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Updated: May 10, 2025
Perhaps they were intended as the ornaments of faith, rather than as the radiant armour and the invincible weapons of reason. One bad feature thereof would be, according to Leibnitz, that it would interfere with the freedom of the will.
Darwin's theory of evolution and selection has changed our modern mode of studying the inorganic and organic phenomena of nature, and investigating the realities of truth. His theory is not altogether new, having been first proclaimed by Leibnitz, and followed up with regard to history by Giovanni Battista Vico.
We might therefore expect to find a theory of Progress developed there, parallel to the development in France though resting on different principles. For Leibnitz, as we saw, provided in his cosmic optimism a basis for the doctrine of human Progress, and he had himself incidentally pointed to it. This development, however, was delayed.
The demand of his own nature, which so strongly impelled Leibnitz to seek and cling to the freedom of the mind, as the basis of moral and accountable agency, could not rest satisfied with so unsubstantial a shadow.
Bacon, as the earliest path-breaker, showed the way, theoretically at least, in which the sciences should be studied; Descartes, pursuing the methods pointed out by Bacon, carried the same line of abstract reason into practice as well; while Leibnitz, coming some years later, and having the advantage of the wisdom of his two great predecessors, was naturally influenced by both in his views of abstract scientific principles.
Leibnitz termed the world, when viewed in relation to the rational beings which it contains, and the moral relations in which they stand to each other, under the government of the Supreme Good, the kingdom of Grace, and distinguished it from the kingdom of Nature, in which these rational beings live, under moral laws, indeed, but expect no other consequences from their actions than such as follow according to the course of nature in the world of sense.
By the law of the conservation of force, Leibnitz corrects the Cartesian doctrine of the conservation of motion, and approaches the point of view of the present day.
The petty complaint, that, while Leibnitz freely imparted his discoveries to Newton, the latter churlishly concealed his own, would deserve to be considered, if it were obligatory upon every man of genius to unfold immediately to the world the results of his labor.
The contest for priority between Leibnitz and Newton concerning the invention of the differential calculus was later settled by the decision that Newton invented his method of fluxions first, but that Leibnitz published his differential calculus earlier and in a more perfect form.
But Spinoza and Leibnitz both agree in this one peculiar conception in which they differ from all other philosophers before or after them that mind and body have no direct communication with each other, and that the phenomena of them merely correspond. M. de Careil says they both borrowed it from Descartes; but that is impossible.
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