New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1897-02-01
LEIBNITZ AND LOCKE.
THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK OF THE
FATHER OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
TRANSLATED AT LAST

By Alfred Gideon Langley, A. NJ. BROWN PIP
xix Sol. The Macmillan Company.
The popular opinion of Leibntz's philosophy
has been drawn rather from books like Voitaire
"Candide" than from the writings OF Leionitz
himself He therefore stands before the worio
as the impersonation Of a shallow optimism cas-
fly ridiculed by Voltaire, just as Schopenhauei
Is held accountable for an equally swallow pessi'
m,sm Those who endure the labor of reading
the new essays" even in the comparatively at
tractive form which Mr.. Langley has given them
will not need to be told why Leibntz has been
misunderstood He was, indeed. a man OF let
>ers hut he was not a literary man. He knew
eo MANY languages that he did not write admir-
ahIv in any and read go many books that he
could not write one. He was conscious OF the
difnculty but. like most men in similar case,
ne looked In the wrong direction for the cause.
Contrasting himself with Locke. he praised the
open and popular method of the English phiioso-
pher. and then described his own system OF
thought as acroamatic. In making TINS CRITICISM
on himself says his editor. he was thinking Oh
the distinction drawn by the old Greek phiioso-
..,ors ha,ween the rigorous scientific form OF
their lectures 10 chosen disciples and the lighter
way which they followed in their writings
Ieibnitz intimated that the obstacles raised
s., N. abs,ractness of his thought were less
formidable in dead language than IN hVihs
one But he might have observed that he look
more pains to express his thought IN oeao
language. that Is in Latin, than ne Ola Wheh lie
nsed one Of the living languages with whch ne
was more or less familiar In French or Ger
man he doubtless wrote very much as ne ta'heu
NOT the way to make literature ana ieast vi
ALL literature in the domain OF philosophE' nc
.harch, HE acroamatic mode Of writing the one
a,scovarv NJ truth'-as II philosophers hoped
"a find the truth at the end of their treatises In
stead OF embodying in these the truth which
.ho,, orr,ved at by previous thinking and obser-
walton. Thus the writing of philosophic essa!
rosnot with Leibnitz final step in the process
,,. IN Intermediate effort to reach the truth'
1Ia had mot the belief in the permanence or any
,ohor,e ~ nbilosophic thought that Locke doubt
,o,s bad in his own and so he lacked that sort
=, ,,sn,ration which makes il possible TO write
with enthusiasm His thought. too. was so wioe-
rsacb,ne because Of his almost unlimited Kno"i-
edee Of what men had reasoned or imagined De-
fore his time that If he had stopped reaoihs
altogether lifetime would not have sufhceu u
oo,,n,ete the structure which he had IN nina
Resides. II he had stopped reading ne Wouiu
,o,.o ,ost the principal stimulus that goaded MIN
to writing.
II Is possible now TO make comparison oe
twsen him and Locke such as neither OF 'heih
.,o,no,ea Locke was one Of the most popular
,hu,sonbers Of his time. In a sense, and pretty
large sense II can be said that neither the Ameri-
can Revolution nor the French Revolution Woulu
have been Just what they were without Ills wiz
,nps Yet Hume bowled the whole system over
with those two famous billiard balls. wnich shook
oil the contents out Of causality as datum OF
tharh nd %
was popular as philosopher. But the fragments
-, the system which he outlined but never
Nn,sbed still stand, weatherbeaten and de
.noYea like the broken columns of some ancient
,enple. He Is still vital force In philosophy
He would doubtless he the same If he had put
his writings in the form which he declared was
nossble that Of mathematical demonstrations
In metaphysics and ethics. He knew OF attempts
az such precision. but he supposed that the au-
thors like Persius, were discouraged by 'he
ar swer 10 the question: Who reads these things! !
~ believe however" he added. meditatively, |
that II they would undertake 1t in the proper
way they would not be likely to repent 1t. Ana |
have been tempted to try 1t"
But he never did try it. unless In some OBSCURE
fragment What he did was TO scatter his
thoughts In brief essays. in critical articles IN
etters innumerable. in prefaces even in
n Latin verse a greater theme than that OF
ucratius no less a theme In fact. than Leb-
,itzs theory Of monads In this poem, If no
yhere else Ieibnitz abandoned himself to the
bought that In devising the monad he had
ctually discovered the innermost secret or
allure To the atoms OF Lucretius and of the
philosophers of his own times. whom he calls
'eripatetics, ne objected on mathematical
rounds. In the appendix to this volume MT
.angey has translated series Of short papers
\ which LeibnitZ reduced the old doctrine or
toms TO an absurdity. AS to modern atomism,
nat OF the chemists. for example, he would un-
oubtedy claim that it owed as much 10 him as
, ANYBODY. His monads were not supposed to
e matter In fact, matter did not exist for him
nv more than 1t did for Berkeley. Both saw
nly phenomena; but while Berkeley found be-
ind phenomena one reality alone, I-eibntz di-
med in every phenomenon a real thing. an
oitome Of all reality and all phenomena, differ
IL from other realities chat is from other mo-
ads) only in being more or less alert than they
, the facts that were potential In IT, Thus
ebntz had no occasion to trouble himself, ex- ,
ut by way OF criticism. with the question
neither matter could think or not. 1t sufflced I
m TO show that Locke was not consistent. and | +
'uld not be consistent as long as he retained s
5 hold upon mere materalsm. Leibnitzs own I
onads to be real had to be psychcal, not cor ,
,real; not physical. but metaphysical. II he {
volted from atomism the one side, and from ,
e view Of Spinoza that nothing but God eX- ,
ted on the other, he could al least find refuge /,
it'll Bruno in the notion that in the universe i,
ch part was identical with the whole. and in its ,
tivity sooner or later represented every other =
rt of the whole. )
Az the whole world shines in each monad, the ,
to-
e highest form of this activity known to man q
that of the human consciousness. But Leb- 9
tx conceives Of higher forms as genii and >
gels as he knows Of lower ones in the varied Il
nds Of animal and vegetable life. The out u
me of his theory is. in the first place, an evolu- q
nsm which is as distinct in its own way a. o.
af OF Darwin or Snencer Then Lei