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Leibniz, like every great man, absorbed into himself the various thoughts of his time, and in absorbing transformed them. He brought into a focus of brilliancy the diffused lights of truth shining here and there. He summed up in a pregnant and comprehensive category the scattered principles of his age. Yet we are not to suppose that Leibniz considered these various ideas one by one, and then patched them into an artificial unity of thought. Philosophies are not manufactured piecemeal out of isolated and fragmentary thoughts; they grow from a single root, absorbing from their environment whatever of sustenance offers itself, and maturing in one splendid fruit of spiritual truth. It is convenient, indeed, to isolate various phases of truth, and consider them as distinct forces working to shape one final product, and as a convenient artifice it is legitimate. But it answers to no process actually occurring. Leibniz never surrendered his personal unity, and out of some one root-conception grew all his ideas. The principles of his times were not separate forces acting upon him, they were the foods of which he selected and assimilated such as were fitted to nourish his one great conception.

But it is more than a personal unity which holds together the thinking of a philosopher. There is the unity of the problem, which the philosopher has always before him, and in which all particular ideas find their unity. All else issues from this and merges into it. The various influences which we have seen affecting Leibniz, therefore, got their effectiveness from the relation which he saw them bear to the final problem of all thought. This is the inquiry after the unity of experience, if we look at it from the side of the subject; the unity of reality, if we put it from the objective side. Yet each age states this problem in its own way, because it sees it in the light of some difficulty which has recently arisen in consciousness. At one time, the question is as to the relation of the one to the many; at another, of the relation of the sensible to the intelligible world; at another, of the relation of the individual to the universal. And this last seems to have been the way in which it specifically presented itself to Leibniz. This way of stating it was developed, though apparently without adequate realization of its meaning, by the philosophy of scholasticism. It stated the problem as primarily a logical question,—the relation of genera, of species, of individuals to each other. And the school-boy, made after the stamp of literary tradition, knows that there were two parties among the Schoolmen,—the Realists, and the Nominalists; one asserting, the other denying, the objective reality of universals. To regard this discussion as useless, is to utter the condemnation of philosophy, and to relegate the foundation of science to the realm of things not to be inquired into. To say that it is an easy matter to decide, is to assume the decision with equal ease of all the problems that have vexed the thought of humanity. To us it seems easy because we have bodily incorporated into our thinking the results of both the realistic and the nominalistic doctrines, without attempting to reconcile them, or even being conscious of the necessity of reconciliation. We assert in one breath that the individual is alone real, and in the next assert that only those forms of consciousness which represent something in the universe are to be termed knowledge. At one moment we say that universals are creations of the individual mind, and at the next pass on to talk of laws of nature, or even of a reign of law. In other words, we have learned to regard both the individual and the universal as real, and thus ignoring the problem, think we have solved it.

But to Leibniz the problem presented itself neither as a logical question, nor yet as one whose solution might be taken for granted. On the contrary, it was just this question: How shall we conceive the individual to be related to the universe? which seemed to him to be the nerve of the philosophic problem, the question whose right answer would solve the problems of religion, of morals, of the basis of science, as well as of the nature of reality. The importance of just this way of putting the question had been rendered evident by the predecessors and contemporaries of Leibniz, especially by Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke. His more specific relations to the last-named will occupy us hereafter; at present we must notice how the question stood at the hands of Descartes and Spinoza.

Descartes had separated the individual from the universal. His philosophy began and ended with a dualism. I have just said that the problem of philosophy is the unity of experience. Yet we find that there have been thinkers, and those of the first rank, who have left the matter without discovering any ultimate unity, or rather who have made it the burden of their contention that we cannot explain the world without at least two disparate principles. But if we continue to look at the matter in this historical way, we shall see that this dualism has always been treated by the successors of such a philosopher, not as a solution, but as a deeper statement of the problem. It is the function of dualistic philosophies to re-state the question in a new and more significant way. There are times when the accepted unity of thought is seen to be inadequate and superficial. Men are thrashing old straw, and paying themselves with ideas which have lost their freshness and their timeliness. There then arises a philosopher who goes deep, beyond the superficial unity, and who discovers the untouched problem. His it is to assert the true meaning of the question, which has been unseen or evaded. The attitude of dualism is thus always necessary, but never final. Its value is not in any solution, but in the generality and depth of the problem which it proposes, and which incites thought to the discovery of a unity of equal depth and comprehensiveness.

Except for Descartes, then, we should not be conscious of the gulf that yawns between the individual mind and the universe in front of it. He presented the opposition as between mind and matter. The essence of the former is thought; of the latter, extension. The conceptions are disparate and opposed. No interaction is possible. His disciples, more consistent than their master, called in a deus ex machina,—the miraculous intervention of God,—in order to account for the appearance of reciprocal action between the universe of matter and the thinking individual. Thus they in substance admitted the relation between them to be scientifically inexplicable, and had recourse to the supernatural. The individual does not act upon the universe to produce, destroy, or alter the arrangement of anything. But upon the occasion of his volition God produces a corresponding material change. The world does not act upon the soul of the individual to produce thoughts or sensations. God, upon occasion of the external affection, brings them into being. With such thoroughness Descartes performed his task of separation. Yet the introduction of the deus ex machina only complicated the problem; it introduced a third factor where two were already too many. What is the relation of God to Mind and to Matter? Is it simply a third somewhat, equally distinct from both, or does it contain both within itself?

Spinoza attempted to solve the problem in the latter sense. He conceived God to be the one substance of the universe, possessing the two known attributes of thought and matter. These attributes are one in God; indeed, he is their unity. This is the sole legitimate outcome of the Cartesian problem stated as Descartes would have it stated. It overcomes the absoluteness of the dualism by discovering a common and fundamental unity, and at the same time takes the subject out of the realm of the miraculous. For the solution works both ways. It affects the nature of God, as well as of extension and thought. It presents him to us, not as a supernatural being, but as the unity of thought and extension. In knowing these as they are, we know God as he is. Spinoza, in other words, uses the conception of God in a different way from the Cartesians. The latter had treated him as the God of theology,—a being supernatural; Spinoza uses the conception as a scientific one, and speaks of Deus sive Natura.

Leibniz recognized the unphilosophic character of the recourse to a deus ex machina as clearly as Spinoza, and yet did not accept his solution. To find out why he did not is the problem of the historian of thought. The one cause which stands out above all others is that in the unity of Spinoza all difference, all distinction, is lost. All particular existences, whether things or persons, are modes of extension and thought. Their apparent existence is due to the imagination, which is the source of belief in particular things. When considered as they really are,—that is, by the understanding,—they vanish. The one substance, with its two unchanging attributes of thought and extension, alone remains. If it is a philosophic error to give a solution which permits of no unity, is it not equally a philosophic error to give one which denies difference? So it seemed to Leibniz. The problem is to reconcile difference in unity, not to swallow up difference in a blank oneness,—to reconcile the individual with the universe, not to absorb him.

The unsatisfactoriness of the solution appears if we look at it from another side. Difference implies change, while a unity in which all variety is lost implies quiescence. Change is as much an illusion of imagination to Spinoza as is variety. The One Reality is permanent. How repugnant the conception of a static universe was to Leibniz we have already learned. Spinoza fails to satisfy Leibniz, therefore, because he does not allow the conceptions of individuality and of activity. He presents a unity in which all distinction of individuals is lost, and in which there is no room for change. But Spinoza certainly presented the problem more clearly to Leibniz, and revealed more definitely the conditions of its solution. The search is henceforth for a unity which shall avoid the irresolvable dualism of Descartes, and yet shall allow free play to the principles of individuality and of activity. There must be, in short, a universe to which the individual bears a real yet independent relation. What is this unity? The answer, in the phraseology of Leibniz, is the monad. Spinoza would be right, said Leibniz, were it not for the existence of monads. I know there are some who have done Leibniz the honor of supposing that this is his way of saying, “Spinoza is wrong because I am right;” but I cannot help thinking that the saying has a somewhat deeper meaning. What, then, is the nature of the monad? The answer to this question takes us back to the point where the discussion of the question was left at the end of chapter second. The nature of the monad is life. The monad is the spiritual activity which lives in absolute harmony with an infinite number of other monads.

Let us first consider the reasons of Leibniz for conceiving the principle of unity as spiritual. Primarily it is because it is impossible to conceive of a unity which is material. In the sensible world there is no unity. There are, indeed, aggregations, collections, which seem like unities; but the very fact that these are aggregations shows that the unity is factitious. It is the very nature of matter to be infinitely divisible: to say this is to deny the existence of any true principle of unity. The world of nature is the world of space and time; and where in space or time shall we find a unity where we may rest? Every point in space, every moment in time, points beyond itself. It refers to a totality of which it is but a part, or, rather, a limitation. If we add resistance, we are not better situated. We have to think of something which resists; and to this something we must attribute extension,—that is to say, difference, plurality. Nor can we find any resistance which is absolute and final. There may be a body which is undivided, and which resists all energy now acting upon it; but we cannot frame an intelligible idea of a body which is absolutely indivisible. To do so is to think of a body out of all relation to existing forces, something absolutely isolated; while the forces of nature are always relative to one another. That which resists does so in comparison with some opposing energy. The absolutely indivisible, on the other hand, would be that which could not be brought into comparison with other forces; it would not have any of the attributes of force as we know it. In a word, whatever exists in nature is relative in space, in time, and in qualities to all else. It is made what it is by virtue of the totality of its relations to the universe; it has no ultimate principle of self-subsistent unity in it.

Nor do we fare better if we attempt to find unity in the world of nature as a whole. Nature has its existence as a whole in space and time. Indeed, it is only a way of expressing the totality of phenomena of space and time. It is a mere aggregate, a collection. Its very essence is plurality, difference. It is divisible without limit, and each of its divisions has as good a right to be called one as the whole from which it is broken off. We shall consider hereafter Leibniz’s idea of infinity; but it is easy to see that he must deny any true infinity to nature. An ultimate whole made up of parts is a contradictory conception; and the idea of a quantitative infinite is equally so. Quantity means number, measure, limitation. We may not be able to assign number to the totality of occurrences in nature, nor to measure her every event. This shows that nature is indefinitely greater than any assignable quantity; but it does not remove her from the category of quantity. As long as the world is conceived as that existing in space and time, it is conceived as that which has to be measured. As we saw in the last chapter, the heart of the mechanical theory of the world is in the application of mathematics to it. Since quantity and mathematics are correlative terms, the natural world cannot be conceived as infinite or as an ultimate unity.

In short, Leibniz urges and suggests in one form and another those objections to the mechanical theory of reality which later German philosophers have made us so familiar with. The objections are indeed varied in statement, but they all come to the impossibility of finding any unity, any wholeness, anything except plurality and partiality in that which is externally conditioned,—as everything is in nature.

But the reasons as thus stated are rather negative than positive. They show why the ultimate unity cannot be conceived as material, rather than why it must be conceived as spiritual. The immediate evidence of its spiritual nature Leibniz finds in the perception of the one unity directly known to us,—the “me,” the conscious principle within, which reveals itself as an active force, and as truly one, since not a spatial or temporal existence. And this evidence he finds confirmed by the fact that whatever unity material phenomena appear to have comes to them through their perception by the soul. Whatever the mind grasps in one act, is manifested as one.

But it is not in any immediate certainty of fact that Leibniz finds the best or completest demonstration of the spiritual nature of the ultimate unity. This is found in the use which can be made of the hypothesis. The truest witness to the spiritual character of reality is found in the capacity of this principle to comprehend and explain the facts of experience. With this conception the reason of things can be ascertained, and light introduced into what were otherwise a confused obscurity. And, indeed, this is the only sufficient proof of any doctrine. It is not what comes before the formulation of a theory which proves it; it is not the facts which suggest it, or the processes which lead up to it: it is what comes after the formation of the theory,—the uses that it can be put to; the facts which it will render significant. The whole philosophy of Leibniz in its simplicity, width, and depth, is the real evidence of the truth of his philosophical principle.

The monad, then, is a spiritual unity; it is individualized life. Unity, activity, individuality are synonymous terms in the vocabulary of Leibniz. Every unity is a true substance, containing within itself the source and law of its own activity. It is that which is internally determined to action. It is to be conceived after the analogy of the soul. It is an indivisible unity, like “that particular something in us which thinks, apperceives and wills, and distinguishes us in a way of its own from whatever else thinks and wills.” Against Descartes, therefore, Leibniz stands for the principle of unity; against Spinoza, he upholds the doctrine of individuality, of diversity, of multiplicity. And the latter principle is as important in his thought as the former. Indeed, they are inseparable. The individual is the true unity. There is an infinite number of these individuals, each distinct from every other. The law of specification, of distinction, runs through the universe. Two beings cannot be alike. They are not individualized merely by their different positions in space or time; duration and extension, on the contrary, are, as we have seen, principles of relativity, of connection. Monads are specified by an internal principle. Their distinct individuality is constituted by their distinct law of activity. Leibniz will not have a philosophy of abstract unity, representing the universe as simple only, he will have a philosophy equal to the diversity, the manifold wealth of variety, in the universe. This is only to say that he will be faithful to his fundamental notion,—that of Life. Life does not mean a simple unity like a mathematical one, it means a unity which is the harmony of the interplay of diverse organs, each following its own law and having its own function. When Leibniz says, God willed to have more monads rather than fewer, the expression is indeed one of naïveté, but the thought is one of unexplored depth. It is the thought that Leibniz repeats when he says, “Those who would reduce all things to modifications of one universal substance do not have sufficient regard to the order, the harmony of reality.” Leibniz applies here, as everywhere, the principle of continuity, which is unity in and through diversity, not the principle of bare oneness. There is a kingdom of monads, a realm truly infinite, composed of individual unities or activities in an absolute continuity. Leibniz was one of the first, if not the first, to use just the expression “uniformity of nature;” but even here he explains that it means “uniform in variety, one in principle, but varied in manifestation.” The world is to be as rich as possible. This is simply to say that distinct individuality as well as ultimate unity is a law of reality.

But has not Leibniz fallen into a perilous position? In avoiding the monotone of unity which characterizes the thought of Spinoza, has he not fallen into a lawless variety of multiplicity, infinitely less philosophic than even the dualism of Descartes, since it has an infinity of ultimate principles instead of only two? If Spinoza sacrificed the individual to the universe, has not Leibniz, in his desire to emphasize the individual, gone to the other extreme? Apparently we are introduced to a universe that is a mere aggregate of an infinite multiplicity of realities, each independent of every other. Such a universe would not be a universe. It would be a chaos of disorder and conflict. We come, therefore, to a consideration of the relation between these individual monads and the universe. We have to discover what lifts the monads out of their isolation and bestows upon them that stamp of universality which makes it possible for them to enter into the coherent structure of reality: in a word, what is the universal content which the monad in its formal individuality bears and manifests?

The way in which the question has just been stated suggests the Leibnizian answer. The monad, indeed, in its form is thoroughly individual, having its own unique mode of activity; but its content, that which this activity manifests, is not peculiar to it as an individual, but is the substance or law of the universe. It is the very nature of the monad to be representative. Its activity consists in picturing or reproducing those relations which make up the world of reality. In a conscious soul, the ability thus to represent the world is called “perception,” and thus Leibniz attributes perception to all the monads. This is not to be understood as a conscious representation of reality to itself (for this the term “apperception” is reserved), but it signifies that the very essence of the monad is to produce states which are not its own peculiar possessions, but which reflect the facts and relations of the universe. Leibniz never wearies in finding new ways to express this purely representative character of the monad. The monads are little souls; they are mirrors of the world; they are concentrations of the universe, each expressing it in its own way; borrowing a term from scholasticism, they are “substantial forms.” They are substantial, for they are independent unities; they are forms, because the term “form” expresses, in Aristotelian phraseology, the type or law of some class of phenomena. The monad is an individual, but its whole content, its objectivity or reality, is the summation of the universe which it represents. It is individual, but whatever marks it as actual is some reproduction of the world. His reconciliation of the principles of individuality and universality is contained in the following words: “Each monad contains within itself an order corresponding to that of the universe,—indeed, the monads represent the universe in an infinity of ways, all different, and all true, thus multiplying the universe as many times as is possible, approaching the divine as near as may be, and giving the world all the perfection of which it is capable.” The monad is individual, for it represents reality in its own way, from its own point of view. It is universal, for its whole content is the order of the universe.

New light is thus thrown upon the former statement that reality is activity, that the measure of a being is the action which it puts forth. That statement is purely formal. It leaves the kind of activity and its law wholly undetermined. But this relation of “representativeness” which we have discovered gives definiteness. It is the law of the monad’s action to mirror, to reflect, the universe; its changes follow each other so as to bring about this reflection in the completest degree possible. The monad is literally the many in the one; it is the answer to the inquiry of Greek philosophy. The many are not present by way of participation in some underlying essence, not yet as statically possessed by the one, as attributes are sometimes supposed to inhere in a substratum. The “many” is the manifestation of the activity of the “one.” The one and the many are related as form and content in an organic unity, which is activity. The essence of a substance, says Leibniz, consists in that regular tendency of action by which its phenomena follow one another in a certain order; and that order, as he repeatedly states, is the order in which the universe itself is arranged.

The activity of a monad may be advantageously compared to that of a supposed atom, granting, for the sake of the illustration, that there is such a thing. Each is in a state of change: the atom changes its place, the monad its representation, and each in the simplest and most uniform way that its conditions permit. How, then, is there such a similarity, such a monotony, in the change of an atom, and such variety and complexity in the change of a monad? It is because the atom has merely parts, or external variety, while the monad has an internal variety. Multiplicity is organically wrought into its very being. It has an essential relation to all things in the universe; and to say that this relation is essential, is to say that it is one which constitutes its very content, its being. Hence the cause of the changes of the monad, of their variety and complexity, is one with the cause of the richness, the profusion, the regulated variety of change in the universe itself. While we have employed a comparison with atoms, this very comparison may serve to show us the impossibility of atoms as they are generally defined by the physicist turned philosopher. Atoms have no internal and essential relation to the world; they have no internal connection with any one thing in the world: and what is this but to say that they do not enter anywhere into the structure of the world? By their very conception they are forever aliens, banished from any share or lot in the realm of reality. The idea which Leibniz never lets go, the idea which he always accentuates, is, then, the idea of an individual activity which in its continual change manifests as its own internal content and reality that reality and those laws of connection which make up the world itself.

We are thus introduced naturally to the conception which plays so large a part in the Leibnizian philosophy, that of pre-established harmony. This term simply names the fact, which we see to be fundamental with Leibniz,—the fact that, while the form of every monad is individuality, a unique principle of action, its content is universal, the very being and laws of the world. For we must now notice more explicitly what has been wrapped up in the idea all along. There is no direct influence of monads upon each other. One cannot affect another causally. There is no actual interaction of one upon another. Expressed in that figurative language which was ever natural to Leibniz, the monads have no windows by which anything can get in or out. This follows, of course, from the mutual independence and individuality of the monads. They are a true democracy, in which each citizen has sovereignty. To admit external influences acting upon them is to surrender their independence, to deny their sovereignty. But we must remember the other half. This democracy is not after the Platonic conception of democracy, in which each does as it pleases, and in which there is neither order nor law, but the extremest assertion of individuality. What each sovereign citizen of the realm of reality expresses is precisely law. Each is an embodiment in its own way of the harmony, the order, of the whole kingdom. Each is sovereign because it is dynamic law,—law which is no longer abstract, but has realized itself in life. Thus another way of stating the doctrine of pre-established harmony is the unity of freedom and necessity. Each monad is free because it is individual, because it follows the law of its own activity unhindered, unretarded, by others; it is self-determined. But it is self-determined to show forth the order, the harmony, of the universe. There is nothing of caprice, of peculiarity, in the content of the monad. It shows forth order; it is organized by law; it reveals the necessary connections which constitute the universe. The pre-established harmony is the unity of the individual and the universe; it is the organic oneness of freedom and necessity.

We see still further what it means when we learn that it is by this conception that Leibniz reconciles the conceptions of physical and final causation. There is no principle closer to the thought of Leibniz than that of the equal presence and efficiency everywhere of both physical and final causes. Every fact which occurs is susceptible of a mechanical and of a rational explanation. It is necessarily connected with preceding states, and it has a necessary end which it is fulfilling. The complete meaning of this principle will meet us hereafter; at present we must notice that it is one form of the doctrine of pre-established harmony. All things have an end because they form parts of one system; everything that occurs looks forward to something else and prepares the way for it, and yet it is itself mechanically conditioned by its antecedents. This is only another way of saying that there is complete harmony between all beings in the universe; so that each monad in fulfilling the law of its own existence contributes to the immanent significance of the universe. The monads are co-ordinated in such a way that they express a common idea. There is a plan common to all, in which each has its own place. All are making towards one goal, expressing one purpose. The universe is an organism; and Leibniz would have applied to it the words which Milne-Edwards applied to the human organism, as I find them quoted by Lewes: “In the organism everything seems to be calculated with one determined result in view; and the harmony of the parts does not result from the influence which they exert upon one another, but from their co-ordination under the rule of a common force, a preconceived plan, a pre-existent force.” That is to say, the universe is teleological, both as a whole and in its parts; for there is a common idea animating it and expressed by it; it is mechanical, for this idea is realized and manifested by the outworking of forces.

It ought to be evident even from this imperfect sketch that the Leibnizian theory of pre-established harmony is not that utterly artificial and grotesque doctrine which it is sometimes represented to be. The phrase “pre-established harmony” is, strictly speaking, tautologous. The term “pre-established” is superfluous. It means “existent.” There is no real harmony which is not existent or pre-established. An accidental harmony is a contradiction in terms. It means a chaotic cosmos, an unordered order, a lawless law, or whatever else is nonsensical.

Harmony, in short, means relation, means connection, means subordination and co-ordination, means adjustment, means a variety, which yet is one. The Leibnizian doctrine is not a factitious product of his imagination, nor is it a mechanical scheme for reconciling a problem which has no existence outside of the bewildered brains of philosophers. It is an expression of the fact that the universe is one of order, of continuity, of unity; it is the accentuating of this doctrine so that the very essence of reality is found in this ordered combination; it is the special application of this principle to the solution of many of the problems which “the mind of man is apt to run into,”—the questions of the relation of the individual and the universal, of freedom and necessity, of the physical and material, of the teleological and mechanical. We may not be contented with the doctrine as he presents it, we may think it to be rather a summary and highly concentrated statement of the problem than its solution, or we may object to details in the carrying out of the doctrine. But we cannot deny that it is a genuine attempt to meet a genuine problem, and that it contains some, if not all, of the factors required for its adequate solution. To Leibniz must remain the glory of being the thinker to seize upon the perfect unity and order of the universe as its essential characteristic, and of arranging his thoughts with a view to discovering and expressing it.

We have but to notice one point more, and our task is done so far as it serves to make plain the standpoint from which Leibniz criticised Locke. There is, we have seen, the greatest possible continuity and complexity in the realm of monads. There is no break, quantitative nor qualitative. It follows that the human soul has no gulf set between it and what we call nature. It is only the highest, that is to say the most active and the most representative, of all monads. It stands, indeed, at the head of the scale, but not outside it. From the monad which reveals its presence in that stone which with blinded eyes we call dead, through that which acts in the plant, in the animal, up to that of man, there is no chasm, no interruption. Nay, man himself is but one link in the chain of spiritual beings which ends only in God. All monads are souls; the soul of man is a monad which represents the universe more distinctly and adequately. The law which is enfolded in the lower monads is developed in it and forms a part of its conscious activity. The universe, which is confusedly mirrored by the perception of the lower monad, is clearly brought out in the conscious apperception of man. The stone is representative of the whole world. An all-knowing intelligence might read in it relations to every other fact the world, might see exemplified the past history of the world, and prefigured the events to come. For the stone is not an isolated existence, it is an inter-organic member of a system. Change the slightest fact in the world, and in some way it is affected. The law of the universe is one of completed reciprocity, and this law must be mirrored in every existence of the universe. Increase the activity, the representative power, until it becomes turned back, as it were, upon itself, until the monad not only is a mirror, but knows itself as one, and you have man. The soul of man is the world come to consciousness of itself. The realm of monads in what we call the inorganic world and the lower organic realm shows us the monad let and hindered in its development. These realms attempt to speak forth the law of their being, and reveal the immanent presence of the universe; but they do not hear their own voice, their utterance is only for others. In man the universe is manifested, and is manifested to man himself.