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Updated: June 10, 2025
The apologetics of Pascal, of Leibnitz, of Secretan, are to me no more convincing than those of the Middle Ages, for they presuppose what is really in question a revealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeable Christianity. It seems to me that what remains to me from all my studies is a new phenomenology of mind, an intuition of universal metamorphosis.
He had commenced with the theological philosophy in use in his country, that of Wolf, which on broad lines was that of Leibnitz. But he early read David Hume, and the train of thought of the sceptical Scotsman at least gave him the idea of submitting all philosophic ideas to a severe and close criticism. He first of all asked himself what the true value is of our knowledge and what knowledge is.
Witness his effort at the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. After Leibnitz came Kant. He certainly was very much of a German. He owned, nevertheless, that he had learned from Rousseau to honor the common man who, not being a savant, possesses moral value far above the savant, who has no merit but science.
A similar tendency toward compromise this time it is a synthesis of Leibnitz and Newton is seen in his Habilitationsschrift, Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio, 1755, and in the dissertation Monadologia Physica, 1756.
It is beside the mark, at present, to inquire how far Leibnitz paints a true picture, and how far he is guilty of a spiteful caricature of Newton's views in these passages; and whether the beliefs which Locke is known to have entertained are consistent with the conclusions which may logically be drawn from some parts of his works.
This medium, Leibnitz thought, was some per se efficient physical antecedent; while the Cartesians imagined for the purpose the theory of Occasional Causes, that is, supposed that God, not quâ mind, or quâ volition, but quâ omnipotent, intervenes to connect the volition and the motion: so far is the mind from being forced to think the action of mind on matter more natural than that of matter on matter.
For Leibnitz this world is the best because it conspires to perpetuate consciousness, and, together with consciousness, will, because intelligence increases will and perfects it, because the end of man is the contemplation of God; while for Schopenhauer this world is the worst of all possible worlds, because it conspires to destroy will, because intelligence, representation, nullifies the will that begot it.
In the "Principia" Newton published for the first time the fundamental principle of the fluxionary calculus which he had discovered about twenty years before; but not till 1693 was his whole work communicated to the mathematical world. This delay in publication led to the historical controversy between him and Leibnitz as to priority of discovery.
It will hereafter be clearly seen, we trust, that it is not possible for any one, holding the scheme of a Calvin, or a Leibnitz, or a Descartes, or an Edwards, to show an agreement between the power of God and the freedom of man; since according to these systems there is an eternal opposition and conflict between them.
From the time of Socrates and Plato, and throughout the medieval ages, the foremost task of the philosopher seemed to be to attempt the proof of the existence and nature of God, and the immortality of the soul. The leading thinkers of the seventeenth century, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Malebranche, liberated philosophy from its bondage to theology.
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