistemological criterion thus becomes a metaphysical predicate by reason of the fact that Leibniz, like Duns Scotus (cf. p. 331), con ceives of the antithesis of distinct and confused as an antithesis in the force of representation or in intensity. Hence the monad is re garded as active in so far as it represents clearly and distinctly, as passive in so far as it represents obscurely and confusedly :* hence, also, its impulse (appMition) is directed toward passing from obscure
• Monad. 7. Cf. Kmst. Xouv. 14, 17.
• M»*ad. II.
• Lelbnix expressed this as the prineipium idrntitatis inditrerntbilium
i Monad. »).
• Here, to be rare. Leibniz overlooked the fact that no real content in reached
in thin ayatem of mutual representation of aubatanrea. The monad a represents the monad* A, c, d, . . . x. But what ia the monad 6 ? It in in turn the repre sentation of the monads a, c, . x. The same true for c, and so on in imtmilHrn.
Monad 49.
• lb. 15-19.
mirror of the
•
rf,
. .
is
424 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
to clear representations, and the "clearing up" of its own content is the goal of its life. To this above-mentioned intensity of the repre sentations Leibniz applies the mechanical principle of infinitely small impulses: he calls these infinitely small constituent parts of the representative life of the monads petite* perceptions,1 and needs this hypothesis to explain the fact, that according to his doctrine the monad evidently has very many more representations than it is con scious of (cf. below, § 33). In the language of to-day the petite* per ceptions would be unconscious mental states ( YorsteUungen).
Of such differences in degree of clearness and distinctness there are infinitely many, and in accordance with the law of continuity — natura non facit saltum — the monads form an uninterrupted graded series, a great system of development, which rises from the "simple" monads to souls and minds. 1 The lowest monads, which represent only obscurely and confusedly, i. e. unconsciously, are therefore only passive ; they form matter. The highest monad, which represents the universe with perfect clearness and distinctness, — just for this reason there is but one such, — and is accordingly pure activity, is called the central monad — God. Inasmuch as each of these monads lives out its own nature, they all harmonise completely with each other at every moment * by virtue of the sameness of their content, and from this arises the appearance of the action of one substance upon others. This relation is the harmonie prikablie des substances — h. doctrine in which the principle of correspondence, introduced by Geulincx and Spinoza for tne relation of the two attributes, appears extended to the totality of all substances. Here as there, however, the principle as carried out involves the uninterrupted determination in the activity of all substances, the strict necessity of all that takes place, and excludes all chance and all freedom in the sense of uncaused action. Leibniz also "rescues the conception of freedom for finite substances only in the ethical meaning of a control of reason over the senses and passions. 4
The pre-established harmony — this relationship of substances in their Being and life — needs, however, a unity as the ground of its explanations, and this can be sought only in the central monad God, who created the finite substances, gave to each its own content
i lb. 21.
1 Princ. 4. In this connection the "soul" is conceived of as the central mi mail of an organism, in that it represents most distinctly the monads consti tuting this, and accordingly only with a lesser degree of distinctness the rest of the universe. Monad. 61
Stint. Now. 14.
Ko magis est libertas quo magi* agitur ex ratione, etc. Leibniz, De Libert. {Op. , Erd. e<l. , 669).
4»
ft.
Chap. 2, § 32. J Natural Right. 425
in a particular grade of representative intensity, and thereby so arranged all the monads that they should harmonise throughout.
And in this necessary process in which their life unfolds, realise the end of the creative Universal Spirit in the whole mechanical determination of the series of their representations. This relation of mechanism to teleology makes its way finally, also, into the epistemological principles of Leibniz. The deity and the other monads sustain the same relation to each other as the infinite and finite substances sustain in the system of Descartes. But for the rationalistic conception of things, only the infinite is a necessity of thought, while the finite, on the contrary, is something " contin gent," in the sense that it might also be thought otherwise, that the opposite contains no contradiction (cf. above, § 30, 7). Thus the antithesis of eternal and necessary truths takes on metaphysical significance : only God's Being is an eternal truth; he exists, accord ing to the principle of contradiction, with logical or absolute necessity. Finite things, however, are contingent ; they exist only in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, by virtue of their determina tion by another; the world and all that belongs to it has only conditioned, hypothetical necessity. This contingency of the world,
Leibniz, in agreement with Duns Scotus,1 traces back to the will of God. The world might have been otherwise ; that it is as it is, it
owes to the choice which God made between the many ]>ossibilities. ' Thus in Leibniz all threads of the old and the new metaphysics run together. With the aid of the conceptions formed in the school
of mechanics he formulated the presages of the philosophy of the Renaissance into a systematic structure, where the ideas of Greece found their home in the midst of the knowledge acquired by modern investigation.
§ 32. Natural Bight
The Philosophy of Right of the Renaissance was also dependent, on the one hand, upon the stimulus of Humanism, and on the other, upon the needs of modern life. The former element is shown not only in the dependence upon ancient literature, but also in the re vival of the ancient conception of the state, and in the attachment to its traditions; the latter make their appearance as a theoreti cal generalisation of those interests, in connection with which the
1 The relations of Leibniz to the greatest of the Scholastics are to be recog nized not only In this point, but also in many others ; though as yet they have unfortunately not found the consideration or treatment that they deserve.
* Cf„ however, in addition, below, ) 35.
