the same direction of action,' and if this were all he might still be a Spinozist, since these laws might be metaphysically necessary. On the other hand, when he speaks of the laws of the mechanism as based on final causes he does not usually give as the ground for this that they are the laws of the monads, but rather that they are chosen freely by God in his wisdom in order to realize the best in his world.2 But while agreeing with Dillman in this respect, it does seem evident from the passage cited from the letter to Remond de Montmort, that the two conceptions were really in this case at least brought together, and in the Principes de la Nature et de la Grace of the same year a closer relation between the two points of view is also suggested than elsewhere appears. For the monads, it is important to remember, are not independent of God. Their laws are chosen by him, and though if we consider them abstractly, we might say with Dillman3 that their harmony does not depend on their dependence on God, but on the essential nature of the monad as a microcosmus reproducing in unity the plurality of the world, we must yet remember that this is only an abstraction, that the essential natures of the monads are only the constitution given by God in selecting the best possible world, and thus are but expressions of his being.*

1II. 58, 314; IV. 434, 444, 466, 472, 390 f, 479, 505; VII. 305, 344.

2 IV. 281, 284, 560, 445; VII. 344, 501, 451; VI. 37, 44, 319-321, 633. Confusion of these two points seems to have led Stein (p. 120) to state that Leibniz had in 1678 given up final causes. The letter to Conring which he adduces as proof, says nothing about final causes, and indeed its language about the futility of using forms and faculties to explain nature is in precisely the same tone, as his language of 1686. Cf. IV., 434 and II., 77. Moreover, on page 196, I., he explains the language to which Stein alludes (I., 186) "Omnia fieri mechanice in natura, id est certis legibus mathematia cis DEO praescriptis."

3 P. 375 ff.

4IV. 476, 548, 492, 498 f, etc. Dillmann (pp. 452, 460) cites these and many other similar passages, but interprets them to mean not that God produces and preserves the monads in the sense that he causes substances and their natures to arise, but that God is the Act corresponding to such a realizing and preservation of things (p. 469). Others before Dillmann have remarked that one class of the expressions of Leibniz might be so taken as to make God almost but another name for the harmony of the monads, but that this is the force of such passages as cited above seems hardly credible.

7. The aspects of Leibniz's system which more immediately concern us are then the following:

(1) All nature is to be explained mechanically and also teleologically; we are to trace the mechanism and also to state the functions and uses of the parts though never confusing the two and resorting to final causes in the case of organisms, for it is as easy for God to produce these through strictly mechanical modes of action, and it would be unscientific to call in his special aid as that of a Deus ex machina in this case.1 We must remember that the soul never directly influences the body or the reverse. No particular phenomenon can thus ever be explained by the use of final causes.2

3

(2). The general laws of the mechanism are chosen by God in accordance with his aim to produce the best world. It follows then that we may make use of final causes in physics, not for explaining particular phenome na but for discovering laws of motion-for example, the laws of refraction and reflection of light. The ground of the statement that the laws of the mechanism itself cannot be mechanically explained is apparent from a moment's thought of what mechanical explanation aims to do. It simply connects phenomena in time and space according to certain general rules called laws of motion, etc. But is this all which the human mind craves by way of explanation? This is as if one would explain the campaign of a prince by stating that at a given time the grains of gunpowder exploded with a velocity sufficient to drive a hard body against the wall of an opposing city. The mind demands a ground for the harmony and unity. It rests in a final cause, such as the choice of the best, and in nothing else.

(3) This demand for unity finds expression in the conception of the monads. It was to find a ground for the unity which manifests itself in every organic body that Leibinz was led to "rehabilitate the substantial forms, "5 which must be conceived in imitation of the notion which we have of souls." " These act

1IV. 447.

2 IV. 397, 472; II. 314; VI. 547.

3 III. 54; IV.339, 284, 444-448, 472, 506, 398; VI.603; VII. 270, 280.

4 IV. 446.

5 IV. 478.

6 IV. 479.

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always from the laws of perception, that is, toward ends, and in this way all that is real in nature is seen to be teleological. There is no other unity possible, and given this no other device, such as "plastic natures," or "vital principle," is needed to explain the life of organisms.1

(4) This demand for harmony and unity is further met by the conception of the pre-established harmony. If the different substances cannot act on each other and yet so act as if there were this constant interaction, we must regard them as in harmony, and if this is not to be a mere external, miraculous harmony such as occasionalism offers, it must be in the nature of the substances. But if these are really distinct substances, a harmony between them is unthinkable, except as mediated in one all-embracing thought established or pre-established by God; for, as Prof. Dewey has remarked, "Pre-established harmony" is really a tautology. "Harmony means pre-established harmony."

(5) There is an end for the whole creation, the realization of the best. Man may not regard everything as existing solely for him, but he may regard all as for him, and the evils which are apparent are to be regarded as the means to a greater good than would have been possible without them.

8. To these points we shall return when we come to examine the relation of Kant to Leibniz. Now we stop to notice aspects of Leibniz's doc

2

the modification which the teleological trine sustained at the hands of Wolff. In general we may say that this consisted in an emphasizing of one side of the first aspect, viz., the use of final causes in explaining the events and forms of natnre, while the second point, the pre-established harmony is almost entirely neglected. Wolff lays weight on the contingent nature of the world to prove, not that it receives its unity from thought, but that it must have a sufficient ground for its existence in a necessary Being outside the world.3 is the cosmological argument, not the physico-theological on which he places chief reliance, but in his Physik, whose character is better indicated by its secondary titles, Von den Absichten

1 VI. 539 ff.

2 B. Erdmann, “M. Knutzen und seine Zeit,” p. 57. "Von den Absichten der Natürlichen Dinge, p. 7.

It

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der Natürlichen Dinge, Von den Absichten der Theile des Menschen, etc., he follows out into the greatest detail the uses of all things in the world. Having laid the basis of his argument in the syllogism' that since every reasonable being acts according to purposes, God as the most reasonable being must act completely according to purposes, he proceeds in his work above. named to show the aims subserved by the motion of world bodies, their size, and structure, and more particularly the aims exhibited by sun, moon, stars, air, winds, mist, clouds, dew, rain, hail, lightning, fire and living creatures. These are all for man who, in turn may be regarded as an end in himself, as he alone can know God. Wolff's thought is not that these various parts of nature subsist independently of any system of mechanical causes. On the contrary, it is because all are so perfectly bound together in one system of means and ends that the wisdom of God is disclosed.3 "It is impossible to imagine a world which should evidence more wisdom since all things are here connected;" and yet in all this treatise one finds the emphasis laid entirely on the design shown in particular objects in nature, with no regard to the question as to whether they were susceptible of a more general explanation. In fact, the very likeness of the world to a machine and more particularly to a clock which occupies so large a place in the Cosmologia, conveys the idea that each part was made for its place and put in by God.

The teleological views of all these writers with the possible exception of Gassendi and Boyle were known to Kant. Those of Newton, Leibniz and Wolff were most influential, either directly or as suggesting criticism.

9. Wolff gave the method for the popular teleology of Kant's cotemporaries as appears from the latter's account of the common method of physico-theological argument. As representative of the general method Kant mentions Reimarus whose work, Von

4

1 Von Gott der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, § 1026.

2 Absichten der Natürlichen Dinge.

§14.

4 H. II. 204; V. 491. The references to Kant are to Hartenstein's edition 1867-63, except in the case of references to the Critique of Pure Reason, which is indicated by the letters A and B, standing for the first and second editions respectively.

den Vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Natürlichen Religion, gives a good view of the prevailing dogmatic method, but adds no new principle to the discussion of the subject. This last may be said also of Lamettrie's L'homme Machine, which criticises all teleology.

10. One writer of an opposite tendency must, however, be mentioned, Maupertuis, President of the Royal Academy at Berlin, whose Essai de Cosmologie appearing in 1751 and read by Kant,' offers important analogies to the first essay of Kant in the teleological field. Manpertuis was, according to d'Alembert, the first of scientific men on the continent to adopt Newton's system; but in this Essai he criticises Newton's claim that the fact that the planets move all in one regular direction is an evidence of intelligent choice. Regularity proves nothing unless we see that it was better to make them move thus rather than otherwise. Nor is the adaptation of organisms to fulfill their various functions any cogent proof that they were created for this express purpose. May it not be simply a case of the survival of those forms which are adapted to their environment? Are the poisonous plants and noxious animals so carefully preserved by nature, fitted to make us recognize the goodness and wisdom of the creator? Not in the details, nor in the conflicting testimony of organic life, but in the universal laws imposed on nature, is the best opportunity to discover the wisdom of the Supreme Being. These laws, deduced from the attributes of a Being all powerful and all wise are found to coincide with the actually existing laws of nature. If any one objects that the laws of movement are merely the necessary consequences of the nature of matter, and that it is irrational to attribute to Providence what is only the effect of necessity, it may be answered that this very thing proves the perfection of the Supreme Being. "C'est que toutes choses soient tellement ordonnées qu'une Mathématique aveugle et necessaire exécute, ce que l'intelligence la plus eclairée et la plus libre prescrivoit." The principle so eminently in accordance with supreme wisdom from which laws of motion may be deduced is that of "least quantity of action." "When any change occurs in nature the quantity of action neces

1 Refered to, H. II. 141.

2 Essai p. XXXIV.

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