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Updated: June 10, 2025
But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable, and for the same reason. The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme form, as we find it in Leibniz for example, implies that things and beings merely realize a programme previously arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, no invention or creation in the universe, time is useless again.
A general, a former professor in the War College, told me that when he heard a great merchant tell of the quick and sure service of his commercial information, the conception of the whole, and the care in all the details of his operations, he could not keep from exclaiming, "Why, that is war!" Leibniz. General Bonnal, Les Maîtres de la Guerre, 1899, p. 137. Op. cit., p. 6.
Certainly, the philosophy of Kant is also imbued with the belief in a science single and complete, embracing the whole of the real. Indeed, looked at from one aspect, it is only a continuation of the metaphysics of the moderns and a transposition of the ancient metaphysics. Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypostatized in God the unity of knowledge.
Pourquoi ne pas espérer de finir, par les mêmes moyens, des disputes, moins difficiles, et moins importantes?" With these rational and conciliatory dispositions, Bossuet, and Molanus, proceeded. But, after this stage of the business, Molanus disappears, and Leibniz comes on the scene.
For Leibniz, on the contrary, extension is indeed still a translation, but it is thought that is the original, and thought might dispense with translation, the translation being made only for us. In positing God, we necessarily posit also all the possible views of God, that is to say, the monads.
In short, Leibniz differs from Spinoza in this, that he looks upon the universal mechanism as an aspect which reality takes for us, whereas, Spinoza makes of it an aspect which reality takes for itself. It is true that, after having concentrated in God the whole of the real, it became difficult for them to pass from God to things, from eternity to time.
Semi-abstract, semi-poetic constructions, they are permeated with imagination not only in the general conception, but also in the numberless details of its application. Such are the "fulgurations" of Leibniz, those very rich digressions of Schopenhauer, etc.
Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel may be taken as typical of the philosophers whose interests are mainly religious and ethical, while Leibniz, Locke, and Hume may be taken as representatives of the scientific wing. In Aristotle, Descartes, Berkeley, and Kant we find both groups of motives strongly present.
Of the Project of Reunion, delivered by Molanus, a Lutheran Divine, and Bossuet's sentiments on that Project; 3dly. Of the intervention of Leibniz in the negotiation; and 4thly. Of the Project suggested by Bossuet, and the principal reasons, by which he contended for its reception.
The principal point developed by Leibniz is the richness of content which, according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. Its simplicity is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine Being, than like the simplicity of the atom of Epicurus, with which Bayle had chosen to compare it.
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