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themselves upon our attention; notably, the functions or uses of parts of the body, e. g. the mouth for nutriment and respiration, and especially the umbilical vessels, the valves of the heart and the tendons of the fingers. Nor is it for theological purposes alone that final causes are worthy of study. They are frequently an aid in discovering the efficient causes in which alone physics is interested according to Descartes, while if we abandon final causes entirely, there then is no conclusive reason for assuming God as the efficient cause. Why may not the world always have been as it is, or at least have assumed its present form by chance as the result of the elements of which it consists? 3

3. In England, in spite of Bacon's well-known sarcasm, comparing final causes with a vestal virgin, who is consecrated to God and bears nothing, the most eminent scientific investigators, Boyle and Newton, declared for a cautious use of final causes, while Locke, though making only a slight allusion to the subject, evidently uses the physico-theological argument as one link in his proof for the existence of God.'

As Boyle's teleology is almost identical with that of Newton, which was so prominently before Kant, it is worth special notice, although his discussion may not have been directly in Kant's hands. After agreeing with Gassendi's position, that man may discover some, though not all, the ends of God, and claiming that an important difference exists in this respect between celestial bodies. and organized beings, he takes up the question as to whether the action for ends may be ascribed to unintelligent and even inanimate bodies. These, he says, cannot act for their own ends, but may from ends of the creator, and this he thinks may be conceived as accomplished through the original endowment of matter by the creator, with such properties and laws of motion as would produce the designed effects, each part acting as regularly for the attain

1 Quae sane et caetera quoque, reipsa non minus miranda manifestant nobis, velimus, nolimus, quem finem in ipsis ita conformandis, naturae Author habuerit. Op. omnia, Lug. 1758. Tomus III. 361 b.

2 At ex investigatione finium, non ipsa modo causa finalis existere intelligitur; sed is ipse quoque est gradus ad agnoscendum efficientem, quae in efficiendo talem sibi ipsi proposuerit finem. Ibid, 360 b, 361 a.

3 Ibid. 360 b.

4 Essay on Human Understanding. Book IV., Chap. X, 5, 6, 7.

ment of ends as though itself "understanding and industriously prosecuting those ends." Finally, as to whether a naturalist may consider final causes, he thinks that, though unsafe elsewhere, it is sometimes allowable in the bodies of animals to infer some of the ends from the manifest uses of the parts, and conjecture the offices from the nature and structure. "I speak only of those ends and uses of the parts of an animal that relate to the welfare and propagation of the animal itself."1 Nor should final causes ever take the place of efficient; it is an important thing to know that a watch has the function to keep time, but the mechanic needs also to understand its construction.

The point of view from which the whole is judged, however, is that of a mechanism so constituted at the outset that all effects are produced without any further interference-“it more sets off the wisdom of God in the fabric of the universe that he can make so vast a machine perform all these many things which he designed it should, by the mere contrivance of brute matter managed by certain laws of local motion and upheld by his ordinary and general concourse, than if he employed from time to time an intelligent overseer, such as nature is fancied to be, to regulate, assist and control the motions of the parts.'

4. What seemed a possibility to Boyle was demonstrated by Newton so far as the movements of the heavenly bodies were concerned. But emphatic as were the protests of the great mathematician against the occult or specific qualities of the scholastics, he insists that "it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World [than creation by the counsel of an intelligent agent], or pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the mere Laws of Nature. For while Comets move in very eccentric Orbs in all manner of Positions, blind Fate could never make all the Planets move one and the same way in Orbs concentrick. Such a wonderful Uniformity in the Planetary System must be allowed the Effect of Choice, And so must the Uniformity in the

1 "A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, wherein it is inquired whether, and if at all, with what Cautions a Naturalist should admit them."-Works, London, 1744, Vol. IV. Cf. also "A Free Inquiry into the vulgarly received notion of Nature," and "Of the High Veneration Man's Intellect owes to God, peculiarly for His Wisdom and Power."

2 Works, Vol. IV., p. 362 a. Cf. p. 530 a.

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Bodies of Animals." His explanation of the instincts of animals. seems to differ from that of Boyle, for while Boyle would apparently make those also spring from the general laws of matter and motion, Newton says, "The Instinct of Brutes and Insects can be the effect of nothing else than the Wisdom and Skill of a powerful ever-living Agent, who, being in all places, is more able by his will to move the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby form and reform the Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts of our own Bodies." 2

Symmetry of motion is accordingly one clear indication of intelligent choice. Another, much insisted upon by Newton and his associates, is variety. "A cœcâ necessitate metaphysicâ, quæ utique eadem est semper & ubique, nulla oritur rerum variatio. Tota rerum conditarum pro locis ac temporibus diversitas, ab ideis & voluntate entis necessario existentis solum modo oriri potuit.

993

5. Newton's teleology was thus a scholium to his general system and had interest chiefly from the pre-eminence of the scientific genius of its author. With Leibniz the case was otherwise. His system is unique in that it makes teleology its central point. It commanded respect not only because its author was the greatest scientific genius on the continent, but because he was also the best read in philosophy and the most original thinker of his day. It showed to Cartesian philosophers that the problem of teleology was not merely a subject for pious reflection, but a genuine problem of philosophy, and to the naturalists and materialists that their fear of scholasticism must not blind their eyes to the fact that mechanism could at best explain but half the world and even for that half, stopped short of a real explanation.

Cartesianism, as we have seen, denied not that God acted from ends, but that man could discover them, and hence excluded their consideration from physics. This, though not rigidly adhered to by all the school, was yet the prevailing view among the scientific contemporaries of Leibniz, and this aspect of Cartes

1Opticks, 2d Ed., London, 1718, p. 378.

2 Ibid, p. 379.

3 Principia Lib. III. Prop. 42. Schol. gen. Cf. also Cotes's Praefatio in Ed. Sec., "nam varietas formarum cum necessitate omnino pugnat." 4 Especially by Malebranche. See Meditations VII. and IX., which may be assumed as representing his views.

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ianism appealed so much more strongly to the scientific mind than its theistic aspect that Voltaire a little later could say that he had known many who had been influenced by Cartesianism to admit no other God than the immensity of things. Against this aspect Leibniz protested strongly. In the system of Spinoza, however, it was not simply a question of the use of final causes in physics. Spinoza's fundamental position, in that it assigned intellect and will to the "natura naturata," and excluded them wholly from the "natura naturans," left no ground for applying any such terms as order, confusion, beauty, good or bad to the world. They indicate only the constitution of the imagination, not that of nature. Benevolence and malevolence are equally inappropriate. All teleology is simply set aside.3 This is not the place to discuss the question recently reopened by Stein as to the relation of Leibniz to Spinoza, but it is evident that the whole emphasis which Leibniz places on final causes and the ultimate explanation of the mechanism of nature is directed, not against Spinoza, but against the materialistic physics of the time. The author's own account of his life is certainly deserving of respect, and this repeatedly affirms that it was through his dynamical researches that he was led to see the necessity of re-introducing the substantial forms of the school, both to find a true unity which the atoms could not furnish, and to explain by the metaphysical conception of force the laws of motion which the Cartesian conception of matter as mere extended substance did not afford.

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6. If matter were really a substance, as the materialists, and even the ordinary thinkers of all beliefs, seem to think, its laws would be of brute and geometric necessity. But matter is not substance. Bodies, with their modifications of size, form and mo

1"La Metaphysique de Newton," Amsterdam, 1740, p. 3.

2 Stein says (Leibniz and Spinoza, p. 114) that "Leibniz nicht ansteht das harte Wort auszusprechen dass der consequente Cartesianismus nothwendig zum Atheismus führe." Leibniz as a matter of fact says just the opposite, for he writes to correct the false report that he had said this, and his words are: “je n'ay garde de dire absolument qu'elle (la philosophie de Descartes) mene à L'atheisme." Philosophische Schriften. Gerhardt's Ausg.; IV. 281.

3 Ethica Props., 31, 32 and App.

4 IV. 478, III. 606.

edition, Berlin, 1875–90.

The references for Leibniz are all to Gerhardt's

tion, in so far as they form the data of natural science, are wholly phenomenal,' have no reality except that of a rainbow or a well-ordered dream. While then it is allowable and even absolutely necessary to explain every part of these phenomena by connecting it in time and space with other parts, it is yet evident that the question why the phenomena group themselves in given ways and change according to particular laws, must find its answer (to carry out the simile) in the laws of the dreamer's constitution, i. e. in the laws of the perception of the monad. No one questions that the mind or conscious monad acts from final causes or conscious purposes, hence the laws of the mechanism itself are really laws of perception, and come from final causes.2 But we have not yet a complete teleology. We must take into account the relation of the monads to each other and to God, each expressing and reproducing the activities of all the rest, and all in harmony as different activities of God, acting according to laws freely chosen by him, having no independent life, but sustained by his constant concourse so that they are but fulgurations of the Deity, or points of view from which he regards the universe.3

It should not be understood from the above that the phenomenality of matter and motion, and the consequent metaphysical ground of these laws were identical in the mind of Leibniz with their derivation from final causes. The two conceptions are nearly always kept distinct. When Leibniz says that the laws of motion and the explanation of the mechanism itself have a metaphysical basis, he refers to the conception of force and the laws of action and reaction, conservation of the same amount of force, and of

1 1II. 270. See Dillmann, "Eine neue Darstellung der Leibnizischen Monadenlehre," Leipzig, 1891, p. 246 ff, for references.

2" Le mouvement est le phenomene du changement suivant le lieu et le temps, le corps est le phenomene qui change. Les loix du mouvement, etant fondées dans les perceptions des substances simples, viennent des causes finales ou de convenance, qui sont immaterielles et en chaque monade; mais si la matiere estoit substance, elles viendroient de raisons brutes ou d'une necessité geometrique, et seroient tout autres qu'elles ne sont. Il n'y a point d'action des substances que les perceptions et les appetits, toutes les autres actions sont phenomenes comme tous les autres agissans." Letter to Remond, III. 623. Cf. also IV. 439.

3IV. 439, 457, 475; VI. 614, etc.