from the order of the world, but must first believe on other grounds that an infinitely good and perfect Being exists. The surest and easiest proof of the reality of an all-sufficient, infinitely wise and good Being who is known from the contemplation of the excellent arrangement which the world everywhere shows, is deprived of its strength through the system of Leibniz." On the other hand, the system of Pope is admirably adapted to give force to this proof, since he shows that all things have such and only such properties as harmonize to express the perfection of the Supreme Being. "Even the most essential and necessary determinations of things, the general laws which are set into a harmonious plan with reference to one another, without any forced union, adapt themselves, as it were, spontaneously to the maintenance of perfect ends." In 1759 we find Kant defending by an a priori argument the proposition of Optimism that this is the best possible world, without any reference to the method of Pope, but the two citicisms of the Leibnizian position, given above, contain the germs of important aspects of his later teleology. In particular he was strongly attracted by the thought that the general laws of the world through an internal rather than an external harmony, express the perfection and so prove the existence of God. This is developed in the treatise on the General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens.

2. In connection with the attempt to extend the method of Newton to the formation of solar and stellar systems from primitive matter, Kant gives the essence of the view which appears in greater details in the treatise, The Sole Ground for a Demonstration of the Being of God. This is briefly as follows. The ordinary argument, while emphasizing and praising the beauty and complete adaptation of means to ends in nature, asserts that this harmony is so far foreign to nature herself that if she were left entirely to her universal laws nothing but chaos would result. The harmony shows a hand interfering from without and forcing matter into a wise plan. Every phenomenon which can be shown to be the necessary result of universal laws is thus wrested from the domain of teleology, and every advance in science is thus a danger to religion.

1

But, urges Kant, if the universal laws of na

1H. I. 212 f.

ture have not the tendency to fulfill the plan of highest wisdom, is not one tempted to suspect that matter and its laws are independent of the supreme wisdom, and that this wisdom though great is not all-sufficient? On the other hand, suppose we grant that matter, determined according to its universal laws, produces beauty and all the useful and beneficent results which seem to be the mark of supreme wisdom, - produces them not simply accidentally, but working under laws of mathematical necessity, so that it could work in no other way, "what is to be thought of this consonance? How could things of different natures in connection with one another possibly produce such harmonies and beauties, and this, too, even for the ends of things which in a certain respect lie outside the sphere of dead matter, that is for the uses of men and animals, if these things of different natures did not acknowledge a common origin, namely, an infinite Understanding in which the essential qualities of all things have been projected with reference to one another? If their natures were necessary in themselves and independently, what an astonishing coincidence, or rather what an impossibility that they should fit together with their natural impulses precisely as a wise and considered choice could have united them "i

This position is further strengthened against the method of Wolff and Reimarus by showing that if we take particular constructions as the special ends of God, we immediately find our-, selves involved in difficulty when we find the opposite construction. If the inclination of the earth to its axis is due to the immediate hand of God, how explain the fact that Jupiter and Mars, also works of divine wisdom, have no inclination, or almost none??

Is this protest against the common physico-theology a return. to the position of Leibniz, or is it a product of Kant's own reflection, suggested perhaps by the similar protest of Manpertuis? It is perhaps not decisive against the dependence on Leibniz that the latter's name is not cited, though as Paulsen remarks it would seem natural to cite Leibniz rather than Descartes as a name by

'H. I. 215.

2 A. I. 327 f.

3

3

Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkennt nisstheorie. p. 57, note.

whose authority a somewhat heretical opinion might be fortified, but the whole tenor of the treatise, it seems to me, indicates rather that the scientific part was suggested by Newton, and that the teleological considerations grew out of the necessary expansion of the teleology of Newton, who had brought in the choice of God as means of explanation when, as he supposed, he had reached the end of mechanical explanation. This would, of course, not imply that Kant was ignorant of the point of view of Leibniz, but it means that his teleology took form and color from his own scientific criticism and extension of Newton's system, stimulated also, as we have seen, by his former comparison of Leibniz and Pope.

4. This opinion of the relation of Kant's early teleology to that of Leibniz is confirmed by a study of the next important treatise in this field, On the Sole Ground for a Demonstration of the Being of God. Aside from the a priori argument which does not concern us here, we have in the second division an a posteriori argument from the unity perceived in the essences of things. This a posteriori argument, with its connected distinction of moral and non-moral dependence, grew out of the teleology of the History of the Heavens. For if, as there maintained, matter working under laws of mathematical necessity produces harmony and beauty, the results of these laws, though dependent on the ultimate reality, are not properly the subject of voluntary choice in the sense in which contingent unities are. "That things exist which have so many beautiful relations is to be attributed to the wise choice of him who produced them for the sake of this harmony; that however each possesses so extended a fitness for manifold agreement through simple grounds, and that by this means an admirable unity could be contained in the whole,— this lies entirely in the possibility of things, and since here the contingent element which must be presupposed in the case of every choice, vanishes, the ground of this unity may be sought in a wise being, but not by virtue of his wisdom."1 Now this is a distinction which Leibniz not only did not make but which we can hardly suppose would have been accepted by him in the form in which it was used by Kant. At first sight it may seem like the distinction employed by Leibniz himself between the

1 H. II. 146.

laws which are of geometrical necessity and those which are the subject of choice. Kant's argument based on the necessary harmony may seem like the proof for the existence of God drawn from the harmony between the monads, which Leibniz regards as his own important contribution to the subject. Finally, Kant's attempt to show that the harmony in the geometrical properties of space and in the laws of motion implies as the ground of unity a wise Being, so that even the laws of mathematies and physics are not independent of God, may seem to agree perfectly with the statements of Leibniz that the understanding of God is the region of eternal truths, that without him there would not only be nothing existent but even nothing possible, that if there were no God there would be no geometry,' and the like.

No doubt a similar thought is at the basis of these various parallelisms. It is contended however, that the difference in the presentation and use of the above named distinction and argument is sufficient to show that Kant was not, at least consciously, borrowing from Leibniz. Indeed this argument may be regarded as a development of the criticism of Optimism already noticed, for that showed that Kant regarded the Leibizian system as failing to maintain logically the dependence of all things upon God, so that on this point he regarded himself as in antagonism to the Leibnizian system, whether rightly or wrongly does not matter. In the present treatise, Kant further aims to show that the common view which treats all harmony as accidental is not only opposed to the advance of science, but is even liable to the charge that it can prove only a wise architect, not a wise creator. His own view, on

the other hand, which regards most of inorganic nature and some features of organic nature as due to a necessary rather than an accidental unity, presupposes a wise Being as ground of matter and its qualities, as well as the arranger of the accidental, and so, freely chosen unities of the organic world.

Now, instead of regarding the harmony between general laws or between the ultimate substances, the monads, as due to a non-moral dependence upon God, Leibniz represents this as due

1 W. VI. 226 f; 614.

to constitutions given by God.' Further Leibniz uses expressions regarding laws of motion which indicate that his view on this point is quite different from Kant's. Thus in Principles of Na

ture and Grace:

"La Sagesse Supreme de Dieu l'a fait choisir surtout les loix des mouvements les mieux ajustées, et les plus convenables aux raisons abstractes ou metaphysiques. Il s'y conserve la même quantité de la force totale et absolue, ou de l'action; la même quantité de la force respective, ou de la réaction; la même quantité enfin de la force directive. De plus, l'action est tousjours égale à la réaction, et l'effet entier est tousjours equivalent à sa cause pleine."2

It seems improbable that Kant would have regarded the law of action and reaction as due to a choice of God. Indeed, he says that the laws of motion are absolutely necessary; that is, if the possibility of matter be presupposed, action according to other laws contradict the presupposition. Moreover he urges that the Leibnizian (or Wolffian) solution of the problem of harmony and uniformity in nature does not meet the real problem. This question is far from being sufficiently answered by an appeal to the wise choice of God which has once for all so arranged the course of nature that more frequent interpositions are unnecessary. For the greatest difficulty lies just here; how can it be possible to unite so great perfection in a series of cosmical events connected according to general laws?"

5. A further point of difference lies in the treatment of organic life. Leibniz while in a sense owing his monadology to the problem presented him by the unity of organisms, will yet make no exception in their favor to the strict adequacy of mechanical laws for the explanation of all phenomena. The two methods of explanation, by final and by efficient causes, apply as well to the "mechanical explanation of the primary tissue of an animal and the whole machine of its parts," as to all else:-"et Dieu est assez habile artisan pour produire une machine encor plus ingenieuse mille fois que celle de nostre corps en ne se servant que de quelques liquers assez simples expressement formés en sorte qu'il ne faille

1 W. IV. 492. Cf. references cited above, I. 7.

2 W. VI. 603.

3 H. II. 143.

'H. II. 152, note.