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Updated: May 31, 2025
There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination without ceasing to be choice; and this is Leibniz's method, and it can be studied at length in the Theodicy.
I cannot but feel that this was a gain, rather than a loss; because it forced me, if I wished to give any interpretation at all of Alexandrian thought, any Theodicy at all of her fate, to refer to laws which I cannot but believe to be deeper, wider, more truly eternal than the points which cause most of our modern controversies, either theological or political; laws which will, I cannot but believe also, reassert themselves, and have to be reasserted by all wise teachers, very soon indeed, and it may be under most novel embodiments, but without any change in their eternal spirit.
It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the Theodicy. Then in the second place, the Theodicy itself is peculiarly rich in historical material.
All events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the least conscious. Leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article 'Rorarius' to other articles of Bayle's dictionary, and touches the question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their fuller treatment in the Theodicy.
The New Essays remained in Leibniz's desk, the Theodicy saw the light. And so, to his own and the succeeding generation, Leibniz was known as the author of the Theodicy. The articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. In 1696 Leibniz heard that a French translation of Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding was being prepared at Amsterdam.
Were history not always a disguised Christian theodicy, were it written with more justice and fervent feeling, it would be the very last thing on earth to be made to serve the purpose it now serves, namely, that of an opiate against everything subversive and novel.
It is possible, we are not gods, and something in us, something weak and unimportant sometimes, disturbs our theodicy. But the victory every day becomes easier, when one is sure of loving logic and truth. It gets to the point even of forestalling, of overcoming in advance, the subject of ill humor, of contempt or of discouragement.
Because he said that evidence alone and the free investigation of evidence led to truth, he has become the ancestor of the sceptics who are persuaded that surrender must be made only to evidence and that evidence cannot be found; and he has become the ancestor of the positivists who believe that evidence certainly exists somewhere, but not in metaphysics or in theodicy, or in knowledge of the soul, of immortality, and of God, branches of knowledge which surpass our means of knowing, which are in fact outside knowledge.
The idea of God, formulated by a theodicy that claims to be rational, is simply an hypothesis, like the hypotheses of ether, for example. Ether is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in so far as it explains that which by means of it we endeavour to explain light, electricity or universal gravitation and only in so far as these facts cannot be explained in any other way.
The poets of the fifth century reflect the conviction which all the higher minds of their country were now coming to hold, that the world is under the rule of one god. From this they are led to take up the questions of theodicy or of the principles of the divine government. Why is Prometheus, though the noblest benefactor of the human race, doomed to undergo such sufferings?
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